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Oh my friend, you should step into the country sometime! The US, alone, is 105,847,090,000,000 square feet. I used that awkward unit because it's easy to visual

Oh my friend, you should step into the country sometime! The US, alone, is 105,847,090,000,000 square feet. I used that awkward unit because it's easy to visualize. Not that we can visualize or even really imagine a hundred trillion, other than that it's just absurdly stupidly vast. Covering all of that region (or even just the parts with a human within a reasonable distance) with towers and wires is an absolutely massive undertaking. This is why, to this day, many places in America still lack access to high speed internet. And then when a tower goes down, or a wire gets cut - it's a major issue that will result in downtime and require costly maintenance. By contrast a relatively small number of satellites can provide coverage to this entire area. And when a satellite goes down, it's not a problem at all - it's a perfectly normal part of the system, and is seamlessly replaced by another instantly. And all of this is just for one country! Starlink covers the entire globe meaning regardless of the state of the country you live in, you can get access to reliable high speed internet.

cma 3y ago
Ultimately everywhere that has wired power should be able to get fiber, if right of ways were reasonable.
- jagger27 3y ago
  Fibre can go about 100 km without a repeater which in the grand scheme of things isn’t very far. Keep in mind that Starlink works best with a fibre base station inside of the coverage cone. A few of those stations in northern Quebec built next to existing cell towers gets you a lot of connectivity for cheap.
  - cma 3y ago
    Seems like a repeater could be powered just from induction with neighboring powerline, or solar+battery.
    - ftth_finland 3y ago
      Subsea cables have built-in repeaters and they span thousands of miles. On land it’s usually easier and cheaper to use huts with power.
  - ftth_finland 3y ago
    You can do 400 km with unrepeated systems. However, very seldom do you need or want to go that far on land since very, very few places worth connecting are more than 400 km from somewhere else. Repeatered systems can go thousands of miles and the repeater sites are handy for local breakout.
- infecto 3y ago
  I am not so sure that is true. Speaking only for the US. I don't have the data but I suspect most of the grid in rural America was built long ago. Everyone needs power, it is a natural monopoly. When they were building it out, everyone got hooked up and only requires regular maintenance. Sure, if there was a sudden growth spurt maybe more lines are run or higher capacity but I suspect for most of rural America that this is not true. I even suspect most of this electrification happened for free or very low rates to the household. Now, if you are building a new home that needs a grid tie-in, it usually costs quite a bit. Now fiber on the other hand, not so much of a natural monopoly. There may be state imposed regulation where a cable company has rights to areas. You could have a totally free market and many different providers. In a rural area you might be able to sign up only 20% of the population with your service, you would still need to build out the infrastructure though and perhaps that 20% would not even cover costs. It is easy to say everywhere with power should have fiber but America is vast and that would be quite expensive, I am not even sure a local effort would be able to cover costs.
  - couchand 3y ago
    GP said, "if right of ways were reasonable." In the context of internet connectivity, I interpret a reasonable right-of-way policy being collectively-owned fiber which can be shared. We don't say, "everybody who wants a road should build their own road along this path" we just build the damn road and share it.
    - infecto 3y ago
      I do not believe your interpretation is correct or what most others would assume to be the case but hey I could be wrong. Right of way being reasonable means that the owner of the transmission lines did not charge unreasonable fees or requirements for using the same poles to run fiber. And you are partly wrong on your last part, yes of course each individual is not building their own road but again, roads are natural monopolies, everyone wants a road of at least some minimum quality (dirt). Additionally it would be near impossible to get "right of way" to build your own road. In rural areas roads are indeed just dirt and to get it paved would require some majority of the individuals living out there to pay for it, YMMV depending on local rules. Since its a road its easier to get a majority to agree to to pack it with gravel or pave it, everyone that lives down that road is driving on it. I am not arguing that internet is or is not a right that everyone should have but that it is not always a natural monopoly, some people maybe don't want it, some have cell service, some are using Dish, maybe there are some cable connections available in certain areas. So yes, each individual does not build their own road but often in rural areas the burden for that road is shared and often stays as a dirt road because of it.
- Jedd 3y ago
  > Ultimately everywhere that has wired power should be able to get fiber, if right of ways were reasonable. That's quite a caveat, but still doesn't get you to 'fiber is feasible everywhere'. Where I am (about 250km north-west of Sydney, Australia) my nearest exchange is 30km away, and no one is going to come up with the money to lay fiber out to me. Starlink has been an amazing enabler.
  - Retric 3y ago
    What matters is the distance between the end of your driveway to the end of the next person’s driveway not the exchange. Like power lines many homes can all use the same cable. And sure there’s going to be a few unprofitable edge cases, that’s what mandates are for. A company that wants to serve high density neighborhoods ends up paying for a few random houses far from each other. The average cost per home is what makes an area profitable at least when you setup the local monopoly correctly.
