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The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using

The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine, but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the time.

throwaway984393 2y ago
Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.
- Alupis 2y ago
  You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket. When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone... For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE. One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
  - rdsnsca 2y ago
    They are actually running fiber almost everywhere in Nova Scotia, Canada. Source : https://internet.buildns.ca https://internet.buildns.ca
  - ta1243 2y ago
    One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere. Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      Cheaper labor and fewer challenges. There is a lot of infrastructure where the cost to replace is an order of magnitude higher than the inflation adjusted original cost.
    - Sparyjerry 2y ago
      Above ground power lines make up most of the it. A pole and wire isn't that expensive. Burying is drastically more expensive.
      - ta1243 2y ago
        So run the fibre on the power line
        Alupis 2y ago
        They do, where feasible. It's still very expensive, and the poles are owned by another entity which complicates things a bit more as well. No free lunch, as they say.
    - hattmall 2y ago
      That would be the REA, Rural Electrification Act, part of Roosevelt's new deal. Citizens could form co-ops and pay some of their own and get some grants from government. A very big number of those co-ops are now running fiber too.
huijzer 2y ago
Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks. It might be a problem but usually you shouldn’t notice; on wired at least. What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.
- threeseed 2y ago
  > Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks Wired networks can include fibre optic to the house like we have in Australia where the speeds can reach a consistent 1Gbps even in highly dense areas at peak times. And internal testing is happening on 10Gbps. If US cares about supporting the internet of tomorrow satellite services like Starlink will never be capable enough.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    1gbps to the house doesn’t mean you’re not oversubscribed. An ISP that has a 10,000 homes on 1gbps connections absolutely does not pay for 10 tbps of transit capacity or even internal capacity to carry all that to its peering points. Cheaper fiber to homes definitely made last mile scale better bandwidth-wise, but it didn’t change the fundamental nature of needing to heavily oversubscribe to make it affordable.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Many major services e.g. Youtube, Netflix, Cloudflare have servers colocated with ISPs. So they don't need to have equivalent transit capacity. Which is not a capability Starlink can provide.
      - kortilla 2y ago
        This is incorrect. Youtube does not in network content caching. That’s pretty unique to Netflix. Youtube meets you at exchange points and if you’re an ISP anywhere that isn’t a major city, there isn’t an exchange point there. Take a place like Boise and a municipal fiber provider there. They aren’t big enough for Netflix to offer an OCA and there isn’t an exchange in Boise with good content provider density on the fabric. So that provider needs to pay for transit or a private lease to the nearest big exchange (SEA, PDX, barely SLC) where it can get connectivity. Your mental model is completely wrong for ISPs that aren’t serving the same city as one of the <10 major exchanges in the US.
kortilla 2y ago
> 700Gbps max per cell > having extremely low customer density I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching. If you go by rural being <1000 people per square mile and a cell covering roughly 97 square miles (assuming the larger 15 mile hex diameter), that lands at 7.2 mbps per person if there are 1000 people in every square mile all trying to use it at the same time. That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum density for what’s considered rural.
- threeseed 2y ago
  > that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.
  - caeril 2y ago
    Unbelievable how much millennials and zoomers are spoiled. I remember when I got my first DSL line at 384kbps symmetric in 1999, I was absolutely over the moon ELATED. Sure, 7mbps may not be good enough to supply the demands of your multi-screen 4k UHD loli goon cave, but it's more than enough to send a < 1kB message to your family that you're safe in a disaster area. Try to get some perspective.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    >Which is ridiculously poor. That’s HD video. The alternative for these people is even slower DSL or heavily throttled LTE tethering if they are lucky enough to have cell coverage. You’re living in a privileged bubble.
  - why_at 2y ago
    >This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas. Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.

throwaway984393 2y ago

Yep, in a few years these dishes will be $600 paperweights. We need real rural broadband.

