4 ms·

"at our expense"? You clearly don't have to deal with rural internet if you think this is a net loss for society.

mempko 6y ago
It could have been a non-profit operation no? I would expect rural internet to be cheaper than what SpaceX is charging. $100 per month is very expensive, especially for people in rural areas which generally are poorer. Example, I believe over 90% of rural china has high speed internet and they pay less than $10 a month. Edit. Anyone have a good argument why we can't get $10 per month high speed internet in rural areas in the USA? If spacex can get there costs down to $10 per month, then I will be impressed. Otherwise it isn't cheaper than laying fiber.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  The whole point of this is that it isn't a non-profit, though. I'd love to live in a world where we can snap our fingers and motivate people to build $1/month internet, but that's not even a remote possibility. Starlink's big boon was that someone with money saw a problem and invested a ton of money into fixing it, hoping to turn a profit in the long-term. I'd love for someone to run fiber out to my house, but even getting it to my neighborhood would start at $30,000. Enter Starlink: cut out the landline companies and offer good internet, forcing the big players to offer better services in order to compete. Also, if you think $100/month is expensive, you don't go shopping for rural internet very often. There isn't an ISP on the planet that offers the speeds or latency that Starlink has right now, and believe me, I've tried to find one. $500 for installation and $100/month is reasonably appropriate for the services they're providing, especially if they're taking a $1000-2000 loss on each dish they ship to customers.
  - new_realist 6y ago
    Have you tried an LTE or 5G access point? They cover roughly 97% of the U.S. population. And you don't have to pay for Internet and also pay for mobile service.
    - smoldesu 6y ago
      I have an LTE access point, it's a pretty bad experience. For one, latency is very high. It's so laggy over SSH that it's basically unusable, and you can forget any VOIP apps with how choppy it is. Speeds are serviceable, but it doesn't really matter since I can't buy an LTE access point without a data cap.
  - mempko 6y ago
    Couldn't we have a publically owned ISP? Also Starlink is already subsidized with public money to the tune of $900 million. Seems we are getting the worst of both worlds. We pay to build the infrastructure with public money but as a public we don't own any of it.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  The problem with laying fiber in the continental US (and I suspect also in Canada) is not typically cost. It's death by a thousand cuts with problems acquiring land rights, fighting incumbent ISPs and the local politicians and congressmen in their pockets, and simple will on the part of ISPs. Google tried to make fiber cheap and ubiquitous with Google Fiber and failed. If an organization with the power, resources, and clout of Google can't get it done, I don't know who can short of the federal government getting involved (which, thanks to lobbyists, is unlikely). LEO constellations bypass these issues almost entirely and ironically enough may motivate incumbent ISPs to try to compete and stop being so obstructive.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Google didn't fail, they gave up. They have the money to do it, they didn't want to spend it. They thought everyone would start writing letters to their congressmen on their behalf and force the government into making the other big fiber ISPs play fair. That's how fucking dumb so the so-called "smartest people in the room" can be. Google should have budgeted $10 billion a year for 10 years for Google Fiber. And in 20 years' time, Google could have been the largest provider of fiber Internet service in the United States, possibly servicing almost every single address in the country. Instead, they did what they *ALWAYS* fucking do... it didn't "catch on" in a year or two's time and they abandoned it. I can't wait to see Google utterly fail as a company, given how shit they are at execution of everything but the most obvious, largest, and easiest-to-enter markets. Elon Musk entered the three hardest markets known to fuckin' mankind... automotive, orbital launch, and ISPs, and he's utterly destroying mother fuckers. If I was an executive involved with Google Fiber, I'd blow my brains out due to utter shame.
- sigstoat 6y ago
  > Anyone have a good argument why we can't get $10 per month high speed internet in rural areas in the USA? do you have any idea how much it costs to dig a trench? look up a calculator for figuring out the present value of a perpetuity that pays $10/mo. that will barely cover somebody digging a trench through your front yard, and laying fiber in it, let alone doing that down miles of rural street.

