Submitted 2 weeks ago by tonytins@pawb.social to technology@lemmy.world
I’m a starlink customer and think it’s one of the best advancements in the past decade as it provides real access to rural addresses. The side effects of this is nearly immeasurable.
Spacex needs to STFU about this though. Fiber should continue to be deployed where possible.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours (and should’ve been a long time ago). Instead, that money was funneled to the likes of Time Warner and Comcast who never even followed through on their part of the deal. Now, SpaceX is getting funneled the cash.
I’m super thankful that WA State supports and gives assistance to counties building out public LUDs for fiber access, many paying attention to rural communities first. I escaped Comcast two years ago because of it.
Time Warner and Comcast need to have all that grant money clawed back. They contracted with the taxpayers to deliver a service and they didn’t even make a good faith effort to start.
It can’t, and the taxes you would pay to support fiber to my home would be extreme.
But fiber to a local wireless solution? Sure. But even that’s not possible for everyone, and they were expensive and unreliable until starlink started showing up. LEO internet has its benefits.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours
I don’t disagree, it should be deployed to rural areas. It’s never going to happen though, it’s just not profitable.
Sure, electrical infrastructure was deployed to the whole country, but it doesn’t need to be replaced and upgraded as frequently as Internet infrastructure does. Even if some rural areas do get fiber at some point, don’t expect the infrastructure to be upgraded regularly enough to stay comparable to denser areas.
You’re never going to find a company willing to do that job. We could do it at the national level, but I have my doubts that the country is headed in that direction.
Hello neighbor!
Fiber also has far better performance that satellite can never match.
there’s no fundamental physics limitation that makes this true
Seriously, this is in the “well, we know you want all the free money you can get, but: no. Now go do your thing on your own dime.”
Fiber in the ground is infrastructure like paved roads. Satellites? One counter-orbiting frag bomb can take out a satellite constellation in less than a day.
The side effects include filling orbit with space junk, crashing satellites to Earth, and blinding our ability to see meteors with a collision course for Earth. The side effects may not be predictable, but they’re definitely measurable.
Starlink has been much better than every other option where I am, but I will switch to fiber as soon as it gets here.
They’ve been promising fiber here for over a decade, but I can finally see them installing it two miles up the road now. Hopefully it will actually be available sometime soon.
What’s wrong with 4g? I live in a rural region and have been using it for years
Unreliable, high latency, slow bandwidth and data caps?
For me? 40/5 was about the best I could get. Mountains between me and the towers.
Hmmm ditch lightning fast and stable fiber for the mediocre speed and unstable micro satellite internet connection controlled by a petty asshole…
What to do, what to do?
Just think how much control he can have if he owns the medium which people access the internet.
And he’d only do good things with that power /s
I mean, you don’t have to guess. He’s interfered in a war and turned a social network into his personal bullhorn.
“Give me all your money” says world’s richest person, in a fit of originality.
Basic physics says satellites using Ku-band or whatever they use can’t compete with fibre.
Satellite internet has its uses like for ships at sea.
Or rural and remote areas. I think it would be a ton of fun to go backpacking with a foldable solar panel and an antenna.
4G towers can have 100km radius
Fibre is an investment that can be used and upgraded for decades. Starlink is a subscription service forever to a private company.
Except StarLink cannot possibly provide the same bandwidth, latency, and throughput a fiber connection can. Because of physics.
I can either share my 10G symmetrical connection with nobody, or with 200 others.
And, Fiber costs me $70 a month. Starlink, with worse performance, costs 4x more.
It’s not secure either. The next world war will involve efforts to sabotage satellites.
That’s the point. Musk wants control over the entire internet.
If all the other internet infrastructure was abandoned, he would be the most powerful person in history. Want to regulate him afterwards? He could just shut down the internet in your region until you accept his terms.
Because of physics.
Pfff, physics, pesky detail! Clearly you are not a true visionary like Musk! /s
Starlink has no answer to dark fiber.
In principle I agree with you, but as a network guy, somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared. The only question is just where and how much bandwidth (well network throughput) there is to share. I work for a large university and our main datacenter has 10GbE and 25/100GbE connections between all the local machines. But we only have about a 3-5gb connection out to the rest of the world.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’d 100% rather have a symmetrical fiber connection to the ISP than something shared like radio or DOCSIS. I used to live in a neighborhood where everyone had Spectrum and about 5-6 PM the speed would plummet because cable internet is essentially just fancy thinnet all over again. Yes I’m old since I used to set up thinnet :)
PS: I would kill for $70 fiber where I am now. Used to have it but we moved to the sticks and I miss it terribly.
somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared.
