Because as we know, the only way for companies owned by the richest person on Earth to do business is if they get hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money first.
As if giving it all to Comcast and Spectrum for the 47th time will make things any better? Starlink is actually something accessible for a lot of these people, while legacy ISPs just pocket the money and claim its too hard to serve rural customers.
It's great that there is variety and all but let's not pretend the CEO isn't dangerous, see starling/Ukraine issue and that the company isn't filling the sky with consumer shite designed to be burned up.
Infrastructure should be publicly owned and strong competitive regulation.
I'll just add that "designed to be burned up" is the correct approach to these types of satellite constellations. SpaceX has that aspect correct, at least.
Agree with everything else. Musk is a batshit egomaniac, and letting him dictate use of large infrastructure is careless. Government subsidies should entail a certain public influence over the operation of the system.
I just don't think we need satellites clogging up the sky for something we can accomplish if we wanted to. Fiber is cheap.
Starlink could be deployed in emergencies just fine.
Clogging up...the sky...you do realize the size of space right? And the size of on of these SATs right?... it's like putting 800 washing machines in AZ and then telling people az is clogged with washing machines...do you randomly run into people's houses driving through your neighborhood?
This is what people are referring to when they talk about junk in orbit.
Starlink doesn't produce any debris, only the satellites. Now they keep the tie rods attached so they don't float off. The reason the picture looks so bad is because each piece of debris in this picture is represented as miles and miles across.
Both of you are right. Space junk is an issue (Kessler syndrome), but that's for orbits which won't degrade by themselves, starlink satellites are supposed to be low enough that at time of crash they should mostly crash towards the earth and burn in the atmosphere.
Anything is better than Starlink, Starlink is just extreme useless pollution for something that normal ISPs can achieve.
The government needs to step in and make internet more of a utility like in like every other successful country.
There are actual use cases for satellite internet. I heard from an evacuee from the Northwest Territories in Canada here that he was basically only able to get updates on what was happening—i.e. what roads weren't on fire and where evacuation centers were—because of a couple of people with starlinks. There are huge areas up there with little to no internet infrastructure, and this summer much of that was damaged in the fires.
Ground infrastructure is expensive to run out to extreme rural areas, and it's also vulnerable in different ways from satellite infrastructure. In the US, yeah, it's dense enough that ISPs mostly need to get their shit together, but there are very large areas where running a cable has a lot of problems.
That makes sense, but Starlink is also extremely expensive and I don't see the price being comparable honestly.
For your first case while evacuation and such, there are alternatives and you shouldn't need full internet access for situations like that. (obviously this isn't the case right now)
From everything that has been posted on the US and what I've seen with ISPs and such, satellite internet is not necessary. I hate Starlink with a passion for what the consequences are, I hate looking up in a dark night and being able to see a giant row of Starlink satellites and I hate how much it pollutes even outside of the Earth. It's not necessary and I will always be for just other wireless communication or straight up wires.
For your first case while evacuation and such, there are alternatives and you shouldn’t need full internet access for situations like that. (obviously this isn’t the case right now)
People absolutely need internet access in evacuation situations. They need information to know where it's safe to go, where they can get help, what routes are still open, whether it's safe to return home, whether their home still exists... in some cases the only communication methods are either internet-based or literally flying a plane in, there aren't even roads to some communities that need to be evacuated. There is way too much information people need to be able to rely on local communication methods like radio.
And that's really one of the only other options in these situations. The fibre line (pretty much singular, because the cost to run fibre over thousands of kilometers is enormous) going through the NWT was destroyed in the fires as a fire was approaching Yellowknife. Cell towers can literally melt from the heat of some of these fires. Ground infrastructure is vulnerable to all of the climate disasters our world is currently facing. And that's ignoring it getting destroyed by actively hostile actors like in Ukraine.
Do Starlink and Musk suck? Absolutely. Fuck them. But satellite internet is increasingly showing itself to be a necessity, and to think otherwise really underestimates the size of our world and the vulnerability of our infrastructure. We need better management of it, but we definitely need it.
I said shouldn't.
It's not expensive compared to the alternatives. It costs exactly what I'm paying Comcast for my cable internet here in suburbia at $120. Companies like Hughesnet will charge you $200/mo for 20GB of data at 2Mbps if it isn't cloudy out.
My coworkers mother in rural SW Washington signed up after I recommended it for her to him. Previously, she couldn't even watch Netflix or YouTube with traditional satellite, and now she's getting 300Mbps for less money than she was paying before.
I meant comparable to wired up internet or proper wireless towers in infrastructure cost, the end user cost is absurd anywhere in the US and it's not worth talking about.
That's observably false, though. If infrastructure costs were really that much cheaper, ISPs would already be serving these people at a lower price point.
Which is why I didn't say it was factual, but rather that I didn't see it being comparable.
And no, my point has nothing to do with ISP companies and for a business it would be illogical to dig to more rural areas.
This is something Starlink avoids by being in space obviously, other existing ISPs wouldn't make much money off of it anywhere near as fast for example. This is why the government should handle all of it, like I said.
Can achieve but don't and won't. You might as well be arguing that rural people don't deserve access to the internet because that's the only legitimate alternative.