    - infecto 3y ago
      No, mandates absolutely should not be involved unless the agency that is issuing the mandate wants to cover those unprofitable edge cases. Additionally the distance to the GP home and the exchange it what matters. Unlike electricity, you maybe only have a small percentage of a rural area wanting fiber. If GP is not in a very dense area, he may be the only person within a reasonable distance that wants fiber and no company wants to foot the bill for that.
      - Retric 3y ago
        Mandates are how we got electricity and phone lines to every home. Building such networks are a natural monopoly and communities have real leverage if they want to use it. Subsidies as needed are fine, subsidies without mandates simply waste taxpayer money without actually fixing the underlying problem. Without a mandate companies just take that cash and build the same profitable network they would have build without it. Also, 93% of Australian homes have home internet. Cheap fiber beats any other technology when it’s available. So perhaps the neighbor doesn’t want fiber today, in 2 or 20 years when someone else moves in you don’t need to lay a new fiber. It’s all just statistical noise from an investment perspective.
Retric 3y ago
You just included a lot of land nobody lives on in that number. The US only has 4.09 million miles of road, that’s roughly how much fiber you need to get it to everyone’s driveway. At ~1-10$ a foot we’re talking ~20-200billion dollars etc and most of it’s already in the ground or dangling from utility poles. We don’t have fiber everywhere because we didn’t mandate it the way we mandated electricity or phone lines to every home. It was billions of subsidies without sufficient strings so of course companies only built the most profitable networks.
- infecto 3y ago
  I don't follow your last part but yes, in the US the federal government subsidized the electrification of rural America and with a add-on to give loans to telephone companies that wanted to expand service at the same time. I do not believe it is so much of a "mandate" but a subsidy that allowed for the majority of expansion. At this point most of rural America is already serviced by cell, satellite and now starlink that in a lot of areas it may not be cost effective. I say cost effective not from a corporate profitability but a non-profit community run initiative.
  - Retric 3y ago
    The last part is this: The government already handed over the full cost of Fiber to the home everywhere. Just the Federal government alone has handed out over 90 Billion dollars for rural high speed internet. That estimate I gave also included profitable areas, the unprofitable rural network requiring strings is only a fraction of the total cost. The money just didn’t have enough strings to require companies taking it to actually build out their networks everywhere.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Your cost estimate is not really reasonable for what it would cost to lay fiber out in the middle of nowhere at extreme scale using labor sources that don't currently exist. But the differences here are so stark that I'm not even going to argue against that, beyond what I've done. Let's go with it, while also considering you also have maintenance costs of course - quite large ones in fact when you're obligated to support and maintain wiring/towers even out in the middle of nowhere. Now let's compare to Starlink. That system was privately designed, built, and deployed for a total cost of ~$10 billion. And while I don't know their maintenance costs, I do know they're now already turning a profit with a relatively small number of users. So that's providing complete and stable connectivity for the entire globe, at half of the bottom of an unrealistically low price for wiring a single country. And you get vastly better reliability, and near 0 labor maintenance. I don't think this is particularly close.
ftth_finland 3y ago
This is a silly argument. The US is about the same size as Europe. Size is not a reason why the US has lack of access to high speed internet.
this15testingg 3y ago
coverage to an entire area is either via "small number of satellites" in geostationary orbits or massive amounts of satellites for low earth orbits, you cannot have both. "Just replaced by another" is massively oversimplifying every aspect of this, not just the act of putting an object in orbit, but also the coordination of that many MOVING satellites, their fuel levels / end-of-life procedures, all the ground infrastructure needed to support it, and the total amount of energy that this system requires (both on the side of the service providers and users). Connecting rural or places without internet is not a technical problem, like everything in the world we built it is an issue of priorities. Starlink was not created "for the good of the farmer".
izacus 3y ago
So how did this great rich nation, leader of the free world, owner of the largest army, manage to get cables to all those imperial square feet of people for power, telephone and water and is now in 2024 at the height of its power incapable of getting a much thinner cable in the same direction? What happened in the last generation that you just so easily buy this cheap copout of "oh no, the whole nation is big and we now can't even cover a small state"?
- smegger001 3y ago
  As for water much of it uses wells drilled on each persons property. Electrical and telephone a lot was done as a new deal jobs programs like the Tennessee Valley authority. As such it was more about making endless work to give the unemployed untrained labor jobs trying to get the US out of the great depression.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cma 3y ago

