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> Gigabit service is but a mile and a half away but no one is going to pay to lay the fiber into our neighborhood. So the last mile and a half is copper from 20

> Gigabit service is but a mile and a half away but no one is going to pay to lay the fiber into our neighborhood. So the last mile and a half is copper from 20 years ago. I think that's going to require political will to fix I imagine once Starlink is an actual choice, the telecoms will install wireless at the end of the fiber and offer you faster, more reliable service than Starlink. They don't do it now because they get your money without having to do anything at all.

varelse 5y ago
I imagine the more immediate threat is 5G internet. But currently the reception in this neighborhood is terrible for T-Mobile (despite their coverage map insisting otherwise) yet one of my neighbors claims he can get 50 Mb download with an AT&T hotspot. I have approximately zero faith in our current ground-based providers. They are the PG&E of broadband IMO. Upgrading to my first 5G phone recently made voice service work at my house but did nothing for data.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  I get around 48-56Mb down tethered to my 5G T-mobile phone. (in the north Seattle area)
  - varelse 5y ago
    Same latitude, lucky to get 2 Mb in either direction. But down in Roseburg, Oredgon I got 135 Mb/s download sitting in a parking lot so it's not my phone. Edit: I just walked through the neighborhood repeatedly invoking speed test and I can get 50 megabits at various points. But I can't get it anywhere on my own property. There's no real rhyme or reason that I can see as to where it's good and to where it's bad.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- bluedino 5y ago
  There are too many places that don't get 5G in the first place.
  - varelse 5y ago
    Yet unlike ground-based service in my experience, the situation is improving with time. It took 15 years for my old place to go from 2.4 Mb/300 kb to bidirectional Gb and that only happened because AT&T was feeling generous briefly in 2019 w/r to expanding service (in that case, 400' of fiber to my cluster of houses). They stopped expanding shortly thereafter because so many people were in exactly the same situation that they were swamped with requests.
- driverdan 5y ago
  With an external antenna aimed correctly I'm sure you'd get a much better cell signal. That may be what your neighbor has. Keep in mind T-Mobile and AT&T are entirely different providers. AT&T coverage may be better where you live.
mdasen 5y ago
Starlink isn't driving the telecoms to install wireless. The telecoms were already planning this before Starlink. T-Mobile Home Internet is already available to 30M households in the US (out of around 130M households so around 20-25% of US households). T-Mobile is looking to have 7-8M subscribers within the next 5 years which would make them the 4th largest ISP (behind Xfinity, Spectrum, and AT&T). Verizon is looking to cover 50M households by the end of 2024 which is years away, but shows that 5G home internet is coming. Wired home internet companies aren't avoiding installing a wireless link at the end of their fiber out of spite. It's a combination of who has wireless spectrum and the technology/capacity available. If you're talking about Xfinity or Spectrum, they don't have the wireless spectrum to offer that. If you're talking about Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile, they're working on it, but it takes time for the technology and spectrum to be there to provide the capacity people expect for a home internet connection. The recently concluded C-Band auction means that wireless carriers are going to have more spectrum available to provide more capacity (and they spent nearly $100B getting it). 5G NR provides more speed and capacity. If it was just out of spite, Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have been offering wireless home internet for years in areas where they had no wired network. They weren't getting the money in places where they didn't own the local telco (which for T-Mobile is everywhere and for Verizon/AT&T is most places). Even when they owned the local telco, most people would be buying cable internet. The problem is that home internet isn't easy. A wireless customer probably uses 10GB of data on average. Streaming HD Netflix is 2-3GB per hour. Home internet usage is usually an order of magnitude higher (and can be even higher than that). Basically, you need to increase your network capacity by at least 10x if you're going to be signing up home internet customers. With new technologies and spectrum, that's what wireless carriers are doing over the next 1-5 years. I think that terrestrial wireless will be big in the future, but it's not because of Starlink putting pressure on telecoms. It's because their networks are going to be seeing massive capacity upgrades over the next few years that will enable it. Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have loved to offer wireless home internet years ago, but the technology and capacity simply wasn't there. I mean, they did offer home internet years ago, but it often cost hundreds of dollars a month and was only available in really rural areas (not just places that might hate 20Mbps service). But new tech and capacity gains are allowing them to offer new service. T-Mobile is first out of the gate because it got new spectrum earlier, but Verizon and AT&T will be following in the coming years.