It could have been a non-profit operation no? I would expect rural internet to be cheaper than what SpaceX is charging. $100 per month is very expensive, especially for people in rural areas which generally are poorer. Example, I believe over 90% of rural china has high speed internet and they pay less than $10 a month. Edit. Anyone have a good argument why we can't get $10 per month high speed internet in rural areas in the USA? If spacex can get there costs down to $10 per month, then I will be impressed. Otherwise it isn't cheaper than laying fiber.

smoldesu 6y ago
The whole point of this is that it isn't a non-profit, though. I'd love to live in a world where we can snap our fingers and motivate people to build $1/month internet, but that's not even a remote possibility. Starlink's big boon was that someone with money saw a problem and invested a ton of money into fixing it, hoping to turn a profit in the long-term. I'd love for someone to run fiber out to my house, but even getting it to my neighborhood would start at $30,000. Enter Starlink: cut out the landline companies and offer good internet, forcing the big players to offer better services in order to compete. Also, if you think $100/month is expensive, you don't go shopping for rural internet very often. There isn't an ISP on the planet that offers the speeds or latency that Starlink has right now, and believe me, I've tried to find one. $500 for installation and $100/month is reasonably appropriate for the services they're providing, especially if they're taking a $1000-2000 loss on each dish they ship to customers.
- new_realist 6y ago
  Have you tried an LTE or 5G access point? They cover roughly 97% of the U.S. population. And you don't have to pay for Internet and also pay for mobile service.
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    I have an LTE access point, it's a pretty bad experience. For one, latency is very high. It's so laggy over SSH that it's basically unusable, and you can forget any VOIP apps with how choppy it is. Speeds are serviceable, but it doesn't really matter since I can't buy an LTE access point without a data cap.
- mempko 6y ago
  Couldn't we have a publically owned ISP? Also Starlink is already subsidized with public money to the tune of $900 million. Seems we are getting the worst of both worlds. We pay to build the infrastructure with public money but as a public we don't own any of it.
kitsunesoba 6y ago
The problem with laying fiber in the continental US (and I suspect also in Canada) is not typically cost. It's death by a thousand cuts with problems acquiring land rights, fighting incumbent ISPs and the local politicians and congressmen in their pockets, and simple will on the part of ISPs. Google tried to make fiber cheap and ubiquitous with Google Fiber and failed. If an organization with the power, resources, and clout of Google can't get it done, I don't know who can short of the federal government getting involved (which, thanks to lobbyists, is unlikely). LEO constellations bypass these issues almost entirely and ironically enough may motivate incumbent ISPs to try to compete and stop being so obstructive.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Google didn't fail, they gave up. They have the money to do it, they didn't want to spend it. They thought everyone would start writing letters to their congressmen on their behalf and force the government into making the other big fiber ISPs play fair. That's how fucking dumb so the so-called "smartest people in the room" can be. Google should have budgeted $10 billion a year for 10 years for Google Fiber. And in 20 years' time, Google could have been the largest provider of fiber Internet service in the United States, possibly servicing almost every single address in the country. Instead, they did what they *ALWAYS* fucking do... it didn't "catch on" in a year or two's time and they abandoned it. I can't wait to see Google utterly fail as a company, given how shit they are at execution of everything but the most obvious, largest, and easiest-to-enter markets. Elon Musk entered the three hardest markets known to fuckin' mankind... automotive, orbital launch, and ISPs, and he's utterly destroying mother fuckers. If I was an executive involved with Google Fiber, I'd blow my brains out due to utter shame.
sigstoat 6y ago
> Anyone have a good argument why we can't get $10 per month high speed internet in rural areas in the USA? do you have any idea how much it costs to dig a trench? look up a calculator for figuring out the present value of a perpetuity that pays $10/mo. that will barely cover somebody digging a trench through your front yard, and laying fiber in it, let alone doing that down miles of rural street.