Ultimately everywhere that has wired power should be able to get fiber, if right of ways were reasonable.

jagger27 3y ago
Fibre can go about 100 km without a repeater which in the grand scheme of things isn’t very far. Keep in mind that Starlink works best with a fibre base station inside of the coverage cone. A few of those stations in northern Quebec built next to existing cell towers gets you a lot of connectivity for cheap.
- cma 3y ago
  Seems like a repeater could be powered just from induction with neighboring powerline, or solar+battery.
  - ftth_finland 3y ago
    Subsea cables have built-in repeaters and they span thousands of miles. On land it’s usually easier and cheaper to use huts with power.
- ftth_finland 3y ago
  You can do 400 km with unrepeated systems. However, very seldom do you need or want to go that far on land since very, very few places worth connecting are more than 400 km from somewhere else. Repeatered systems can go thousands of miles and the repeater sites are handy for local breakout.
infecto 3y ago
I am not so sure that is true. Speaking only for the US. I don't have the data but I suspect most of the grid in rural America was built long ago. Everyone needs power, it is a natural monopoly. When they were building it out, everyone got hooked up and only requires regular maintenance. Sure, if there was a sudden growth spurt maybe more lines are run or higher capacity but I suspect for most of rural America that this is not true. I even suspect most of this electrification happened for free or very low rates to the household. Now, if you are building a new home that needs a grid tie-in, it usually costs quite a bit. Now fiber on the other hand, not so much of a natural monopoly. There may be state imposed regulation where a cable company has rights to areas. You could have a totally free market and many different providers. In a rural area you might be able to sign up only 20% of the population with your service, you would still need to build out the infrastructure though and perhaps that 20% would not even cover costs. It is easy to say everywhere with power should have fiber but America is vast and that would be quite expensive, I am not even sure a local effort would be able to cover costs.
- couchand 3y ago
  GP said, "if right of ways were reasonable." In the context of internet connectivity, I interpret a reasonable right-of-way policy being collectively-owned fiber which can be shared. We don't say, "everybody who wants a road should build their own road along this path" we just build the damn road and share it.
  - infecto 3y ago
    I do not believe your interpretation is correct or what most others would assume to be the case but hey I could be wrong. Right of way being reasonable means that the owner of the transmission lines did not charge unreasonable fees or requirements for using the same poles to run fiber. And you are partly wrong on your last part, yes of course each individual is not building their own road but again, roads are natural monopolies, everyone wants a road of at least some minimum quality (dirt). Additionally it would be near impossible to get "right of way" to build your own road. In rural areas roads are indeed just dirt and to get it paved would require some majority of the individuals living out there to pay for it, YMMV depending on local rules. Since its a road its easier to get a majority to agree to to pack it with gravel or pave it, everyone that lives down that road is driving on it. I am not arguing that internet is or is not a right that everyone should have but that it is not always a natural monopoly, some people maybe don't want it, some have cell service, some are using Dish, maybe there are some cable connections available in certain areas. So yes, each individual does not build their own road but often in rural areas the burden for that road is shared and often stays as a dirt road because of it.
Jedd 3y ago
> Ultimately everywhere that has wired power should be able to get fiber, if right of ways were reasonable. That's quite a caveat, but still doesn't get you to 'fiber is feasible everywhere'. Where I am (about 250km north-west of Sydney, Australia) my nearest exchange is 30km away, and no one is going to come up with the money to lay fiber out to me. Starlink has been an amazing enabler.
- Retric 3y ago
  What matters is the distance between the end of your driveway to the end of the next person’s driveway not the exchange. Like power lines many homes can all use the same cable. And sure there’s going to be a few unprofitable edge cases, that’s what mandates are for. A company that wants to serve high density neighborhoods ends up paying for a few random houses far from each other. The average cost per home is what makes an area profitable at least when you setup the local monopoly correctly.
  - infecto 3y ago
    No, mandates absolutely should not be involved unless the agency that is issuing the mandate wants to cover those unprofitable edge cases. Additionally the distance to the GP home and the exchange it what matters. Unlike electricity, you maybe only have a small percentage of a rural area wanting fiber. If GP is not in a very dense area, he may be the only person within a reasonable distance that wants fiber and no company wants to foot the bill for that.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Mandates are how we got electricity and phone lines to every home. Building such networks are a natural monopoly and communities have real leverage if they want to use it. Subsidies as needed are fine, subsidies without mandates simply waste taxpayer money without actually fixing the underlying problem. Without a mandate companies just take that cash and build the same profitable network they would have build without it. Also, 93% of Australian homes have home internet. Cheap fiber beats any other technology when it’s available. So perhaps the neighbor doesn’t want fiber today, in 2 or 20 years when someone else moves in you don’t need to lay a new fiber. It’s all just statistical noise from an investment perspective.