No, it's not and you need to read what I said in the second part of my comment.
And if you're going to be like that, I do believe rural people don't deserve access to the internet if it means severely polluting the sky, space and the earth while it's not necessary.
The US government can easily step in, it's just hard to imagine that ever happening.
The US government can easily step in, it's just hard to imagine that ever happening.
Which is why it isn't a legitimate solution. Starlink exists now.
Why are you so concerned about pollution in LEO but not pollution from digging a million miles of wire and trenches or chopping down forests full of trees, all of which regularly sustain damage and need replacement?
That's why I said it's hard to imagine that ever happening currently, it doesn't mean it isn't a legitimate solution.
On Earth you can compensate for the pollution caused by laying in wires, and if this was done by the government it would probably be near or at powerlines (when they exist, which they should) and it could just be part of normal maintenance for example.
None of this can be done with LEO, it's getting polluted up there and these satellites just get burnt up. We're removing precious resources from our planet to burn them up for no reason and causing pollution on Earth and outside of it, it makes no sense.
Starlink is just extreme useless pollution for something that normal ISPs can achieve.
If they could achieve it, Starlink simply wouldn't exist.
That's completely wrong, for the ISPs it usually isn't worth achieving and is why the government should step in.
for the ISPs it usually isn't worth achieving
Yes that's exactly my point
and is why the government should step in.
Okay but...they don't.
Starlink also covers the entire planet and all the oceans, which is simply not feasible with wires.
And also simply not necessary to have as many satellites as Starlink does needed to cover the ocean and the rare spots where wires can't go.
And we really need that 4K UHD porn to load faster on the hole planet, including the oceans.
You're intentionally conflating high speed internet access with any internet access at all.
TIL: The majority of Lemmys have never lived an hour from the nearest population center, down a dirt road, on a few hundred acres of wilderness. I fucking HATE musk and I still have an RV kit in my basement so when I'm traveling around hours from anywhere, Starlink works perfectly.
I live two hours from a city, waaaay up in the Alps and I have gigabit fibre for€40 a month lol
Your infrastructure sucks donkeyballs 😂
two hours is waaaay out there guys!
My sides are in orbit! Here is a side-by side of the Alps
next to a small section of the American Rockies,
which is still nothing compared to Canada (yes there are people in that big empty area).
No offense, but true European rural doesn't exist.
No offense, but true European rural doesn't exist.
Bro, come to northern Sweden and say that again lol
Touche lol
Also if we're talking about the European continent as a whole finland, the urals, and maybe the west coast of ireland depending on definitions.
Yeah, I just get a bit peeved cuz I live up here, lol!
If I drive 250km to my grandparents I will not see much of buildings and people.
Come to the most uninhabitable place on the continent for some real rural living!
Shit, that picture outside Edmonton is hardly even distant, there are a bunch of communities in northern Alberta and BC that don't even have roads going to them because they're too far away.
I hear there's roads in the winter, lol.
Me -
Your infrastructure is shit
You -
Here, I will demonstrate how correct you are
😂
You were being an ignorant dick and I called you on it. It's not my fault you can't handle a few hours on the road.
No where in Europe is "remote."
Come to the South West US where you can drive 100 miles in any direction and barely see another human.
You can easily drive 100 miles in northern Sweden and see nothing but trees lol
Or maybe don't go there and then complain about the obvious shortfalls of the place.
The rural exodus happened for a reason.
The rural exodus happened for many reasons, none of which have to do with the availability of high-speed internet. People are born where they are born, and often live there too. Sometimes that place is densely populated and replete with amenities, such as the Alps, sometimes it's not. You don't have to be an uneducated dick.
"Haha stupid poor people. Why don't you just move somewhere else? Have you tried not being poor? Have you tried not being born in a impoverished remote or rural area? Did you even try to upgrade your parent's income bracket, or trade-in for better parents?”
Or maybe you meant, "Why don't you just abandon your grandparents who live at, or across the border? I'm sure the Mexican or American governments will pick up the slack when you move away. I'm sure familial cultural importance and dynamics are the same in Switzerland as they are around the Mexican border".
It's not a shortfall thanks to Starlink. Are you following along?
But taxes...
It's a difference between definitions of "city" and "middle of nowhere" between the US and Europe. The US is a massive place. Part of the reason the US appears to have such a crappy infrastructure is that when, say, mobile carriers want to improve it to upgrade something to 5G, they have to do so for the entire country, with many US states having an area the size of whole European countries. Texas itself is the size of Germany. That is a much bigger undertaking than improving it for a single European country or even a block of countries like western or central Europe. Things are so spread out here that "remote" can mean REALLY remote in some areas. Distances between reasonably sized cities in the US can be much larger than in Europe, and the US has more people in those more rural areas than some think, especially in states in the middle of the country. Local ISPs for internet in those areas can be good depending on the area, but a lot of people in the really rural areas would still be better and more easily served by a service like Starlink.
This is far more hilarious to see that a good number of European countries fit inside of Texas.
Sounds wonderful tbh
Today you learned that the majority of people don't live in the middle of nowhere?
