They were never building that, let’s be honest.
The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink
Submitted 3 weeks ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theverge.com/news/675502/bead-program-fiber-internet-paused
Comments
aesthelete@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Glitchvid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It was basically up to the states this time around, they could allocate BEAD funds more or less as they wanted and absolutely build fiber out to the vast majority of residences (look at North Dakota, it’s evidently possible) through models like municipal fiber.
Ultimately it’s a political issue more than anything else, Americans just can’t get anything done anymore, politicians would rather enrich themselves and voters only care about the culture war.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wish there was more municipal fiber. It’s absolutely insane that the big ISPs fight it and often win.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
This is proof of why Direct Democracy is better than “Representative” “Democracy”
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Every single time the land line ISPs have gotten money for rural broadband, they use it for something else and don’t build anything. Starlink actually built a network that works. Many places have gotten decent 5G home internet too.
I have been promised fiber for over a decade yet the only wired connection available is a DSL network that’s been so poorly maintained that it barely even functions.
RedPostItNote@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Do you mean works or falls out of the sky routinely to litter the earth? We build lots as far as smaller ISPs go. You just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
Tiger_Man_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
There’s nothing beter than optic fiber, because nothing can be faster than light
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
That’s…not really a cogent argument.
Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum — light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they’re just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don’t call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.
If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don’t use fiber, you probably use microwaves: arstechnica.com/…/private-microwave-networks-fina…
Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that “physics bandwidth” tends to care about relative bandwidth (“frequency divided by delta frequency”), whereas “information bandwidth” cares about absolute bandwidth (“delta frequency”), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz — so a tiny relative bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum — light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum
I’m a complete laymen when it comes to this, but this sounds like it would pertain to latency rather than bandwidth. I expect that fiber would have a much higher data capacity than satellite.
piecat@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Microwave point-to-point radios are fastest because they travel through air, but more importantly, are typically the shortest path possible by line-of-sight.
Being 66.7% of speed of light doesn’t matter terribly when you consider that the cable path is shorter by more than 66.7% of path taken by satelite link.
There’s also the idea of
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Light in glass is actually surprisingly slow
After some distance, starlink would have better latency, as while the signal needs to go through a bunch of km of slow atmosphere, it would make up for that by having a big part of the signal go through vacuum between satellites
But latency isn’t everything
Fiber (when properly installed) is very stable. Satellite and mobile is always at least a little bit flaky
TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
St*rlink orbits at 500 km so you would need to be like 1200 km by land away from your destination to have a better latency
Sentau@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
This has got a scary amount for up votes, especially considering that this is the ‘technology’ community.
Radiowaves are also ‘light’ and infact as many others have mentioned so eloquently, light travelling through air is faster than light travelling through glass. The reasons why fiber is better are - better stability because of lower packet loss and interference and better efficiency because there fewer losses due to diffusion, reflection and other processes when traveling in a fiber optic cable.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
scary amount of up votes
Eh, I think it’s fine. Fiber is faster (higher bandwidth, lower latency) than light transmission due to the factors you mentioned, so whether it technically transmits slower than light is largely irrelevant.
untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’ve heard starlink is faster than fiber by a few nanoseconds and big finance really wants that for their high-speed trading
most of its signals move though space, compared to the glass in fiber so it sorta makes sense
Goretantath@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Its not, light is the fastest AND isnt as interuptuble and lag induced as satalite. A wired connection will ALWAYS have lesslatency to a sat link.
nthavoc@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Line of site is a thing…
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It depends on the distance, but yes. Those laser interlinks are fast.
pulsewidth@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pros of fibre:
- cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
- faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
- very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
- high stability: does not give a crap if it’s cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it’s just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
- long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
- lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.
Cons of nationwide fibre:
- billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
- monopoly Internet Service Providers won’t be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
- people will tell you “uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons”, but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.
There’s nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As someone who wrote their CS thesis on networks I find starlink infuriating. Its such a terrible option that basically persists through memes and highly niche use anecdotes.
You can literally cover entire landmass of earth with fiber and cell towers for pennies on a dollar what low orbit satellites would get you.
nonentity@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Wireless data transmission should only ever be used for nomadic, temporary, and/or sacrificial links.