But the difference here is that on a fibre connection the shared portion goes over higher speed trunks which gives you most of that 1Gbps bandwidth. A wireless connection has a limited number of slices in the same band that it can share.
It’s the same issue with too many people on a single WiFi connection.
Technically correct. The best kind of correct ;). He should have said not sharing that last mile connection, like one would share with a satellite downlink.
That’s good for Starlink and all other ISPs, intuitively, the less internet people have, the more they will pay for more, simple supply and demand !
The best financial move for SpaceX and Starlink would be to have a few “unfortunate accidents” where tesla crash into telephone poles which happen to also hold critical fiber junctions.
Now that is profit driven innovation !
Starlink is 120/mo. Over the past 30 days my average DL is 144Mb, UL 18Mb, with a 27ms ping. It suuuuuuuuuuuuucks, but the only other option is a literal 4Mb DSL for 80$/mo
And, wait until Starlink hits saturation… Your speeds will be 1mb down, 300kb up, and latency hitting 100ms…
You’re only benefiting from early adoption at this time. It can only get worse the more they onboard.
Starlink is 120/mo.
How much for install?
TIL 120 is 4 x 70…
So, not 4x, but 2x.
BTW, did you know HughesNet is cheaper, and works just as well. Or, it will work just as well once Starlink reaches the saturation HughesNet faces.
Going from the most secure, hard wired formats to a con man’s satellites would be a fatal error. Any sort of military conflict and the network is all down, atleast broadband keeps secure networks intact.
Gotta gear up for America’s century of humiliation.
Just have a look at what’s going on in ukraine. Once they started using drones, the drone were attacked through their wireless connections. Now they trail fiber optic cables for control. What does that say about the relative reliability and security?
One day he’s gonna get assassinated and it will be a global holiday
You’d be instantly banned on reddit for this comment lol
Which is why I’m here and not there. It’s the internet: I hope nobody posts their hot takes! Reddit needs to lighten up. Or even better, fuck off.
i like the saying
Some make the world better by their passing, others make the world better by their passing.
it’s vague and passive enough that you have plausible deniability, but the meaning is clear. plus I like the poetry of it.
Some of us were already banned for such comments, but now we are here being bloodthirsty dickheads. I want to put Musks head in a vice and tighten it till the two plates are dry.
I’m going to start the celebration from now
doing doing the witch is dead
That was fast.
I should buy some fireworks
We should always celebrate whenever male supremacists meet their demise. People who use the term “misandry” unironically, for example.
Publicly funded fibre can be provider agnostic. Starlink can’t. Unless Musk is arguing for the nationalization of Starlink, which frankly I could get behind.
We paid for it, it should be nationalized. But they only ever socialize their losses, the profits are private.
Technically, S0aceX should be nationalized by the US based on the volume of money they’ve received in contacts.
A society grows great when old men plant fiber whose speed they know they shall never download from.
Fiber fucking rules
American taxpayers paid for both Starlink and Space X. Overpaid, actually, that’s why he’s the richest man in the world. None of his businesses are profitable, he just skims hundreds of billions off the enormous government grants he gets.
Since we overpaid for that tech, we should just confiscate it from him. He can be thankful that he doesn’t go to prison for misappropriating government funds.
He can keep Tesla. It’ll be bankrupt in 2 years anyway.
I say this as someone who actively pays for starlink out of necessity.
Fuck you, no. Fiber is much better for everyone. Eat shit muskrat.
I had Starlink for over 2 years while waiting for my fiber to be installed. Worlds better than the marginal DSL I had available before (5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up), but I’m far happier with the fiber I have now.
I feel that man. Right now I load balance between tmobile and starlink cause the towers near me suck. I work from home so having consistent internet is really important and in my area, the fiber build out is really slow and expensive. Luckily I’m moving here soon but its been a pain in the ass to say the least.
Starlink is great for what it is. Very important tech but yea, I’m sure most everyone would be happier with fiber.
“Oligarch mouthpiece demands diverting of major public funds to oligarchs instead”
Story of America, really.
I got a better idea: a civil war against oligarchs
This country is so cooked
No fucking thanks. Gigabit+ fiber > Nazi-ass satellite internet that doesn’t have the bandwidth for actual dense population centers.
Yeah! I want my internet run by a man baby who turns off your access if he doesn't like you!
Honestly, I think starlink is a fantastic idea in general, but this is clearly bullshit. Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It’s just never going to be as cost effective as installed fiber. Fiber is obviously the right technology to use in heavily populated areas i.e. for the vast majority of Internet users. And where the population is sparse and laying fiber for individual customers is cost prohibitive, that is where satellite connectivity shines. If SpaceX or anyone else is pretending otherwise, they’re being blatantly deceitful and malicious. That’s not in Internet users’ best interest.