Of course they don't, by definition, if a bunch of people lived there, it wouldn't be the middle of nowhere.
Lmao you're being a pedantic dick bc you know what they meant.. and I'm cracking up enjoying everything about it
Yeah, Musk has gone insane, anyone can see that.
But Musk aside, LEO satellites are still really the only viable and economical solution to the problem of broadband in rural areas, and Starlink seems to work great.
Also, the objection that resulted in pulling this funding looks pretty bullshit. Several other broadband providers are getting these same funding deals for doing basically nothing.
Musk has gone insane
No, he hasn't. He's just a bog-standard capitalist doing bog-standard capitalist things.
Explicitly not the point of my post...
My partner’s family lives on a dirt road between a corn field and cow pasture.. a full 1.5 hour drive from the nearest mid-sized city.. they have gigabit fiber..
Not saying that their situation is currently typical, but id argue it is indeed a sign that good internet is slowly but surely coming available to everyone.
Don't blame the people because the private sector doesn't gain any money from this investment in this infrastructure.
That doesn't make any sense. Taxpayer money was supposed to fix this over a decade ago.
Middle of nowhere between fields: I have 5g router and 300+mbps
If you're pulling 5G you're not remote.
Brother, we have wildly different definitions of "nowhere" if you get 5G. When I lived in a rural shithole in the US, I had to drive 100 miles to start picking up 5G signals (though that was just before the pandemic, so maybe 5G coverage has improved greatly in the past 3 years).
Closest town is 55km away
Shit man, I used to commute almost that exact distance each way. Anything under triple digits is practically in-town in many places.
Yeah me too, untill COVID and the digital acceleration to WFH
That stock chart is nothing terrible. Sideways on the 6 months and the 5-year is pretty good. I don't think he's suffering.
Its simple like many Musk projects he over promises and under delivers.
Starlink performance is slow and unreliable. Sometimes you get 100 Mbps and sometimes you get < 1 Mbps with the average being around 25. So it cant even really be considered broadband.
Doesn't match my experience. The worst thing about it is ping, but download is mostly always around 100-200.
Yeah, I've always seen at least 20 down, never as low as 1 Mbps the grandparent comment claimed. I usually see roughly 100 Mbps down, though.
That's based on using it in a few different places in our RV over the summer, some with obstructions from trees in some spots. Regardless of the actual speed, my wife and I were both able to telework and hold conference calls simultaneously without an issue - and my wife would use video (I kept it off, but she used it).
Really? Shit. I was planning to move to starlink but let me do some research.
I had Starlink too and it was definitely unreliable. It's also absolutely atrocious in any kind of weather like heavy rain or snow.
It's better than nothing for sure, but definitely look into it more, especially if you'll be relying on it for work.
It's also generally better than dsl.
It's faster than my old fiber connection through Telus up here in Canadia and also means I can look at any hamlet with power as a viable place to live now. We are never down for more the 2 seconds a day.
Because it's satellite!
Absolutely, but Musk specifically said weather wouldn't be a problem like regular satellites, which was just not true from my experience.
Overall though, I just think people should be aware that it's not a good replacement for if you already have access to other Internet services. I've seen people discuss how they want to ditch Comcast for it. It's a lot more expensive and definitely not as consistent. Again, it totally has an audience and purpose, pros and cons.
DISH says the same crap about satellite TV. Physics doesn't lie.
I was shocked when he got a gov't contract after he admitted to all that fuckery in Ukraine.
Wtf is happening in gov't???
i imagine that's a product of the technology and not so much the company. the problems with satellite internet are just physics. it's probably stupid to go with something like this in an area that has fiber available.
My parents had it. Average was about 40mbps over a 60gb download, minimums were in the low 20s, and it topped out at around 80-100mbps. A fuck of a lot better than 10mbps down 750kbps up, their only other option. I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but starlink is awesome.
trying to get another one of his boondoggles financed by Congress i see.. nothing but charlatan under those robes..
musk is one of the richest man alive, why does he need subsidies to do his job??
clearly you’re not rich. the rich stay rich by spendng other people’s money.
this guy knows material dialectics
This isn't really a great argument. Subsidies are there to promote the things we want to come to fruition. Want your people to have solar? Subsidies for putting one on your roof. You want more electric cars on the road even though more expensive? Subsidies.
You want a billionaire to help a new technology reach people he wouldn't bother with? Subsidies.
So we do that by giving them even more fucking money, instead of taking it away when they do a shitty thing, like ruin our atmosphere with fossil fuels.
musk is one of the richest man alive, why does he need subsidies to do his job??
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. Next question ...
Aside from the bit of personal enjoyment I get from seeing Elon take an L… Starlink only meets the classification as “broadband internet” in optimal conditions. The average experience just plain doesn’t qualify and it is openly acknowledged that performance will get worse with more traffic. It may be better than nothing for some, but it is clearly not sustainable. The money would be better spent running lines because at least that would be consistent and long lasting even if it is more expensive.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”
That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal.
SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.
“This applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.” FCC commissioner Brendan Carr dissented, writing that “the FCC did not require — and has never required — any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”
But his funding plan was slashed by the time it became law, with the final version offering no money for locally-run internet service.