Retric 3y ago

You just included a lot of land nobody lives on in that number. The US only has 4.09 million miles of road, that’s roughly how much fiber you need to get it to everyone’s driveway. At ~1-10$ a foot we’re talking ~20-200billion dollars etc and most of it’s already in the ground or dangling from utility poles. We don’t have fiber everywhere because we didn’t mandate it the way we mandated electricity or phone lines to every home. It was billions of subsidies without sufficient strings so of course companies only built the most profitable networks.

infecto 3y ago
I don't follow your last part but yes, in the US the federal government subsidized the electrification of rural America and with a add-on to give loans to telephone companies that wanted to expand service at the same time. I do not believe it is so much of a "mandate" but a subsidy that allowed for the majority of expansion. At this point most of rural America is already serviced by cell, satellite and now starlink that in a lot of areas it may not be cost effective. I say cost effective not from a corporate profitability but a non-profit community run initiative.
- Retric 3y ago
  The last part is this: The government already handed over the full cost of Fiber to the home everywhere. Just the Federal government alone has handed out over 90 Billion dollars for rural high speed internet. That estimate I gave also included profitable areas, the unprofitable rural network requiring strings is only a fraction of the total cost. The money just didn’t have enough strings to require companies taking it to actually build out their networks everywhere.
somenameforme 3y ago
Your cost estimate is not really reasonable for what it would cost to lay fiber out in the middle of nowhere at extreme scale using labor sources that don't currently exist. But the differences here are so stark that I'm not even going to argue against that, beyond what I've done. Let's go with it, while also considering you also have maintenance costs of course - quite large ones in fact when you're obligated to support and maintain wiring/towers even out in the middle of nowhere. Now let's compare to Starlink. That system was privately designed, built, and deployed for a total cost of ~$10 billion. And while I don't know their maintenance costs, I do know they're now already turning a profit with a relatively small number of users. So that's providing complete and stable connectivity for the entire globe, at half of the bottom of an unrealistically low price for wiring a single country. And you get vastly better reliability, and near 0 labor maintenance. I don't think this is particularly close.

ftth_finland 3y ago

This is a silly argument. The US is about the same size as Europe. Size is not a reason why the US has lack of access to high speed internet.

this15testingg 3y ago

coverage to an entire area is either via "small number of satellites" in geostationary orbits or massive amounts of satellites for low earth orbits, you cannot have both. "Just replaced by another" is massively oversimplifying every aspect of this, not just the act of putting an object in orbit, but also the coordination of that many MOVING satellites, their fuel levels / end-of-life procedures, all the ground infrastructure needed to support it, and the total amount of energy that this system requires (both on the side of the service providers and users). Connecting rural or places without internet is not a technical problem, like everything in the world we built it is an issue of priorities. Starlink was not created "for the good of the farmer".

izacus 3y ago

So how did this great rich nation, leader of the free world, owner of the largest army, manage to get cables to all those imperial square feet of people for power, telephone and water and is now in 2024 at the height of its power incapable of getting a much thinner cable in the same direction? What happened in the last generation that you just so easily buy this cheap copout of "oh no, the whole nation is big and we now can't even cover a small state"?

smegger001 3y ago
As for water much of it uses wells drilled on each persons property. Electrical and telephone a lot was done as a new deal jobs programs like the Tennessee Valley authority. As such it was more about making endless work to give the unemployed untrained labor jobs trying to get the US out of the great depression.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]