As fiber is rolled out more, i see less and less why it would be cost prohibitive?
All you need to do to connect a remote place is lay a cable. More expensive if you need dig a trench and put the cable in there. But if it can be done for electricity it can be done for fiber.
Well the companies that want to lay fiber aren’t always the same ones who own the telephone poles. If they have to pay for that, that adds to costs.
Also, above ground cables are more exposed and need to be repaired more frequently. Falling trees can sever cables and simply swinging in the wind puts more wear on the cables over time. All together, it means that burying cables is more cost effective in the long term, but present higher upfront costs. Whereas above ground cables are cheaper upfront, but more expensive over time.
The high upfront costs are the bigger deal, but in general, they just don’t want to lay a mile of cable for a couple of users, regardless of how they’re doing it.
lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.
Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It doesn’t even work well in tandem.
Starlink has a single benefit going for it right now: Lack of uptake.
They only have a swath of spectrum, and that has a physical upper limit to how much information it can carry, in total. So does fiber. But, Starlink gets to share that with all users (Much like how cable internet works, its shared bandwidth for everyone on the loop). Fiber, you get your dedicated pipe.
This isn’t even getting to view obstruction (A plane will cause a drop out), latency, jitter, etc. These are all physics problem that just cannot be solved without violating the laws of physics. Latency, at a minimum, is 2.6 ms, and that’s just for the first leg.
It’s crazy to say it doesn’t work well in tandem… I mean, it’s demonstrable, If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t use it, but they do. And there is no other way to reach users in some places. Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
Look, I don’t like Elon, I don’t like monopolies, I’m not a secret shill for SpaceX, but I can admit the truth right in front of me. You don’t have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn’t a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it? Why create a false narrative? Why get all defensive about a technology?
And finally, I do not see any reason to care about an extra 5 ms latency.
In France they authorised air hanging fiber, so they just use electric poles and hang the fiber under the 220 volt lines, as a last resort.
Cheap as hell. Or, where there’s a will there is a way.
We do this in some parts of America too. My grandmother’s local electric co-op provided fiber to her house this way in the middle of know where.
Nah we don’t support nazis
Fiber all the way, especially if it is owned by the community. That would simply ensure that Musk nor TelCos can’t fuck around with people. Fast speed, no data caps, low prices, and not being at the mercy of some wealthy jackhole would be wins across the board.
Also, if America has a 2nd Civil War, fiber will be much more safe than relying on sats - those can be shot down, or worse, Musk can cut off the good guys from having internet. It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors. As seen in Ukraine, the fucker has absolutely no compunctions against disabling the internet at key moments.
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.
Remember when our government spent billions of our taxes on getting high speed internet out to as many Americans as possible? Remember how literally nothing happened and they just shrugged when we asked where the money went?
This was during the Obama years too if memory serves correctly.
It doesn’t matter what they decide to do. The money will magically vanish and we will all get left holding the bag once more.
Alternative Headline: Billionaire Signals States Should Speed Fiber Rollout
SpaceX should dump all their space plans and give back their grant money.
Fuck off and give me the fiber that was promised and paid for decades ago.
Remember how Elon Musk conned Vegas out of millions with the hyperloop.
Satellite internet is not the future; it’s cell internet.
The tech behind starlink is good. LEO satellites play a purpose. Upsides are they have less latency than GEO satellites. Speeds are the same though.
Downside is you have to deploy them evenly as a constellation or else you get service inturruption. Which means if you look at any population map 90% of your constellation is going to be underutilized, and the other 10% is going to be full.
The real target audience should be mobile broadband. Airplanes, ships, RVs, cars, phones, etc.
But what do you do in the meantime? Fill in the unutilized constillation with rural residential. You can’t compete with fiber tech, so you sue the govt for free money.
It shouldn’t be all or nothing. It should be diversified.
Yeah, there are rural locations where Starlink makes sense but also there are a lot of urban places that it would never work in.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 2 weeks ago
all you can eat latency and an oversaturated network on devices with a limited lifespan.. what else could you ask for!
pennomi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Starlink has much better latency than most satellites, but still 10 to 50 times as much as fiber.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 2 weeks ago
ha yeah... not having to make a 340 mile round trip instead of the hundreds of feet to the nearest router will do that
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Just for reference, I get about 45-50 ping playing Marvel Rivals on Starlink.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So if my ping is currently 90ms, it’ll become 900ms - 4.5s?
Guidy@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A subscription that somehow still manages to use surge pricing? I’m assuming that’s the next logical step.
ubergeek@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Well, to be fair, the dishes do make great outdoor cat beds!
smithsonianmag.com/…/outdoor-cats-are-using-500-s…