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You have it exactly backwards. It is far less complex and expensive and resource intensive to build Starlink than to run a new copper or fiber line with associa
by modeless 7mo ago
You have it exactly backwards. It is far less complex and expensive and resource intensive to build Starlink than to run a new copper or fiber line with associated telecom equipment on both sides to every rural residence in the US, let alone worldwide. Yes, despite the large cost of launching satellites. And it's especially good that we don't have to force everyone to subsidize inefficient monopoly utilities with our tax dollars to get everyone connected. Plus the benefit of mobility is enormous and shouldn't be ignored.
As solar and batteries become cheaper, eventually we can transition to most rural residences being entirely off the grid and self sufficient. This will also be cheaper and less resource intensive than maintaining the electric grid in those rural areas, let alone building it in the first place, and we can all stop paying hidden subsidies for those users.
- sunshinekitty 7mo agoThe HN groupthink is to hate on anything Elon adjacent, satellite internet included.
- razingeden 7mo agohopefully that include his business partners , airlines in this case.
- platevoltage 7mo agoIt's not groupthink to believe that the guy sucks and is a threat to humanity. He constantly fights against the type of programs that could have possibly given us satellite internet, the same way we all get to enjoy GPS.
- SV_BubbleTime 7mo ago> It's not groupthink to believe that the guy sucks and is a threat to humanity. Wow, that’s a wild misstatement; that is exactly groupthink nonsense. You (people) loved him before he went in for Trump.
- tdeck 7mo agoBefore he went in for Trump he was running a factory with an alarmingly high injury rate, where employees were regularly called the N-word, and union busting. People who liked him then weren't paying attention at all.
- odo1242 7mo agoBefore he went in for Trump he created an obviously fake, insanely expensive system that could never work in practice (Hyperloop) just to slow down California rail projects
- nxm 7mo agoCalifornia rail projects fail because it’s California
- tombert 7mo agoFor what it's worth, I hated him well before he had anything to do with Trump. Most concretely when he called the cave diver a pedo for not wanting to use his stupid submarine, but I remember thinking that the Hyperloop thing he was proposing was pretty stupid too. Oh, and when he lied about taking Tesla private so he could quickly boost the price of the stock. That sucks too. He's always sucked.
- heavyset_go 7mo ago> You (people) loved him before he went in for Trump. The inflection point for the public was Musk calling the cave diver, who helped orchestrate the rescue of a dozen trapped kids, a "pedo guy" and then doubling down on it, again, twice in front of his audience of millions. The inflection point for anyone in tech with two eyes and a brain was Musk insisting his companies produce products that do more than they are, still to this day, capable of. First was around 2018, the latter was ~2016, although anyone who was familiar with machine learning knew models were not as capable as Musk was insisting they were, and that the hyperloop was a scam.
- robrain 7mo agoAnd yet this discussion seems to be driven by a load of TSLA maximalists. Elon is a busted flush. He promises the world, delivers somewhat less, somewhat late, if at all. And then layers it with deeply unpleasant politics. Not groupthink, a sane reaction. Belated, but sane.
- andrewharvey 7mo agothis. Except it's no longer only in rural areas, grid connected utilities are now costing more than being off grid in the cities too. Starlink residential 100 Mbps is cheaper ($69/mo AUD) (ignoring hardware and setup costs) than 50 Mbps fixed line internet ($80/mo AUD). Depending on location, home solar + batteries will usually work out cheaper than being on the grid within the battery warranty period too.
- raw_anon_1111 7mo agoWhere are you? In the suburbs of Atlanta I paid $80 for AT&T Fiber 1Gbps u/d.
- gnabgib 7mo agoIf they're paying Australian Dollars.. probably not Atlanta
- UltraSane 7mo agoMan, I pay $50USD/month for 1Gbps up down in Wisconsin.
- sam1r 7mo agoWicked, I wonder what the most juiced option would cost amongst your upgrade options. “When in Wisconsin.”