Alupis 2y ago
You can have real rural broadband today. You just need to be willing to pay for installation out of pocket. When an ISP runs fiber to a new building (be it in a business park or rural farm), the math is almost entirely based on recuperating their installation costs - which they often pay for entirely out of their pocket. Your entire first contract term is usually just paying back the installation costs alone... For some perspective, at a previous building we tried to bring fiber across the street into our office. The installation costs were too expensive to make the math work - so the ISP offered to split the installation costs 50/50 instead. Our half was over $94,000. This involved directional boring and the works, to go ~200ft to the right-of-way vault and into our MPOE. One can only imagine the expense of running fiber (or any type of cable) out to the boonies. It's totally feasible - but the costs make it not palatable in reality.
- rdsnsca 2y ago
  They are actually running fiber almost everywhere in Nova Scotia, Canada. Source : https://internet.buildns.ca https://internet.buildns.ca
- ta1243 2y ago
  One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere. Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    Cheaper labor and fewer challenges. There is a lot of infrastructure where the cost to replace is an order of magnitude higher than the inflation adjusted original cost.
  - Sparyjerry 2y ago
    Above ground power lines make up most of the it. A pole and wire isn't that expensive. Burying is drastically more expensive.
    - ta1243 2y ago
      So run the fibre on the power line
      - Alupis 2y ago
        They do, where feasible. It's still very expensive, and the poles are owned by another entity which complicates things a bit more as well. No free lunch, as they say.
  - hattmall 2y ago
    That would be the REA, Rural Electrification Act, part of Roosevelt's new deal. Citizens could form co-ops and pay some of their own and get some grants from government. A very big number of those co-ops are now running fiber too.

huijzer 2y ago

Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks. It might be a problem but usually you shouldn’t notice; on wired at least. What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.

threeseed 2y ago
> Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks Wired networks can include fibre optic to the house like we have in Australia where the speeds can reach a consistent 1Gbps even in highly dense areas at peak times. And internal testing is happening on 10Gbps. If US cares about supporting the internet of tomorrow satellite services like Starlink will never be capable enough.
- kortilla 2y ago
  1gbps to the house doesn’t mean you’re not oversubscribed. An ISP that has a 10,000 homes on 1gbps connections absolutely does not pay for 10 tbps of transit capacity or even internal capacity to carry all that to its peering points. Cheaper fiber to homes definitely made last mile scale better bandwidth-wise, but it didn’t change the fundamental nature of needing to heavily oversubscribe to make it affordable.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Many major services e.g. Youtube, Netflix, Cloudflare have servers colocated with ISPs. So they don't need to have equivalent transit capacity. Which is not a capability Starlink can provide.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      This is incorrect. Youtube does not in network content caching. That’s pretty unique to Netflix. Youtube meets you at exchange points and if you’re an ISP anywhere that isn’t a major city, there isn’t an exchange point there. Take a place like Boise and a municipal fiber provider there. They aren’t big enough for Netflix to offer an OCA and there isn’t an exchange in Boise with good content provider density on the fabric. So that provider needs to pay for transit or a private lease to the nearest big exchange (SEA, PDX, barely SLC) where it can get connectivity. Your mental model is completely wrong for ISPs that aren’t serving the same city as one of the <10 major exchanges in the US.

kortilla 2y ago

> 700Gbps max per cell > having extremely low customer density I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching. If you go by rural being <1000 people per square mile and a cell covering roughly 97 square miles (assuming the larger 15 mile hex diameter), that lands at 7.2 mbps per person if there are 1000 people in every square mile all trying to use it at the same time. That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum density for what’s considered rural.

threeseed 2y ago
> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.
- caeril 2y ago
  Unbelievable how much millennials and zoomers are spoiled. I remember when I got my first DSL line at 384kbps symmetric in 1999, I was absolutely over the moon ELATED. Sure, 7mbps may not be good enough to supply the demands of your multi-screen 4k UHD loli goon cave, but it's more than enough to send a < 1kB message to your family that you're safe in a disaster area. Try to get some perspective.
- kortilla 2y ago
  >Which is ridiculously poor. That’s HD video. The alternative for these people is even slower DSL or heavily throttled LTE tethering if they are lucky enough to have cell coverage. You’re living in a privileged bubble.
- why_at 2y ago
  >This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas. Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.