Christopher Cardaci, head of legal at SpaceX, writes in a letter to the FCC that “Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”
The original article contains 296 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 21%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Quite excited to see what some competition will do in this space (no pun intended) with Amazon's upcoming deployment.
I imagine Amazon will be the one taking your tax dollars to do business. They famously have no money and need American tax dollars generated by working class labor in order to survive.
For an operating company that's the kiss of death. I predict Starlink will be bought by the US government and there won't be a hell of a lot of profit.
Unlikely that it'll be purchased by DoD, but death's kiss was given when Elon held satellite internet access of the Ukrainian Armed Forces hostage while they were engaged in a hot war and being supported by DoD. That's not how the Defense Industry operates. If you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.
I can pretty much guarantee you that the Pentagon immediately started a lot of conversations with established contractors about rapidly expediting their own LEO constellations, and promising help on the regulatory side.
It may not have been immediately apparent, but it was there. It honestly wouldn't have mattered as much for the business, except for the fact that SpaceX is entirely dependent upon government contracts, and the military is a huge part of that.
He didn't hold it hostage.
He didn't turn it off, it was never on. He didn't intervene in an attack, he just did nothing.
It's even questionable if he can legally allow Ukraine to drop one on a boat and use it as a weapon, and it was against the terms of use.
The DoD failed to sign an agreement with SpaceX which left them in that awkward position. The DoD has now done so and it's a non issue now. The DoD is the one allowing all these combat uses now as it should have been from day 1
When Musk cut off Ukraine, the Pentagon informed him that they were immediately purchasing a minor controlling stake in the, currently, private company. Service to Ukraine was restored the next day.
That's how "capitalism" works apparently.
I also assume that's why NVidia did it's sudden about face and fell right in line when the generals threatened to own them the next day.
It's all just rich people getting reminded they're only rich, or alive, because the government allows them to be.
I'm honestly at a loss with trying to discern whether you just honestly don't understand the situation and how corporations/defense contractors and government work, if you're unwittingly repeating a source of intentional disinformation, or if you're actually maliciously trying to pump some counterfactual narrative.
I think it's a mixture of the first two, which is unfortunate because the word count that is required to correct all of that bad information is a lot more then I'm willing to type out on my phone screen.
So, I'll just point out you can either own a controlling interest, or a minor stake, but the two are mutually exclusive, and at no point was either on the table for purchase from the Pentagon.
Jesus, the absolute state of misinformation in your post...
I don't know that Iridium is still working. I think it's been decommissioned. But, the US military has been looking for its replacement for years. Now, they could launch their own, or buy a network. Musk not getting RUS funds and losing a thousand satellites from orbit a year makes Starlink a prime candidate.
They didn't cut off Internet to Ukraine. They had to stop the military from using it in an offensive way, which is ITAR, it wasn't even musk who pulled the plug, it was a bunch of lawyers that had to make that call.
Starlink is a defense contractor, ITAR was bullshit reasoning and not at all applicable. That's like saying Raytheon missiles can't be used to attack foreign targets, because ITAR, or even more accurately, Ukrainian munitions with American IC's or copper can't be used.
But that guy's comments about "the generals bought a minor stake the next day" is also just as full of shit.
Actually, no, his comments about generals buying stakes was actually more bullshit, because at least that ITAR garbage had mainstream traction, so I at least understand why someone would believe it.
The fuck are you talking about starlink is not a defense contractor... it's like saying Microsoft is a defense contractor because the military uses windows...ITAR was absolutely in play here...
SpaceX and Starlink are both defense contractors...
Also, what do you think defense contractor means...? Because your example by itself, and without the other areas of defense Microsoft is engaged in, is a defense contract: providing software and services to the military.
Oh, and thanks for confirming my earlier assumptions.
Starlink was not sold or provided to Ukraine under a defense contract.... defense contractors who are labeled as such do not typically work with the public directly. You're definition of a defense contractor apparently is any company who has worked on a DOJ or DOD bid....which means basically all companies in the USA. This doesn't magically make them not have to follow civilian regulations. ITAR is in play here, just because starlink has defense contracts, doesn't magically give them a pass on other regulations.
Cereal companies get defense contracts FFS...that doesn't make them a defense contractor.
Why would working a DOJ bid make a company a defense contractor..?
JFC...you might actually need a reeducation camp, but instead of propaganda, it's just a forced repeat of K-12 education.
You do know what the NSD is right? You put your foot in your mouth...easier to take the L...
You mean the lawyers who coordinate national security related legal issues with law enforcement and intelligence? Yep, sure do, still doesn't make them part of the military.
I'd say it's easier to take the L, but I understand you lack the self-awareness of your stupidity.
Honestly, you're the clearest example of Dunning-Kruger I've seen in quite a while. For that, I'm sorry.
Forgot that DHS and the national guard aren't military....
You keep thinking that military contacts magically make a company a defense contractor and that they don't have to follow the laws...the only reason you're upset is because you are so far up the musk hate trains ass you can't disassociate yourself from it.
Continuing to dunk on you feels like I'm abusing a special needs child, so I'm just going to retroactively agree with everything you've said, or ever will say.
