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> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. I'v

by q3k 6y ago

> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. I've had faster Internet than the average Starlink speedtest says, in rural Romania, at the foot of a mountain, wild bears and all: https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632 https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632 . Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem, it just now hinges on enough of a societal push to apply this solution where needed. Starlink is yet another SV-style attempt to solve (US) societal problems by blindly applying technology. Except this time, this also affects other countries, and we're furious.

reitzensteinm 6y ago
I've been there, it's beautiful. Although under ten kilometers from a town of tens of thousands wasn't exactly what I had in mind; I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. A solar powered base station that relayed mobile internet, even if slow, would make a meaningful difference. The point of my comment isn't to defend the satellite launches, quite the opposite. It's saying that even as somebody that would be in favor, not carefully considering the trade offs before giving permission to permanently alter the night sky is not acceptable. This is exactly the kind of thing that bureaucracy should make painfully slow.
- vanderZwan 6y ago
  > I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. When was the last time that you were in Africa? And in which country, because it's an entire continent. EDIT: So I guess HN doesn't like being called out on https://africasacountry.com/ https://africasacountry.com/ issues? Well sorry not sorry, but as someone born in Ghana I'm more a little tired of the sentiment on display in the cited part of comment I'm reacting to, which is the implication that Africa as an entire continent is inherently and forever will be a place too poor to have proper infrastructure.
  - reitzensteinm 6y ago
    This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.
    - NationalPark 6y ago
      The U.S. actually does do this! The FCC alone spends more than $2bn annually subsidizing telecom infrastructure in rural areas. There are a number of other similar programs, and Ajit Pai (current FCC chairman) recently proposed another $20bn of spending on subsidies for rural internet connections: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-204-billion-rural-digital-opportunity-fund-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-204-billion-rural-...
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        If Ajit actually cared he'd unlicense more spectrum. Paying the Daughters Bell our own tax money to encourage them to further victimize us is fascist.
    - vanderZwan 6y ago
      And yet you used Africa as an example, instead of North America and Australia. Why? EDIT: Wow, you guys are really bad at admitting your own blatantly obvious biases, aren't you?
      - unholythree 6y ago
        I assume because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
        vanderZwan 6y ago
        This is completely irrelevant to GP's claim that Africa was only used as an example because of population density.
Turing_Machine 6y ago
There isn't anywhere in Europe that's "rural" by the standards of North America. The North Slope Borough in Alaska is nearly the size of Romania, but has only about 9,000 people living there. The state as a whole is larger than all of Western Europe, but has only about 700,000 people. Much of Canada is the same, only more so.
BurningFrog 6y ago
It's not a solved problem in Sudan, Polynesia or on vehicles. Satellites is the solution there.
- numpad0 6y ago
  *4G
kaliszad 6y ago
I remember being on a tour in Romania in 2019 on a bus and in the middle of a forest in Transylvania and a colleague called that they have some issues at work and if I could please look into it. Then I just tethered my LTE reception (sometimes it dropped to 3G but was still usable) to my laptop, SSHed in and fixed the issues for them. In Germany, even being on a quite populated beach some 500 meters away from the promenade of a popular vacation city (Heringsdorf) is a hit or miss in regards to a usable mobile reception not even talking about LTE (this is on O2 Deutschland, in August 2020). There are many parts of Germany, that are more or less white spots in regards to a usable mobile data connection. I mean, sometimes my phone would just use the polish signal from Świnoujście even though Heringsdorf is about 10 km from the border.
kanox 6y ago
> Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem. No it isn't. Just because it works for you it doesn't mean the same solutions can apply everywhere.
adflux 6y ago
Romania is ranked 5th in the world broadband internet speeds: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/romania https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/romania So it's not exactly a good potential userbase for starlink. However, most of South America, Africa and Central Asia could benefit massively from Starlink and start participating in the global digital economy
monk_e_boy 6y ago
I wonder if all the people without internet will join the discussion? Oh .... wait ....
oh_sigh 6y ago
"There's food in my refrigerator. Ergo, world hunger is pretty much a solved problem." If we are just going to completely ignore costs, then I can say that getting great astronomical observations is solved as well, since we can just launch satellites to take the observations instead of doing ground-based observations. So it's not clear what the big deal about these satellites is anyway.
stickfigure 6y ago
Let me summarize what you just said: I've gotten decent internet speeds in one place that looked pretty wild, therefore worldwide internet access is a solved problem.
Darmody 6y ago
Romania is an outlier when it comes to internet speed. But I know people from rich countries like UK, US, Germany with download speeds under 5 mbps paying more than you would pay for the most expensive line on Romania.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> Starlink is yet another SV-style attempt to solve (US) societal problems by blindly applying technology. Except this time, this also affects other countries, and we're furious. Perhaps you are. I'm from the same country, and I couldn't be happier :). I mean, LEO Internet constellations are awesome for providing access (not just in rural areas, but also in remote areas and at sea). But more than that, we're talking Starlink here in particular. The problem it's solving isn't (just) how to improve Internet access for some people. The main problem it's solving is how to fund SpaceX's R&D on Starship. Which translates to dropping another order of magnitude from the cost of access to orbit. Which will, longer-term, translate to a boon for astronomy.
sedgjh23 6y ago
In the United States it is far from solved.