varelse 5y ago

I imagine the more immediate threat is 5G internet. But currently the reception in this neighborhood is terrible for T-Mobile (despite their coverage map insisting otherwise) yet one of my neighbors claims he can get 50 Mb download with an AT&T hotspot. I have approximately zero faith in our current ground-based providers. They are the PG&E of broadband IMO. Upgrading to my first 5G phone recently made voice service work at my house but did nothing for data.

turtlebits 5y ago
I get around 48-56Mb down tethered to my 5G T-mobile phone. (in the north Seattle area)
- varelse 5y ago
  Same latitude, lucky to get 2 Mb in either direction. But down in Roseburg, Oredgon I got 135 Mb/s download sitting in a parking lot so it's not my phone. Edit: I just walked through the neighborhood repeatedly invoking speed test and I can get 50 megabits at various points. But I can't get it anywhere on my own property. There's no real rhyme or reason that I can see as to where it's good and to where it's bad.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bluedino 5y ago
There are too many places that don't get 5G in the first place.
- varelse 5y ago
  Yet unlike ground-based service in my experience, the situation is improving with time. It took 15 years for my old place to go from 2.4 Mb/300 kb to bidirectional Gb and that only happened because AT&T was feeling generous briefly in 2019 w/r to expanding service (in that case, 400' of fiber to my cluster of houses). They stopped expanding shortly thereafter because so many people were in exactly the same situation that they were swamped with requests.
driverdan 5y ago
With an external antenna aimed correctly I'm sure you'd get a much better cell signal. That may be what your neighbor has. Keep in mind T-Mobile and AT&T are entirely different providers. AT&T coverage may be better where you live.

mdasen 5y ago

Starlink isn't driving the telecoms to install wireless. The telecoms were already planning this before Starlink. T-Mobile Home Internet is already available to 30M households in the US (out of around 130M households so around 20-25% of US households). T-Mobile is looking to have 7-8M subscribers within the next 5 years which would make them the 4th largest ISP (behind Xfinity, Spectrum, and AT&T). Verizon is looking to cover 50M households by the end of 2024 which is years away, but shows that 5G home internet is coming. Wired home internet companies aren't avoiding installing a wireless link at the end of their fiber out of spite. It's a combination of who has wireless spectrum and the technology/capacity available. If you're talking about Xfinity or Spectrum, they don't have the wireless spectrum to offer that. If you're talking about Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile, they're working on it, but it takes time for the technology and spectrum to be there to provide the capacity people expect for a home internet connection. The recently concluded C-Band auction means that wireless carriers are going to have more spectrum available to provide more capacity (and they spent nearly $100B getting it). 5G NR provides more speed and capacity. If it was just out of spite, Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have been offering wireless home internet for years in areas where they had no wired network. They weren't getting the money in places where they didn't own the local telco (which for T-Mobile is everywhere and for Verizon/AT&T is most places). Even when they owned the local telco, most people would be buying cable internet. The problem is that home internet isn't easy. A wireless customer probably uses 10GB of data on average. Streaming HD Netflix is 2-3GB per hour. Home internet usage is usually an order of magnitude higher (and can be even higher than that). Basically, you need to increase your network capacity by at least 10x if you're going to be signing up home internet customers. With new technologies and spectrum, that's what wireless carriers are doing over the next 1-5 years. I think that terrestrial wireless will be big in the future, but it's not because of Starlink putting pressure on telecoms. It's because their networks are going to be seeing massive capacity upgrades over the next few years that will enable it. Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have loved to offer wireless home internet years ago, but the technology and capacity simply wasn't there. I mean, they did offer home internet years ago, but it often cost hundreds of dollars a month and was only available in really rural areas (not just places that might hate 20Mbps service). But new tech and capacity gains are allowing them to offer new service. T-Mobile is first out of the gate because it got new spectrum earlier, but Verizon and AT&T will be following in the coming years.