They’re useful for quick deployment, but are intrinsically brittle and terrible for resiliency and efficiency.
The longer the dependence on them for a given use case, the less defensible arguments in support of them become.
I’m all for the use of satellite delivery of internet services, but only when it’s used in conjunction with a broader roll out of hardwired infrastructure, at which point it can reasonably be relegated to serving as a secondary, backup diverse path.
notannpc@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ah yes, who needs fiber when you have an inferior product that will be worse in every calculable way?
Pay no attention to the person who stands to benefit from this deal. There’s definitely nothing illegal about it.
So what if the owner of Starlink just happened to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to get the current president elected? That surely has nothing to do with the abysmal Starlink service stealing away funding for critical infrastructure.
PancakesCantKillMe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hope you like satellite internet.
Not as much as I revile Musk.
BigMacHole@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
This would be REALLY CORRUPT if the CEO of Starlink was ALSO cutting HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of American Jobs and SLASHING BILLIONS in Social Funding (like Social Security) just so we could Give Him these CONTRACTS! But FOX NEWS told me that was NOT true so it’s OK!
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
If your nationwide fibre internet plan rollout was even half as bungled and bullshit as ours here in Australia, it must be a shitshow. It was used as a political pawn, with one party wanting to NOT finish it so they could use it to help get them re-elected endlessly, and the other party opposing it because it wasn’t their idea, and pushing an alternative terrible plan that was far slower and far more expensive in the long term. In the end we got a terrible mix of both.
overload@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I don’t recall labor not wanting to finish it? My recollection was that it was the libs not wanting to go through with it and that’s how we got fibre to the node after they were elected.
I get that running fibre all the way to every premises in rural areas like Alice Springs would have been ridiculous though.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 3 weeks ago
Labor could have finished it easily if they wanted to, but they dragged their butts because they knew it was a vote winner. Just like almost every big issue, they never want to actually implement it fully because they want to continue using it to get re-elected.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
We’ve already given telecoms well over $100 billion, over the last 25 years, and they’ve done fuck all
hector@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
They’re doing the whole California rail thing again and a big part of Americans is cheering for it. You wanted a greater America? Enjoy the privatization of everything :)
tonytins@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
The plan’s lead architect, Evan Feinman, says that before he was forced out by the Trump administration in March, […] In March, Lutnick announced a “rigorous review” of BEAD, which he claims is too “woke” and filled with “burdensome regulations.” Now the plan may change.
Hatred really does make you do stupid things.
k0e3@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Shouldn’t the 5G covid brain control serum chip nanobot people be upset about this?
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Inb4 “The satellites are beaming mind control into your head”
EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Better get to work laying cable.
Bieren@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I miss dial up. Like local providers with 2 or 3 numbers to try.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I don’t, dial-up sucked.
dumbpotato@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
Satellite and wired internet are not the future.
The future is to just use our phones and cell towers.
RedPostItNote@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hi, I’m someone working on the rural fiber expansions. Those are what we use to feed the cell towers. You don’t want to rely on microwave or what else have you.
dumbpotato@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
Right. It’s way cheaper to connect cell towers than residents.
Goretantath@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Username fits.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Someone really needs to explain the fundamental limitations of shared medium internet connections (pretty much anything wireless) when compared to exclusive medium internet connections (one wire/fiber per end point) to politicians and other decision makers. Banning the advertising of shared medium speeds as if they were exclusively reserved for you would be a good start.
billiam0202@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh, I see.
You think this is a “politicians don’t understand the tech they’re supposed to regulate” issue, and not a “Elon Musk is bribing every greedy asshole in Congress to prop up his businesses at taxpayer expense” issue.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I think one of the issues with taking bribes is that even corrupt people don’t want to completely ruin the economy because you don’t want the people trying to bribe you lack the money to do so. Or in other words, even apart from any moral issues you don’t want to kill your golden goose.
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Uhhh – the politicians politicized money to companies to make tubes that we never got. Not sure if elaborating on details of tubes is going to help clear things up.