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We have an alternative for 99% of the world and it’s fibre. Which brings everyone the same speeds instead of perpetuating a digital divide between cities and r

We have an alternative for 99% of the world and it’s fibre. Which brings everyone the same speeds instead of perpetuating a digital divide between cities and rural areas. Which may not be bad now but once we start moving to ten and hundred gigabit plans, solutions like Starlink are going to resemble dialup.

robalpha 1y ago
This makes zero sense. Fibre is not going to be economically viable in rural areas at all. If that's the only option, they won't have any internet at all. I also don't think we'll be moving to >10g plans anytime soon. Only a small portion of users have even close to 1g, and everyone else seems fine with it.
- threeseed 1y ago
  a) Hospitals and roads are not economically viable either. We do it because it serves the national good and by making people more productive it improves the economy as a whole. b) In Australia they are trialing 100g over the existing fibre network. c) Everyone was fine with dialup at one point as well.
  - laurencei 1y ago
    I'm from Australia. You dont want to use us as an example of internet speeds or leading the world on anything in this space. Our internet infrastructure/speed etc is considered sub optimal by many. It is (slowly) getting better - but it has been years of lost oppoutunity.
    - threeseed 1y ago
      a) Australia is a very large, geographically diverse country that has committed to rolling out fibre in rural areas. It is an example that it can be done and you don’t need to rely on bandwidth limited satellites. b) Our internet infrastructure was sub-optimal but is being upgraded to full fibre to the door across the country. 1g is available to consumers today, 10g to businesses, 100g in testing. And it’s future proof.
  - tastyfreeze 1y ago
    The interstate wasn't built for public good or trade. It was built for military. Public use for commerce is a byproduct.
- ty6853 1y ago
  A lot of rural areas have small-scale wireless ISPs at 10-100mbps. You just have to install a directional antenna on your roof. This doesn't work once you get really remote, nor does fiber. In any case none of them beat the experience of pulling an antenna out of a box and it pretty much just working.
  - thallium205 1y ago
    These services are generally terrible compared to Starlink.
    - ty6853 1y ago
      No doubt, but given the cost and challenge of launching a satellite, I think your best bet if your rural enclave despises Starlink for whatever reason, right now your best bet is to run fiber to a single house and make a mini wireless ISP.
    - esseph 1y ago
      Maybe 15 years ago, but not for at least 10 years, and definitely 5 in most markets. I'd take fiber -> Taara -> Tarana 3.65 CBRS any day of the week over any LEO. Way faster, way lower latency, and way lower total cost to deploy. Also scales massively better.
      - kortilla 1y ago
        >Tarana 3.65 CBRS any day of the week over any LEO. Way faster, way lower latency To what? Starlink is getting you to a major exchange in two direct shots. When I was testing it in North Dakota I was getting lower latency to Google and Cloudflare through Starlink than I was through local fiber providers (likely due to their long circuitous route to Minneapolis).
        esseph 1y ago
        Satellite can't handle the density required for one, but yes, network path is huge. Same reason a lot of HFT uses microwave vs fiber paths - fiber paths are following the ROW, the microwave paths are the physically shorter paths. LEO is a niche technology, but not and shouldn't be the default for tons of reasons.
- lowmagnet 1y ago
  Weird, I'm sitting here in a rural area and I have 1g fiber. You may have forgotten that cooperatives exist. It's a common error, since they mainly exist in exurb and rural areas. The cool thing is that since they often own the power right of way, they can run fiber on it without any change. The way coops work is that we're the owners, we vote for initiatives, etc. The local power company is now our region's #1 internet provider, hands down.
  - bdamm 1y ago
    Which is great for you, but the vast majority of the world doesn't have such strong local organization consisting of members who can afford to pay for big ditch infrastructure.
    - threeseed 1y ago
      Vast majority of the world is having fibre being laid by governments. You need to vote and encourage others to make fast internet an election issue.
      - bdamm 1y ago
        I'm sorry, but in an environment where sovreignty is increasingly the dominant election issue, fiber doesn't rate. And even if every house has fiber, there are still many cases for mobile and robust Internet that can't be covered by cellular networks. The reality is that Starlink needs a competitor. And besides, satellite Internet from LEO satellites is a viable competitive option to fiber, based on infrastructure costs alone. It's all nice to convince slow moving bureaucracies to lay out fiber, but nobody wants to wait the five to ten years for that to happen, when you can subscribe today and get it within a week.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    If you get 'free' fiber you are just punting the cost to other members. It cost me $15,000 to establish my co-op membership 1,000 ft it went to the next guy. Our bylaws require all members to pay 100% of the full unsubsidized cost of extension up front. This is fairly common. Not a lot of co-ops are built where prior entrants foot the full cost of new entrants. The real cost of extending fiber can be $10+ a foot overhead or $30+ underground, which is a hard sell to prior entrants as a freebie to toss out.
- AngryData 1y ago
  Meanwhile, me living in a rural area, didn't have internet besides 56k until 4g LTE existed, got co-op fiber direct to my home now for less than my wireless plan, and it is so successful they have expanded to everywhere around here and continuously growing. If an area could be wired with phones in the past, it can be wired for fiber now even cheaper and nearly all of rural areas were wired with electrical and phone lines before. Fiber is cheaper and lighter than copper lines, bucket trucks have never been more common, and there are very few existing utilities to contend with. This fiber is WAY cheaper than any satellite internet, works even when the weather is shitty, and doesn't require investments into proprietary gear.
- vel0city 1y ago
  Somehow we managed to bring telephone and electricity to rural areas but golly a fiber line is just too hard.
deleted 1y ago
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robalpha 1y ago