Because as we know, the only way for companies owned by the richest person on Earth to do business is if they get hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money first.
As if giving it all to Comcast and Spectrum for the 47th time will make things any better? Starlink is actually something accessible for a lot of these people, while legacy ISPs just pocket the money and claim its too hard to serve rural customers.
It's great that there is variety and all but let's not pretend the CEO isn't dangerous, see starling/Ukraine issue and that the company isn't filling the sky with consumer shite designed to be burned up.
Infrastructure should be publicly owned and strong competitive regulation.
I'll just add that "designed to be burned up" is the correct approach to these types of satellite constellations. SpaceX has that aspect correct, at least.
Agree with everything else. Musk is a batshit egomaniac, and letting him dictate use of large infrastructure is careless. Government subsidies should entail a certain public influence over the operation of the system.
I just don't think we need satellites clogging up the sky for something we can accomplish if we wanted to. Fiber is cheap.
Starlink could be deployed in emergencies just fine.
Clogging up...the sky...you do realize the size of space right? And the size of on of these SATs right?... it's like putting 800 washing machines in AZ and then telling people az is clogged with washing machines...do you randomly run into people's houses driving through your neighborhood?
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-students/what-is-orbital-debris-grades-5-8/
This is what people are referring to when they talk about junk in orbit.
Starlink doesn't produce any debris, only the satellites. Now they keep the tie rods attached so they don't float off. The reason the picture looks so bad is because each piece of debris in this picture is represented as miles and miles across.
Both of you are right. Space junk is an issue (Kessler syndrome), but that's for orbits which won't degrade by themselves, starlink satellites are supposed to be low enough that at time of crash they should mostly crash towards the earth and burn in the atmosphere.
Anything is better than Starlink, Starlink is just extreme useless pollution for something that normal ISPs can achieve.
The government needs to step in and make internet more of a utility like in like every other successful country.
There are actual use cases for satellite internet. I heard from an evacuee from the Northwest Territories in Canada here that he was basically only able to get updates on what was happening—i.e. what roads weren't on fire and where evacuation centers were—because of a couple of people with starlinks. There are huge areas up there with little to no internet infrastructure, and this summer much of that was damaged in the fires.
Ground infrastructure is expensive to run out to extreme rural areas, and it's also vulnerable in different ways from satellite infrastructure. In the US, yeah, it's dense enough that ISPs mostly need to get their shit together, but there are very large areas where running a cable has a lot of problems.
That makes sense, but Starlink is also extremely expensive and I don't see the price being comparable honestly.
For your first case while evacuation and such, there are alternatives and you shouldn't need full internet access for situations like that. (obviously this isn't the case right now)
From everything that has been posted on the US and what I've seen with ISPs and such, satellite internet is not necessary. I hate Starlink with a passion for what the consequences are, I hate looking up in a dark night and being able to see a giant row of Starlink satellites and I hate how much it pollutes even outside of the Earth. It's not necessary and I will always be for just other wireless communication or straight up wires.
People absolutely need internet access in evacuation situations. They need information to know where it's safe to go, where they can get help, what routes are still open, whether it's safe to return home, whether their home still exists... in some cases the only communication methods are either internet-based or literally flying a plane in, there aren't even roads to some communities that need to be evacuated. There is way too much information people need to be able to rely on local communication methods like radio.
And that's really one of the only other options in these situations. The fibre line (pretty much singular, because the cost to run fibre over thousands of kilometers is enormous) going through the NWT was destroyed in the fires as a fire was approaching Yellowknife. Cell towers can literally melt from the heat of some of these fires. Ground infrastructure is vulnerable to all of the climate disasters our world is currently facing. And that's ignoring it getting destroyed by actively hostile actors like in Ukraine.
Do Starlink and Musk suck? Absolutely. Fuck them. But satellite internet is increasingly showing itself to be a necessity, and to think otherwise really underestimates the size of our world and the vulnerability of our infrastructure. We need better management of it, but we definitely need it.
I said shouldn't.
It's not expensive compared to the alternatives. It costs exactly what I'm paying Comcast for my cable internet here in suburbia at $120. Companies like Hughesnet will charge you $200/mo for 20GB of data at 2Mbps if it isn't cloudy out.
My coworkers mother in rural SW Washington signed up after I recommended it for her to him. Previously, she couldn't even watch Netflix or YouTube with traditional satellite, and now she's getting 300Mbps for less money than she was paying before.
I meant comparable to wired up internet or proper wireless towers in infrastructure cost, the end user cost is absurd anywhere in the US and it's not worth talking about.
That's observably false, though. If infrastructure costs were really that much cheaper, ISPs would already be serving these people at a lower price point.
Which is why I didn't say it was factual, but rather that I didn't see it being comparable.
And no, my point has nothing to do with ISP companies and for a business it would be illogical to dig to more rural areas.
This is something Starlink avoids by being in space obviously, other existing ISPs wouldn't make much money off of it anywhere near as fast for example. This is why the government should handle all of it, like I said.
I'll leave it to Canada to fund it then
Can achieve but don't and won't. You might as well be arguing that rural people don't deserve access to the internet because that's the only legitimate alternative.
