Submitted 11 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to technology@lemmy.world
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday reaffirmed its 2022 decision to deny SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies.
I dislike musk, but this is a stupid decision, given how many subsidies went to shitty providers that did nothing.
Plus the fact that Starlink is actually serving these people already.
So if starlink isn’t getting the subsidy, guess whose prices are going through the roof next year?
So get rid of those instead of giving Mr.Rightwinger more socialism that he hates so much.
Bell operating companies stretched cable out to the rural areas. That’s a lot more than nothing.
Incoming Starlink price increases…
“New and improved” Starlink, with lightning fast speeds upto 8mbps, now from only $1399 per month…
/s
Separating Starlink from musk as much as is possible, it’s been a great service for me.
My only other option where I live is 20/1 DSL from CenturyLink, a company which, for me, has been far worse to deal with than Xfinity. The 20/1 service wasn’t even that fast when tested. If one device in the house managed to get a decent download going, the uplink would saturate and prevent pretty much any other traffic.
Starlink meanwhile has been a huge improvement at 120/10 most of the time for me, and very reliable. I pay $120/month.
There’s zero chance any service provider is going to run better corrections out to my neighborhood, the line of sight service options are not in my line of sight, and cell service is a joke.
I have had a similar experience. Previously the only thing we had was a AT&T hot spot that got 10/2 in one specific window. Starlink has been a godsend allowing me to work from home. My job for the last two years has been remote tech support for manufacturing, where I have to regularly VPN into customers sites to help them get up and running again. With Starlink we get 140/15 average and only occasional drops during severe storms. But yes Musk is not a good person and we would switch to copper or fiber if it was available.
Wow 120 dollars a month is a pretty hefty price. Didn’t know that’s what the cost was
It's weird. Even in the least densely populated county (and one of the poorest county), we were able to get fiber. 50/25 is pretty reasonably priced, and could go up to 250mbps if we wanted for still fairly reasonable.
If they could do it, don't understand why most places except the most rural western US can't do the same.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social 11 months ago
I’m a little torn on this because every time I’ve seen this posted on Lemmy there’re people who praise it and point out how it’s often the only viable option if you’re rural.
However, as someone pointed out, the infrastructure is not really sustainable long term, and may not be very sustainable short term it sounds like either.
We need to bury our electrical anyway, I say start in these rural areas and bury internet right along with it.
badaboomxx@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I agree. Also the issue that I have with starlink is that an any given time, if musk throws a tantrum, you could get kicked out of the internet.
AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Can’t really help the small islands and all the shipping traffic and aircraft that have started using it and can benefit from a high speed connection
Damage@feddit.it 11 months ago
Ships and planes aren’t rural