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Starlink is a god send for my hometown in West Virginia. Current internet service there is provided by Frontier Communications. They offer "advertised" speeds

Starlink is a god send for my hometown in West Virginia. Current internet service there is provided by Frontier Communications. They offer "advertised" speeds of 6 Mbps but for years my parents internet came in around 1 or 2 on a good day. Service is abhorrent and they are still using phone lines that will likely never be replaced. They've taken serious advantage of the state of WV and even after a class action lawsuit in 2015 that they settled on I doubt it will ever improve. My parents finally got starlink setup ~3 months ago, it's around 100 mbps (roughly 100x as fast) and way more reliable even though it's satellite.

tuckerpo 4y ago
The default answer in the cable industry for solving "underserved" communities seems to be run fiber - but that's prohibitively expensive, especially for very rural communities. I believe "underserved" is defined as sub 32 MBps down and sub 6 MBps up. There's HFC which alleviates things somewhat but that still implies noise problems and signal amplitude loss for each home's coax tap. It's nice to have Starlink as an intermediary solution for rural people while the "fiber everywhere" approach takes slow adoption.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Is fiber really more expensive to run than coax? I'd imagine that most of the cost is the cost of digging a trench or stringing out cables under the power lines. If you take a close look at the outdoor plant for a cable system there are a large number of large powered boxes that also cost money. Contrast that to a fiber system which has very few active parts. I'd imagine that coaxial cable still dominates in many places because it was installed in the 1980s and 1990s. When the cable company wants to upgrade the system it is cost-effective to replace the uppermost nodes of the network with fiber and still leave coax for the last half mile. I know a rural "cable" company that today runs fiber optic plant in communities with favorable economics. Their primary product is an analog cable signal that is exactly what goes over the coax just modulated on a light beam. It's an economical and reliable system now and it is straightforward to upgrade to GPON or more advanced technologies in that future.
  - ThaDood 4y ago
    It might not be so much that the fiber itself is expensive. It might just be the conduit or other delivery mechanism that can be rather costly to run. But in general, fiber is absolutely a viable option for rural communities, usually if the project/roll out is being handled by some local organization (Co-op or municipality or as you sated a smaller cable company). I wrote my thesis on community owned broadband programs in Ohio and did a fair amount of research on the topic.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      The one entity that is not going to invest in new plant is an entity that has an existing plant. For instance if there is a phone company with a copper plant that can charge $60 a month for DSL it is obviously unaffordable for them to upgrade to fiber so they can charge $70 a month. Some other entity might find the new plant is worth investing in but it still fights against the old plant. For instance the phone company is making crazy profits on $60 a month DSL and can probably still make profits on $40 a month DSL. This puts a downward pressure on pricing for a fiber service and also means the fiber plant is going to bypass many possible subscribers because there are plenty of people who will put up with a 100x drop in performance to save a few dollars. This book https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-zero-sum-society-by-lester-c-thurow/ https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-zer... works an interesting case study that was fundamental to the Democratic party becoming advocates for free trade. In particular, the steel industry in the US in the 1970s still depended on open hearth furnaces that were obsolete in every way to the basic oxygen furnaces used in Germany and Japan. From a marxist perspective, capital is the "master class", maybe even the capital itself (as opposed to the capitalist), embodied in those furnaces. Instead of replacing the furnaces, the US steel industry pursued protectionism which was harmful to the competitiveness of other sectors of the economy: inferior and expensive steel is an ingredient for inferior and expensive cars, buildings, etc. To analogize, however, the problem is that the copper phone network exists. So long as it exists there are strong incentives to keep using it. It might not be a problem of encouraging investment in fiber as much as forcing disinvestment in copper.
  - zbobet2012 4y ago
WebbWeaver 4y ago
I've never been satisfied with Frontier internet.
dghughes 4y ago
It's the same in my province for rural areas. I recall fiber optic lines being run in the mid 1990s but then nothing. Politicians promising just basic Internet connectivity at first then "high speed" (the famous up to) for the last 25 years. Here in south-eastern Canada we were some of the first to be in the Starlink coverage area. From what I hear it's doing well not fantastic but better than up to x speed which always seems to end up being less than 1MBps. Luckily I am in a town with lots of options but still the cost is high $100/month for 350Mbps. Setting aside Musk's abrasive personality, any typical satellite Internet issues, orbital clutter, escalating costs, it's at least something. Internet access is more than just for entertainment these days.
briffle 4y ago
I have an RV I like to use often, and have been watching this with quite a bit of interest. Additionally, some of the phone companies are starting to have 'real' 5g home connections that compete with cable. While I live in a suburb now, my last home I moved out of in 2016 was 2M/256k wireless internet, that was $60/month, and only 5-6 miles south of downtown Madison, WI. Between Starlink and the 5G home connections t-mobile and verizon have been selling lately, its going to be interesting that Rural locations will suddenly see good internet choices. I may be able to finally buy a place in the middle of no-where. Working from home has made that not possible previously.
walrus01 4y ago
Frontier is famous in the telecom/ISP network engineering community for having the absolute worst shit tier quality of old copper phone wiring running ADSL2+. Street side pedestals wrapped in plastic garbage bags and such. What you've got there is probably dialtone POTS copper phone wiring that was installed in the 1960s to 1980s at a very long loop length from where the DSLAM is installed. And wet, dirty connections, noisy with crosstalk. Until they come up with a firm financial commitment to overbuild their legacy POTS dialtone copper phone wiring outside plant with singlemode fiber it's only going to get worse.
- icedchai 4y ago
  In Verizon territory (originally NYNEX), we have POTS wiring literally rotting on the poles. They’ve decommissioned many “copper facilities” but never physically removed them. Much of the area has been upgraded to fiber.