No, it's not and you need to read what I said in the second part of my comment.
And if you're going to be like that, I do believe rural people don't deserve access to the internet if it means severely polluting the sky, space and the earth while it's not necessary.
The US government can easily step in, it's just hard to imagine that ever happening.
Which is why it isn't a legitimate solution. Starlink exists now.
Why are you so concerned about pollution in LEO but not pollution from digging a million miles of wire and trenches or chopping down forests full of trees, all of which regularly sustain damage and need replacement?
That's why I said it's hard to imagine that ever happening currently, it doesn't mean it isn't a legitimate solution.
On Earth you can compensate for the pollution caused by laying in wires, and if this was done by the government it would probably be near or at powerlines (when they exist, which they should) and it could just be part of normal maintenance for example.
None of this can be done with LEO, it's getting polluted up there and these satellites just get burnt up. We're removing precious resources from our planet to burn them up for no reason and causing pollution on Earth and outside of it, it makes no sense.
If they could achieve it, Starlink simply wouldn't exist.
That's completely wrong, for the ISPs it usually isn't worth achieving and is why the government should step in.
Yes that's exactly my point
Okay but...they don't.
Starlink also covers the entire planet and all the oceans, which is simply not feasible with wires.
And also simply not necessary to have as many satellites as Starlink does needed to cover the ocean and the rare spots where wires can't go.
And we really need that 4K UHD porn to load faster on the hole planet, including the oceans.
You're intentionally conflating high speed internet access with any internet access at all.
TIL: The majority of Lemmys have never lived an hour from the nearest population center, down a dirt road, on a few hundred acres of wilderness. I fucking HATE musk and I still have an RV kit in my basement so when I'm traveling around hours from anywhere, Starlink works perfectly.
I live two hours from a city, waaaay up in the Alps and I have gigabit fibre for€40 a month lol
Your infrastructure sucks donkeyballs 😂
My sides are in orbit! Here is a side-by side of the Alps
next to a small section of the American Rockies,
which is still nothing compared to Canada (yes there are people in that big empty area).
No offense, but true European rural doesn't exist.
Bro, come to northern Sweden and say that again lol
Touche lol
Also if we're talking about the European continent as a whole finland, the urals, and maybe the west coast of ireland depending on definitions.
Yeah, I just get a bit peeved cuz I live up here, lol!
If I drive 250km to my grandparents I will not see much of buildings and people.
Come to the most uninhabitable place on the continent for some real rural living!
Shit, that picture outside Edmonton is hardly even distant, there are a bunch of communities in northern Alberta and BC that don't even have roads going to them because they're too far away.
I hear there's roads in the winter, lol.
Me -
You -
😂
You were being an ignorant dick and I called you on it. It's not my fault you can't handle a few hours on the road.
No where in Europe is "remote."
Come to the South West US where you can drive 100 miles in any direction and barely see another human.
You can easily drive 100 miles in northern Sweden and see nothing but trees lol
Or maybe don't go there and then complain about the obvious shortfalls of the place. The rural exodus happened for a reason.
The rural exodus happened for many reasons, none of which have to do with the availability of high-speed internet. People are born where they are born, and often live there too. Sometimes that place is densely populated and replete with amenities, such as the Alps, sometimes it's not. You don't have to be an uneducated dick.
"Haha stupid poor people. Why don't you just move somewhere else? Have you tried not being poor? Have you tried not being born in a impoverished remote or rural area? Did you even try to upgrade your parent's income bracket, or trade-in for better parents?”
Or maybe you meant, "Why don't you just abandon your grandparents who live at, or across the border? I'm sure the Mexican or American governments will pick up the slack when you move away. I'm sure familial cultural importance and dynamics are the same in Switzerland as they are around the Mexican border".
It's not a shortfall thanks to Starlink. Are you following along?
But taxes...
It's a difference between definitions of "city" and "middle of nowhere" between the US and Europe. The US is a massive place. Part of the reason the US appears to have such a crappy infrastructure is that when, say, mobile carriers want to improve it to upgrade something to 5G, they have to do so for the entire country, with many US states having an area the size of whole European countries. Texas itself is the size of Germany. That is a much bigger undertaking than improving it for a single European country or even a block of countries like western or central Europe. Things are so spread out here that "remote" can mean REALLY remote in some areas. Distances between reasonably sized cities in the US can be much larger than in Europe, and the US has more people in those more rural areas than some think, especially in states in the middle of the country. Local ISPs for internet in those areas can be good depending on the area, but a lot of people in the really rural areas would still be better and more easily served by a service like Starlink.
https://www.wideopencountry.com/map-shows-countries-fit-inside-texas/
This is far more hilarious to see that a good number of European countries fit inside of Texas.
Sounds wonderful tbh
Today you learned that the majority of people don't live in the middle of nowhere?
Of course they don't, by definition, if a bunch of people lived there, it wouldn't be the middle of nowhere.
Lmao you're being a pedantic dick bc you know what they meant.. and I'm cracking up enjoying everything about it
Yeah, Musk has gone insane, anyone can see that.
