Comment on Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies

• Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the kind of dumb statement that really gives this platform a bad name. I know people who were quoted a six figure sum to get mains power to their property, fibre would have been a similar cost. And this is people who are at a fixed location, we also have those who are mobile to consider.

  There are people for whom a wired connection to anything is out of the question.

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  • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If only someone like a government would subsidise the installation just like the subsidised starlink because that also isn’t profitable. But a lot of money today is cheaper than an infinite amount of money from launching infinite rockets forever.

    How do you think everything got built thus far?

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      First, I’m not in America.

      Second, I don’t think you comprehend just how remote some people are. I live in New Zealand, where over 90% of the country has fibre broadband thanks to a government initiative to get everyone connected, and we still have a large number of people using Starlink or other systems to get online, because it is simply not cost effective to wire them in.

      Reality does not align with your smug one-liners.

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      • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Hey, look, I can instantly downvote you too even though downvotes mean nothing on this platform, and it just antagonists any hope of conversation! Woo. Here’s where you say you didn’t do that.

        My entire point is that starlink is not more cost effective, it’s paid for by American subsidies and investors. It’s a money losing scheme. But laying infrastructure instead of burning the money up with infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers forever gives you a better return on the money spent as you can continue using that infrastructure for hundreds more years

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• Lmaydev@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Still doesn’t help ahips

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  • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ships don’t need infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers launched forever.

    Maybe when we have fusion power and don’t have to waste the resources. We don’t. We have to choose what we want to use. I say that launching infinite rockets with infinite cell towers forever is not worth being able to watch tiktok in the middle of the Atlantic.

    There’s always actual satellite internet for the needed communications.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers

      They need 12,000 of them, which isn’t a huge amount considering you’re covering the entire globe.

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      • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Per year, forever. Hence infinite rockets with infinite cell towers.

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  • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The issue with starlink is the choice to be in LEO instead of using geosats. It lowers the latency but it makes the whole project completely unsustainable.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I suspect they’ll eventually move to a slightly higher orbit, where their satellites can last a decade or so, once the technology is more mature.

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• mosiacmango@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A lot of glass is much better than a lot of copper.

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