7 ms·
I know it's a blessing for people who live out in the sticks to have internet.... but is that really such a large use-case to justify entire fleets of these thi
by tetris11 2y ago
I know it's a blessing for people who live out in the sticks to have internet.... but is that really such a large use-case to justify entire fleets of these things?
How hard is it to run km of wire from the nearest town?
To me, these were built for the sole purpose of surveillance, and internet is an afterthought.
Edit: yes yes it's expensive, but the easiest solution the world came up with was for some guy to invest billions in a satellite program?
- philomath_mn 2y ago> How hard is it to run km of wire from the nearest town? Very hard, especially when the towns are much more dispersed than a km apart.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoYeah, no one is going to "run a wire" out to Umiat, Alaska. In places like that it's satellite or nothing.
- astrodust 2y agoThe hardest part is not the cable, or even the installation thereof, it's finding a contiguous right-of-way you can install it on, or having to fuss around with thousands of land owners who want their cut for the rights. This is why most cables are laid alongside train tracks, not unlike telegram wires of years past. You negotiate with a handful of entities and can get permission relatively easily. Of course, this presumes there's tracks, which is less and less likely as they keep getting ripped out. If there's anything modern infrastructure build needs, it's more right-of-way access where you can provision dark fibre without getting mired in the legal issues.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago> How hard is it to run km of wire from the nearest town? If it's not hard, why hasn't it happened already?
- oh_my_goodness 2y agoTo be fair, people are already using wire.
- digging 2y ago(in the US) It may be hard for a new company but easy for existing telecom giants. But existing telecom giants don't give a shit about national internet infrastructure quality, so if connecting rural customers simply appears less profitable* than focusing on current operations[1], they won't do it. [1] Current operations include the obviously profitable "send monthly marketing materials via mail, email, and live salespersons to homes who canceled your services the day they had an alternative," among other idiotic practices.
- FredPret 2y agoSuper hard. You have to dig a trench or span the wire. Either way you need to clear it with numerous property owners over a vast distance, get approval from dozens of authorities along the way, coordinate work crews, and then do maintenance on the whole thing for decades. And then you discover that the wire used 50 years ago contained lead and we don't like that anymore, so now you have to pay for massive lawsuits (look up AT&T & Verizon) and rip up all that wire. More coordinating work crews and property owners! And then they invent a new kind of wire and you have to do it all again. Launching 1000's of satellites isn't easy but I can see wanting to do that rather than wire up the whole planet.
- ajford 2y agoBecause telecoms keep pocketing the money instead of actually building out broadband. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...
- ericd 2y agoYeah, I’m not sure why trenching is so expensive, I think PG&E was quoting something silly like millions per kilometer. I’m planning on doing like a tenth of a kilometer in a day with a $400 trencher rental pretty soon. I’m sure it’s not apples to apples, but the delta there seems pretty baffling. For me, the biggest hang up has just been that I’m required by the state to get it inspected before I put in the conduit, and that ramps up the complexity of coordinating things quite a bit, because I’d rather not leave it open too long. If they have to deal with a bunch of bureaucratic coordination, then I could see the actual labor becoming a relatively tiny part of the difficulty/cost.
- iwontberude 2y agoIt might cost money to figure out where to prioritize resources
- ericd 2y agoYeah, but if the planning that’s meant to make things efficient is using up almost all the money, seems like maybe we need to rethink how we’re doing things.
- oh_my_goodness 2y agoHard enough that some people are putting up satellites instead. EDIT: Say there's some way to put in fiber at $10k per km. Even then, ten million users at 1km per user makes $100 billion.
- bmitc 2y agoTo me, these are capitalistic solutions looking for problems. It's the whole startup mentality. Let's just throw a bunch of shit in space and see if it ends up being useful for anything. This idea of connecting the world is as false as the other hundred millions times that's been sold.
- oh_my_goodness 2y agoYeah, fair. Just because stuff is expensive doesn't mean it's worth anything.
- FredPret 2y agoIf you paid attention, "this time" and also the "other hundred million times" are true, not false. We're massively more connected than ever before. Homeless people in the third world have phones now. They should be able to get on the internet too.
- palata 2y agoStarlink is not there to bring Internet in places that don't have it. It's here to bring fast Internet in places that already have slow Internet. The question is: how fast an Internet connection do we need? Do we really need to swipe 4k videos on social network, or to download 50G of docker containers for every build? I don't think so.
- FredPret 2y agoIs there some maximum level of development you want? And what is that level, and why? Where do you want to draw the line? The wheel, fire, hand tools, struggling to survive in the middle ages, slow internet, fast internet? I say there is no line.
- Starlevel004 2y ago[flagged]
- a2l3aQ 2y agoNot a great point of view when the cities don't grow all that much food.
- Starlevel004 2y agoNeither do most ruraloids and especially not the ones actually paying for the satellites.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoThat's nice. No one put you in charge of this.
- downWidOutaFite 2y agoISPs were paid billions to do this in the US and then stole the money and didn't do it thanks to regulatory capture.
- shadowgovt 2y agoIn many cases, the issue isn't cost to run but cost to maintain. Consider South Africa, where the largest threat to installation deployment is inability to police the entire deployment coupled with massive wealth inequality... People just dig the cables out of the ground for the copper. Cellular radio has ameliorated the issue some (harder to steal the repeater antenna out of the back yard of a shotgun-owning resident), but Internet can still be a challenge.
- Turing_Machine 2y agoThat specific problem should go away as more lines get replaced with fiber, which has minimal scrap value compared to copper.
- inemesitaffia 2y agoNo one can tell before they cut if they are outsiders
- pfdietz 2y agoIt's getting to the point it's not even worthwhile to run power lines to remote locations.
- palata 2y ago> To me, these were built for the sole purpose of surveillance, and internet is an afterthought. Growth! Growth no matter the cost! Why would anyone question the need for always faster internet connections everywhere? /s
- Turing_Machine 2y agoLet us know when you switch back to a 300 bps audio modem.
- palata 2y agoSure, because that is the only alternative to fiber. /s