But Musk aside, LEO satellites are still really the only viable and economical solution to the problem of broadband in rural areas, and Starlink seems to work great.
Also, the objection that resulted in pulling this funding looks pretty bullshit. Several other broadband providers are getting these same funding deals for doing basically nothing.
No, he hasn't. He's just a bog-standard capitalist doing bog-standard capitalist things.
Explicitly not the point of my post...
My partner’s family lives on a dirt road between a corn field and cow pasture.. a full 1.5 hour drive from the nearest mid-sized city.. they have gigabit fiber..
Not saying that their situation is currently typical, but id argue it is indeed a sign that good internet is slowly but surely coming available to everyone.
Don't blame the people because the private sector doesn't gain any money from this investment in this infrastructure.
That doesn't make any sense. Taxpayer money was supposed to fix this over a decade ago.
Middle of nowhere between fields: I have 5g router and 300+mbps
If you're pulling 5G you're not remote.
Brother, we have wildly different definitions of "nowhere" if you get 5G. When I lived in a rural shithole in the US, I had to drive 100 miles to start picking up 5G signals (though that was just before the pandemic, so maybe 5G coverage has improved greatly in the past 3 years).
Closest town is 55km away
Shit man, I used to commute almost that exact distance each way. Anything under triple digits is practically in-town in many places.
Yeah me too, untill COVID and the digital acceleration to WFH
Guys, please be nice to Elon. He's having a bad day, his attempted cover story to boost TSLA isn't working, and he's coming down.
That stock chart is nothing terrible. Sideways on the 6 months and the 5-year is pretty good. I don't think he's suffering.
Its simple like many Musk projects he over promises and under delivers.
Starlink performance is slow and unreliable. Sometimes you get 100 Mbps and sometimes you get < 1 Mbps with the average being around 25. So it cant even really be considered broadband.
Doesn't match my experience. The worst thing about it is ping, but download is mostly always around 100-200.
Yeah, I've always seen at least 20 down, never as low as 1 Mbps the grandparent comment claimed. I usually see roughly 100 Mbps down, though.
That's based on using it in a few different places in our RV over the summer, some with obstructions from trees in some spots. Regardless of the actual speed, my wife and I were both able to telework and hold conference calls simultaneously without an issue - and my wife would use video (I kept it off, but she used it).
Really? Shit. I was planning to move to starlink but let me do some research.
I had Starlink too and it was definitely unreliable. It's also absolutely atrocious in any kind of weather like heavy rain or snow.
It's better than nothing for sure, but definitely look into it more, especially if you'll be relying on it for work.
It's also generally better than dsl.
It's faster than my old fiber connection through Telus up here in Canadia and also means I can look at any hamlet with power as a viable place to live now. We are never down for more the 2 seconds a day.
Because it's satellite!
Absolutely, but Musk specifically said weather wouldn't be a problem like regular satellites, which was just not true from my experience.
Overall though, I just think people should be aware that it's not a good replacement for if you already have access to other Internet services. I've seen people discuss how they want to ditch Comcast for it. It's a lot more expensive and definitely not as consistent. Again, it totally has an audience and purpose, pros and cons.
DISH says the same crap about satellite TV. Physics doesn't lie.
I was shocked when he got a gov't contract after he admitted to all that fuckery in Ukraine. Wtf is happening in gov't???
i imagine that's a product of the technology and not so much the company. the problems with satellite internet are just physics. it's probably stupid to go with something like this in an area that has fiber available.
My parents had it. Average was about 40mbps over a 60gb download, minimums were in the low 20s, and it topped out at around 80-100mbps. A fuck of a lot better than 10mbps down 750kbps up, their only other option. I hate Elon as much as the next guy, but starlink is awesome.
trying to get another one of his boondoggles financed by Congress i see.. nothing but charlatan under those robes..
musk is one of the richest man alive, why does he need subsidies to do his job??
clearly you’re not rich. the rich stay rich by spendng other people’s money.
this guy knows material dialectics
This isn't really a great argument. Subsidies are there to promote the things we want to come to fruition. Want your people to have solar? Subsidies for putting one on your roof. You want more electric cars on the road even though more expensive? Subsidies.
You want a billionaire to help a new technology reach people he wouldn't bother with? Subsidies.
So we do that by giving them even more fucking money, instead of taking it away when they do a shitty thing, like ruin our atmosphere with fossil fuels.
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. Next question ...
Aside from the bit of personal enjoyment I get from seeing Elon take an L… Starlink only meets the classification as “broadband internet” in optimal conditions. The average experience just plain doesn’t qualify and it is openly acknowledged that performance will get worse with more traffic. It may be better than nothing for some, but it is clearly not sustainable. The money would be better spent running lines because at least that would be consistent and long lasting even if it is more expensive.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”
That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal.
SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.
“This applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.” FCC commissioner Brendan Carr dissented, writing that “the FCC did not require — and has never required — any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”
But his funding plan was slashed by the time it became law, with the final version offering no money for locally-run internet service.
Christopher Cardaci, head of legal at SpaceX, writes in a letter to the FCC that “Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”
The original article contains 296 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 21%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Quite excited to see what some competition will do in this space (no pun intended) with Amazon's upcoming deployment.
