4 ms·

I have used Starlink for remote work and I can download anything as fast as providers can serve it (I am nearly 100% dependent on limitations on the providers u

I have used Starlink for remote work and I can download anything as fast as providers can serve it (I am nearly 100% dependent on limitations on the providers upload speed). I have had no downtime during power outages (as long as I have my own power - which I do) which makes the unit have much higher resiliency than wired internet. Not sure what you mean by scaling issues, that's exactly what is plaguing fiber. They can't scale without digging up the entire planet.

acdha 2y ago
If you search the forums, they have capacity scaling issues once more than a few people in a region are using it and suffer degradation in bad weather. I’m not saying it’s a terrible service but it’s slower and less scalable than fiber and if you are talking large scale deployments that will matter.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  Remember that we're talking about rural deployments here. Scale is not the problem. Or maybe it is, but not in the way you think. The scale of fibre is the problem. Fibre makes sense when you're serving places where a single neighbourhood rivals the population of entire rural towns. They're close to backhauls, technicians, and enough customers to justify the cost. Which is why companies have dragged their feet on it in rural areas where the nearest full-time technician is a half-day's drive away. I mean shit, my mother lives less than an hour outside the capital city of my home province and can't even get DSL. It's too much copper for too few people to justify maintaining it at a price people are able to pay. I've been using Starlink in rural Canada, prairies and mountains, where most people are either using Starlink, horrible past-gen satellite links, or microwave LOS systems. My father's been using a microwave LOS system at his farm for a decade. All of them are affected by weather to some extent, but Starlink is the least affected, and no Starlink user I've talked to has been affected by congestion issues. Yes it's absolutely slower than fibre, it's slower than the DOCSIS 3 cable internet I was using before this. Microwave is usually cheaper, but Starlink is much faster (unless you're wealthy enough to get a beefy uplink). And importantly, Starlink ready to go right now. Rural users often have to choose between nothing and a very expensive something. Fibre would be nice but wiring up every rural customer to fibre is a ridiculously time-consuming and expensive proposition. On the off-chance that a rural town grows instead of dies, then fibre would be better for them but at that point the economics of running fibre would make sense without the need for subsidies. Rural people need alternatives to Starlink but fibre isn't it.
  - acdha 2y ago
    Yes, I’m not saying that there’s no place for Starlink but that I would use it at a lower preference: try to run fiber into small towns, schools, etc. and their neighbors (e.g. where I live there are a lot of small towns which used to be hubs along railroads or canals where you could get a small number of dozens of people, government offices, and businesses with a single fiber run of modest distance from an existing telco station) and save things like Starlink for the people who are seriously remote and maybe on the wrong side of a mountain or other difficult terrain.

acdha 2y ago

If you search the forums, they have capacity scaling issues once more than a few people in a region are using it and suffer degradation in bad weather. I’m not saying it’s a terrible service but it’s slower and less scalable than fiber and if you are talking large scale deployments that will matter.

inhumantsar 2y ago
Remember that we're talking about rural deployments here. Scale is not the problem. Or maybe it is, but not in the way you think. The scale of fibre is the problem. Fibre makes sense when you're serving places where a single neighbourhood rivals the population of entire rural towns. They're close to backhauls, technicians, and enough customers to justify the cost. Which is why companies have dragged their feet on it in rural areas where the nearest full-time technician is a half-day's drive away. I mean shit, my mother lives less than an hour outside the capital city of my home province and can't even get DSL. It's too much copper for too few people to justify maintaining it at a price people are able to pay. I've been using Starlink in rural Canada, prairies and mountains, where most people are either using Starlink, horrible past-gen satellite links, or microwave LOS systems. My father's been using a microwave LOS system at his farm for a decade. All of them are affected by weather to some extent, but Starlink is the least affected, and no Starlink user I've talked to has been affected by congestion issues. Yes it's absolutely slower than fibre, it's slower than the DOCSIS 3 cable internet I was using before this. Microwave is usually cheaper, but Starlink is much faster (unless you're wealthy enough to get a beefy uplink). And importantly, Starlink ready to go right now. Rural users often have to choose between nothing and a very expensive something. Fibre would be nice but wiring up every rural customer to fibre is a ridiculously time-consuming and expensive proposition. On the off-chance that a rural town grows instead of dies, then fibre would be better for them but at that point the economics of running fibre would make sense without the need for subsidies. Rural people need alternatives to Starlink but fibre isn't it.
- acdha 2y ago
  Yes, I’m not saying that there’s no place for Starlink but that I would use it at a lower preference: try to run fiber into small towns, schools, etc. and their neighbors (e.g. where I live there are a lot of small towns which used to be hubs along railroads or canals where you could get a small number of dozens of people, government offices, and businesses with a single fiber run of modest distance from an existing telco station) and save things like Starlink for the people who are seriously remote and maybe on the wrong side of a mountain or other difficult terrain.