by q3k 6y ago

reitzensteinm 6y ago

I've been there, it's beautiful. Although under ten kilometers from a town of tens of thousands wasn't exactly what I had in mind; I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. A solar powered base station that relayed mobile internet, even if slow, would make a meaningful difference. The point of my comment isn't to defend the satellite launches, quite the opposite. It's saying that even as somebody that would be in favor, not carefully considering the trade offs before giving permission to permanently alter the night sky is not acceptable. This is exactly the kind of thing that bureaucracy should make painfully slow.

vanderZwan 6y ago
> I was picturing some of the places I've been in Africa that don't have mobile reception and may well never get it if it means laying fiber. When was the last time that you were in Africa? And in which country, because it's an entire continent. EDIT: So I guess HN doesn't like being called out on https://africasacountry.com/ https://africasacountry.com/ issues? Well sorry not sorry, but as someone born in Ghana I'm more a little tired of the sentiment on display in the cited part of comment I'm reacting to, which is the implication that Africa as an entire continent is inherently and forever will be a place too poor to have proper infrastructure.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    The U.S. actually does do this! The FCC alone spends more than $2bn annually subsidizing telecom infrastructure in rural areas. There are a number of other similar programs, and Ajit Pai (current FCC chairman) recently proposed another $20bn of spending on subsidies for rural internet connections: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-204-billion-rural-digital-opportunity-fund-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-204-billion-rural-...
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      If Ajit actually cared he'd unlicense more spectrum. Paying the Daughters Bell our own tax money to encourage them to further victimize us is fascist.
  - vanderZwan 6y ago
    And yet you used Africa as an example, instead of North America and Australia. Why? EDIT: Wow, you guys are really bad at admitting your own blatantly obvious biases, aren't you?
    - unholythree 6y ago
      I assume because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
      - vanderZwan 6y ago
        This is completely irrelevant to GP's claim that Africa was only used as an example because of population density.

Turing_Machine 6y ago

There isn't anywhere in Europe that's "rural" by the standards of North America. The North Slope Borough in Alaska is nearly the size of Romania, but has only about 9,000 people living there. The state as a whole is larger than all of Western Europe, but has only about 700,000 people. Much of Canada is the same, only more so.

BurningFrog 6y ago

It's not a solved problem in Sudan, Polynesia or on vehicles. Satellites is the solution there.

numpad0 6y ago
*4G

kaliszad 6y ago

I remember being on a tour in Romania in 2019 on a bus and in the middle of a forest in Transylvania and a colleague called that they have some issues at work and if I could please look into it. Then I just tethered my LTE reception (sometimes it dropped to 3G but was still usable) to my laptop, SSHed in and fixed the issues for them. In Germany, even being on a quite populated beach some 500 meters away from the promenade of a popular vacation city (Heringsdorf) is a hit or miss in regards to a usable mobile reception not even talking about LTE (this is on O2 Deutschland, in August 2020). There are many parts of Germany, that are more or less white spots in regards to a usable mobile data connection. I mean, sometimes my phone would just use the polish signal from Świnoujście even though Heringsdorf is about 10 km from the border.

kanox 6y ago

> Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem. No it isn't. Just because it works for you it doesn't mean the same solutions can apply everywhere.

adflux 6y ago

Romania is ranked 5th in the world broadband internet speeds: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/romania https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/romania So it's not exactly a good potential userbase for starlink. However, most of South America, Africa and Central Asia could benefit massively from Starlink and start participating in the global digital economy

monk_e_boy 6y ago

I wonder if all the people without internet will join the discussion? Oh .... wait ....

oh_sigh 6y ago

"There's food in my refrigerator. Ergo, world hunger is pretty much a solved problem." If we are just going to completely ignore costs, then I can say that getting great astronomical observations is solved as well, since we can just launch satellites to take the observations instead of doing ground-based observations. So it's not clear what the big deal about these satellites is anyway.

stickfigure 6y ago

Let me summarize what you just said: I've gotten decent internet speeds in one place that looked pretty wild, therefore worldwide internet access is a solved problem.

Darmody 6y ago

Romania is an outlier when it comes to internet speed. But I know people from rich countries like UK, US, Germany with download speeds under 5 mbps paying more than you would pay for the most expensive line on Romania.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> Starlink is yet another SV-style attempt to solve (US) societal problems by blindly applying technology. Except this time, this also affects other countries, and we're furious. Perhaps you are. I'm from the same country, and I couldn't be happier :). I mean, LEO Internet constellations are awesome for providing access (not just in rural areas, but also in remote areas and at sea). But more than that, we're talking Starlink here in particular. The problem it's solving isn't (just) how to improve Internet access for some people. The main problem it's solving is how to fund SpaceX's R&D on Starship. Which translates to dropping another order of magnitude from the cost of access to orbit. Which will, longer-term, translate to a boon for astronomy.

sedgjh23 6y ago

In the United States it is far from solved.