tuckerpo 4y ago

The default answer in the cable industry for solving "underserved" communities seems to be run fiber - but that's prohibitively expensive, especially for very rural communities. I believe "underserved" is defined as sub 32 MBps down and sub 6 MBps up. There's HFC which alleviates things somewhat but that still implies noise problems and signal amplitude loss for each home's coax tap. It's nice to have Starlink as an intermediary solution for rural people while the "fiber everywhere" approach takes slow adoption.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Is fiber really more expensive to run than coax? I'd imagine that most of the cost is the cost of digging a trench or stringing out cables under the power lines. If you take a close look at the outdoor plant for a cable system there are a large number of large powered boxes that also cost money. Contrast that to a fiber system which has very few active parts. I'd imagine that coaxial cable still dominates in many places because it was installed in the 1980s and 1990s. When the cable company wants to upgrade the system it is cost-effective to replace the uppermost nodes of the network with fiber and still leave coax for the last half mile. I know a rural "cable" company that today runs fiber optic plant in communities with favorable economics. Their primary product is an analog cable signal that is exactly what goes over the coax just modulated on a light beam. It's an economical and reliable system now and it is straightforward to upgrade to GPON or more advanced technologies in that future.
- ThaDood 4y ago
  It might not be so much that the fiber itself is expensive. It might just be the conduit or other delivery mechanism that can be rather costly to run. But in general, fiber is absolutely a viable option for rural communities, usually if the project/roll out is being handled by some local organization (Co-op or municipality or as you sated a smaller cable company). I wrote my thesis on community owned broadband programs in Ohio and did a fair amount of research on the topic.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    The one entity that is not going to invest in new plant is an entity that has an existing plant. For instance if there is a phone company with a copper plant that can charge $60 a month for DSL it is obviously unaffordable for them to upgrade to fiber so they can charge $70 a month. Some other entity might find the new plant is worth investing in but it still fights against the old plant. For instance the phone company is making crazy profits on $60 a month DSL and can probably still make profits on $40 a month DSL. This puts a downward pressure on pricing for a fiber service and also means the fiber plant is going to bypass many possible subscribers because there are plenty of people who will put up with a 100x drop in performance to save a few dollars. This book https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-zero-sum-society-by-lester-c-thurow/ https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-zer... works an interesting case study that was fundamental to the Democratic party becoming advocates for free trade. In particular, the steel industry in the US in the 1970s still depended on open hearth furnaces that were obsolete in every way to the basic oxygen furnaces used in Germany and Japan. From a marxist perspective, capital is the "master class", maybe even the capital itself (as opposed to the capitalist), embodied in those furnaces. Instead of replacing the furnaces, the US steel industry pursued protectionism which was harmful to the competitiveness of other sectors of the economy: inferior and expensive steel is an ingredient for inferior and expensive cars, buildings, etc. To analogize, however, the problem is that the copper phone network exists. So long as it exists there are strong incentives to keep using it. It might not be a problem of encouraging investment in fiber as much as forcing disinvestment in copper.
- zbobet2012 4y ago

WebbWeaver 4y ago

I've never been satisfied with Frontier internet.

dghughes 4y ago

It's the same in my province for rural areas. I recall fiber optic lines being run in the mid 1990s but then nothing. Politicians promising just basic Internet connectivity at first then "high speed" (the famous up to) for the last 25 years. Here in south-eastern Canada we were some of the first to be in the Starlink coverage area. From what I hear it's doing well not fantastic but better than up to x speed which always seems to end up being less than 1MBps. Luckily I am in a town with lots of options but still the cost is high $100/month for 350Mbps. Setting aside Musk's abrasive personality, any typical satellite Internet issues, orbital clutter, escalating costs, it's at least something. Internet access is more than just for entertainment these days.

briffle 4y ago

I have an RV I like to use often, and have been watching this with quite a bit of interest. Additionally, some of the phone companies are starting to have 'real' 5g home connections that compete with cable. While I live in a suburb now, my last home I moved out of in 2016 was 2M/256k wireless internet, that was $60/month, and only 5-6 miles south of downtown Madison, WI. Between Starlink and the 5G home connections t-mobile and verizon have been selling lately, its going to be interesting that Rural locations will suddenly see good internet choices. I may be able to finally buy a place in the middle of no-where. Working from home has made that not possible previously.

walrus01 4y ago

Frontier is famous in the telecom/ISP network engineering community for having the absolute worst shit tier quality of old copper phone wiring running ADSL2+. Street side pedestals wrapped in plastic garbage bags and such. What you've got there is probably dialtone POTS copper phone wiring that was installed in the 1960s to 1980s at a very long loop length from where the DSLAM is installed. And wet, dirty connections, noisy with crosstalk. Until they come up with a firm financial commitment to overbuild their legacy POTS dialtone copper phone wiring outside plant with singlemode fiber it's only going to get worse.

icedchai 4y ago
In Verizon territory (originally NYNEX), we have POTS wiring literally rotting on the poles. They’ve decommissioned many “copper facilities” but never physically removed them. Much of the area has been upgraded to fiber.