I imagine Amazon will be the one taking your tax dollars to do business. They famously have no money and need American tax dollars generated by working class labor in order to survive.
For an operating company that's the kiss of death. I predict Starlink will be bought by the US government and there won't be a hell of a lot of profit.
Unlikely that it'll be purchased by DoD, but death's kiss was given when Elon held satellite internet access of the Ukrainian Armed Forces hostage while they were engaged in a hot war and being supported by DoD. That's not how the Defense Industry operates. If you're in for a penny, you're in for a pound.
I can pretty much guarantee you that the Pentagon immediately started a lot of conversations with established contractors about rapidly expediting their own LEO constellations, and promising help on the regulatory side.
It may not have been immediately apparent, but it was there. It honestly wouldn't have mattered as much for the business, except for the fact that SpaceX is entirely dependent upon government contracts, and the military is a huge part of that.
He didn't hold it hostage.
He didn't turn it off, it was never on. He didn't intervene in an attack, he just did nothing.
It's even questionable if he can legally allow Ukraine to drop one on a boat and use it as a weapon, and it was against the terms of use.
The DoD failed to sign an agreement with SpaceX which left them in that awkward position. The DoD has now done so and it's a non issue now. The DoD is the one allowing all these combat uses now as it should have been from day 1
When Musk cut off Ukraine, the Pentagon informed him that they were immediately purchasing a minor controlling stake in the, currently, private company. Service to Ukraine was restored the next day.
That's how "capitalism" works apparently.
I also assume that's why NVidia did it's sudden about face and fell right in line when the generals threatened to own them the next day.
It's all just rich people getting reminded they're only rich, or alive, because the government allows them to be.
I'm honestly at a loss with trying to discern whether you just honestly don't understand the situation and how corporations/defense contractors and government work, if you're unwittingly repeating a source of intentional disinformation, or if you're actually maliciously trying to pump some counterfactual narrative.
I think it's a mixture of the first two, which is unfortunate because the word count that is required to correct all of that bad information is a lot more then I'm willing to type out on my phone screen.
So, I'll just point out you can either own a controlling interest, or a minor stake, but the two are mutually exclusive, and at no point was either on the table for purchase from the Pentagon.
Jesus, the absolute state of misinformation in your post...
I don't know that Iridium is still working. I think it's been decommissioned. But, the US military has been looking for its replacement for years. Now, they could launch their own, or buy a network. Musk not getting RUS funds and losing a thousand satellites from orbit a year makes Starlink a prime candidate.
They didn't cut off Internet to Ukraine. They had to stop the military from using it in an offensive way, which is ITAR, it wasn't even musk who pulled the plug, it was a bunch of lawyers that had to make that call.
Starlink is a defense contractor, ITAR was bullshit reasoning and not at all applicable. That's like saying Raytheon missiles can't be used to attack foreign targets, because ITAR, or even more accurately, Ukrainian munitions with American IC's or copper can't be used.
But that guy's comments about "the generals bought a minor stake the next day" is also just as full of shit.
Actually, no, his comments about generals buying stakes was actually more bullshit, because at least that ITAR garbage had mainstream traction, so I at least understand why someone would believe it.
The fuck are you talking about starlink is not a defense contractor... it's like saying Microsoft is a defense contractor because the military uses windows...ITAR was absolutely in play here...
SpaceX and Starlink are both defense contractors...
Microsoft is also a defense contractor...
Also, what do you think defense contractor means...? Because your example by itself, and without the other areas of defense Microsoft is engaged in, is a defense contract: providing software and services to the military.
Oh, and thanks for confirming my earlier assumptions.
Starlink was not sold or provided to Ukraine under a defense contract.... defense contractors who are labeled as such do not typically work with the public directly. You're definition of a defense contractor apparently is any company who has worked on a DOJ or DOD bid....which means basically all companies in the USA. This doesn't magically make them not have to follow civilian regulations. ITAR is in play here, just because starlink has defense contracts, doesn't magically give them a pass on other regulations.
Cereal companies get defense contracts FFS...that doesn't make them a defense contractor.
Why would working a DOJ bid make a company a defense contractor..?
JFC...you might actually need a reeducation camp, but instead of propaganda, it's just a forced repeat of K-12 education.
You do know what the NSD is right? You put your foot in your mouth...easier to take the L...
You mean the lawyers who coordinate national security related legal issues with law enforcement and intelligence? Yep, sure do, still doesn't make them part of the military.
I'd say it's easier to take the L, but I understand you lack the self-awareness of your stupidity.
Honestly, you're the clearest example of Dunning-Kruger I've seen in quite a while. For that, I'm sorry.
Forgot that DHS and the national guard aren't military....
You keep thinking that military contacts magically make a company a defense contractor and that they don't have to follow the laws...the only reason you're upset is because you are so far up the musk hate trains ass you can't disassociate yourself from it.
Continuing to dunk on you feels like I'm abusing a special needs child, so I'm just going to retroactively agree with everything you've said, or ever will say.
Musk doesn't listen to lawyers, look at everything he has done at Twitter.
You're right. He got that advice from Mohamed bin Salman.