This makes zero sense. Fibre is not going to be economically viable in rural areas at all. If that's the only option, they won't have any internet at all. I also don't think we'll be moving to >10g plans anytime soon. Only a small portion of users have even close to 1g, and everyone else seems fine with it.

threeseed 1y ago
a) Hospitals and roads are not economically viable either. We do it because it serves the national good and by making people more productive it improves the economy as a whole. b) In Australia they are trialing 100g over the existing fibre network. c) Everyone was fine with dialup at one point as well.
- laurencei 1y ago
  I'm from Australia. You dont want to use us as an example of internet speeds or leading the world on anything in this space. Our internet infrastructure/speed etc is considered sub optimal by many. It is (slowly) getting better - but it has been years of lost oppoutunity.
  - threeseed 1y ago
    a) Australia is a very large, geographically diverse country that has committed to rolling out fibre in rural areas. It is an example that it can be done and you don’t need to rely on bandwidth limited satellites. b) Our internet infrastructure was sub-optimal but is being upgraded to full fibre to the door across the country. 1g is available to consumers today, 10g to businesses, 100g in testing. And it’s future proof.
- tastyfreeze 1y ago
  The interstate wasn't built for public good or trade. It was built for military. Public use for commerce is a byproduct.
ty6853 1y ago
A lot of rural areas have small-scale wireless ISPs at 10-100mbps. You just have to install a directional antenna on your roof. This doesn't work once you get really remote, nor does fiber. In any case none of them beat the experience of pulling an antenna out of a box and it pretty much just working.
- thallium205 1y ago
  These services are generally terrible compared to Starlink.
  - ty6853 1y ago
    No doubt, but given the cost and challenge of launching a satellite, I think your best bet if your rural enclave despises Starlink for whatever reason, right now your best bet is to run fiber to a single house and make a mini wireless ISP.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Maybe 15 years ago, but not for at least 10 years, and definitely 5 in most markets. I'd take fiber -> Taara -> Tarana 3.65 CBRS any day of the week over any LEO. Way faster, way lower latency, and way lower total cost to deploy. Also scales massively better.
    - kortilla 1y ago
      >Tarana 3.65 CBRS any day of the week over any LEO. Way faster, way lower latency To what? Starlink is getting you to a major exchange in two direct shots. When I was testing it in North Dakota I was getting lower latency to Google and Cloudflare through Starlink than I was through local fiber providers (likely due to their long circuitous route to Minneapolis).
      - esseph 1y ago
        Satellite can't handle the density required for one, but yes, network path is huge. Same reason a lot of HFT uses microwave vs fiber paths - fiber paths are following the ROW, the microwave paths are the physically shorter paths. LEO is a niche technology, but not and shouldn't be the default for tons of reasons.
lowmagnet 1y ago
Weird, I'm sitting here in a rural area and I have 1g fiber. You may have forgotten that cooperatives exist. It's a common error, since they mainly exist in exurb and rural areas. The cool thing is that since they often own the power right of way, they can run fiber on it without any change. The way coops work is that we're the owners, we vote for initiatives, etc. The local power company is now our region's #1 internet provider, hands down.
- bdamm 1y ago
  Which is great for you, but the vast majority of the world doesn't have such strong local organization consisting of members who can afford to pay for big ditch infrastructure.
  - threeseed 1y ago
    Vast majority of the world is having fibre being laid by governments. You need to vote and encourage others to make fast internet an election issue.
    - bdamm 1y ago
      I'm sorry, but in an environment where sovreignty is increasingly the dominant election issue, fiber doesn't rate. And even if every house has fiber, there are still many cases for mobile and robust Internet that can't be covered by cellular networks. The reality is that Starlink needs a competitor. And besides, satellite Internet from LEO satellites is a viable competitive option to fiber, based on infrastructure costs alone. It's all nice to convince slow moving bureaucracies to lay out fiber, but nobody wants to wait the five to ten years for that to happen, when you can subscribe today and get it within a week.
- ty6853 1y ago
  If you get 'free' fiber you are just punting the cost to other members. It cost me $15,000 to establish my co-op membership 1,000 ft it went to the next guy. Our bylaws require all members to pay 100% of the full unsubsidized cost of extension up front. This is fairly common. Not a lot of co-ops are built where prior entrants foot the full cost of new entrants. The real cost of extending fiber can be $10+ a foot overhead or $30+ underground, which is a hard sell to prior entrants as a freebie to toss out.
AngryData 1y ago
Meanwhile, me living in a rural area, didn't have internet besides 56k until 4g LTE existed, got co-op fiber direct to my home now for less than my wireless plan, and it is so successful they have expanded to everywhere around here and continuously growing. If an area could be wired with phones in the past, it can be wired for fiber now even cheaper and nearly all of rural areas were wired with electrical and phone lines before. Fiber is cheaper and lighter than copper lines, bucket trucks have never been more common, and there are very few existing utilities to contend with. This fiber is WAY cheaper than any satellite internet, works even when the weather is shitty, and doesn't require investments into proprietary gear.
vel0city 1y ago
Somehow we managed to bring telephone and electricity to rural areas but golly a fiber line is just too hard.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]