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Also, receiving internet service requires some kind of paid monthly plan. The cheapest plans have very low data caps. Streaming audio over them is much less p

by jandrese 11mo ago

Also, receiving internet service requires some kind of paid monthly plan. The cheapest plans have very low data caps. Streaming audio over them is much less practical for the end users than having a simple radio receiver. Radio waves also propagate further than cell broadcasts.

esseph 11mo ago
What ISP still has data caps that isn't a LTE carrier?
- throwaway94275 11mo ago
  Comcast.
  - eurleif 11mo ago
    Not on new plans as of earlier this year: https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcasts-new-plans-dump-the-data-caps https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcasts-new-plans-dump-the-data-... But Cox still has data caps.
- jandrese 11mo ago
  When you're talking about rural Internet, especially in the developing world, it is cell coverage. Wired infrastructure is expensive and when the population density is low it's unaffordable.
xp84 11mo ago
The OP here, in their defense, wasn't talking about just operating an internet radio to replace public broadcasting and telling listeners to just get a data planpay for Internet and go online to listen. They were suggesting TCP/IP backhaul to get the signals to the remote radio stations, and rebroadcasting on the radio. Presumably this would be feasible for most populated areas, but broadband availability is so crap outside of urban/suburban, I bet half of those really remote stations are already getting their Internet over Starlink or Hughesnet. Now, I think there are plenty of reasons that the satellites (which are already in the sky, presumably) are probably more robust in the face of emergencies than the entire Internet infrastructure. If I may steelman a good counterargument: "The Internet itself is supposed to be resilient to nuclear war!" True, but that doesn't mean outages of critical pinch points like AWS, Azure and Cloudflare don't constantly affect even services like GitHub that have huge budgets. A fully robust Internet solution with a ton of high-uptime redundancy in many POPs nationwide would likely cost more than maintaining the satellite systems.

esseph 11mo ago

What ISP still has data caps that isn't a LTE carrier?

throwaway94275 11mo ago
Comcast.
- eurleif 11mo ago
  Not on new plans as of earlier this year: https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcasts-new-plans-dump-the-data-caps https://www.pcmag.com/news/comcasts-new-plans-dump-the-data-... But Cox still has data caps.
jandrese 11mo ago
When you're talking about rural Internet, especially in the developing world, it is cell coverage. Wired infrastructure is expensive and when the population density is low it's unaffordable.

xp84 11mo ago

The OP here, in their defense, wasn't talking about just operating an internet radio to replace public broadcasting and telling listeners to just get a data planpay for Internet and go online to listen. They were suggesting TCP/IP backhaul to get the signals to the remote radio stations, and rebroadcasting on the radio. Presumably this would be feasible for most populated areas, but broadband availability is so crap outside of urban/suburban, I bet half of those really remote stations are already getting their Internet over Starlink or Hughesnet. Now, I think there are plenty of reasons that the satellites (which are already in the sky, presumably) are probably more robust in the face of emergencies than the entire Internet infrastructure. If I may steelman a good counterargument: "The Internet itself is supposed to be resilient to nuclear war!" True, but that doesn't mean outages of critical pinch points like AWS, Azure and Cloudflare don't constantly affect even services like GitHub that have huge budgets. A fully robust Internet solution with a ton of high-uptime redundancy in many POPs nationwide would likely cost more than maintaining the satellite systems.