- Affric 7mo agoGrid prices are going to start coming down in some of the most expensive parts of Australia due to SAPS, home generation and storage, and microgrids. I wouldn’t rule out the grid just yet.
- markdown 7mo agoIf you find Starlink cheap they just haven't gotten around to the bait and switch in your locality. It'll come.
- rob74 7mo ago
- jojobas 7mo agoStarlink recently hit 10k satellites. I'd hazard a guess that's not anywhere near enough getting everyone in the US, let alone worldwide, online.
- theParadox42 7mo agoWhile having more satellites sure does help serve more people, there’s a second issue which arises when trying to serve high density areas, where you run into bandwidth limitations. The solution there is not more satellites but either bigger satellites (which can make smaller beams) or more FCC allowance on the spectrum.
- modeless 7mo agoNot everyone. But it's enough for rural areas, which are the most expensive and least practical to serve with wires.
- 310260 7mo agoAs far as electric goes, that's a nice thought but the reality is prices will not go down in such a scenario. I'd rather my bill go to subsidizing rural areas than to pure profit. Nevermind there are benefits helpful to rural areas that grid service can provide versus solar+battery.
- sandworm101 7mo agoMaybe today, but internet over radio cannot defeat physics. There is only so much bandwidth, so much space in the RF spectrum for data. But landline internet is effectively limitless. You can always lay a second, or twentieth, fiber run. A 10cm bundle of fibers can carry more bandwidth than the entire starlink network many times over, with much lower running costs. The most effective in rural areas is generally a combination. Fiber to a central location and wifi radio out to customers. I am monitoring a property on the west coast connected via such a setup. The last relay is actually solar powered atop an island.
- vablings 7mo agoYou can beat the physics here though. There are several techniques in signal processing and beam forming that can be used to make insane high-speed transmissions, the days of geostationary broadcast for all radio traffic are over when it comes to advanced radio communication. Radio technology is truly the closes thing to black magic. I wish there were more places to learn and read outside of an EE degree
- lnxg33k1 7mo ago[flagged]
- angoragoats 7mo agoI do wonder about what happens when Starlink grows its customer base a lot bigger like many of you are predicting here, since Elon Fucking Musk, the king of over-promising and under-delivering, is at the helm. We might end up yearning for the days of the (slightly more) regulated utilities instead.
- pachouli-please 7mo agoIdeally the other couple low orbit satellite based ISPs will get to a decent place by the time of irrecoverable enshittification.
- angoragoats 7mo agoOh good, so we’ll be in the same place as we are today with a duopoly or similar, where every option sucks. Sounds lovely.
- modo_mario 7mo agoIsn't this even more of a monopoly utility? In theory you could have multiple providers but it just doesn't happen much due to market dynamics and incentives. In this case if I understood it well there's a limit to the amount of satellites we can send into space at those heights and that space is essentially privatized for free uncontested and ESA and China's CNSA already complained about near collision events. So not only do you get the same market dynamics but practical limitations too and an externalization of costs.
- buckle8017 7mo agoESA and CNSA were always going to complain, real problems or not.
- modo_mario 7mo agoWhy would that be? Having to pull tricks to dodge satellites seems like a valid one.
- tmerc 7mo ago> And it's especially good that we don't have to force everyone to subsidize inefficient monopoly utilities with our tax dollars to get everyone connected. Again*. In some ways we did subsidize the initial public phone network that put ma bell in the position to take over as an Internet backbone as "the Internet" became a thing. In some ways we're subsidizing starlink like direct grants of taxpayer sourced funding for rural broadband expansion and contracts that subsidize the spacex launches. I do wonder sometimes if it's actually cheaper to connect a rural farm to the Internet by blasting a satellite into space vs setting up some kind of terrestrial radio based network like lora or microwave. That's not my knowledge area so maybe there are real, unsolvable issues that prevent terrestrial radio as a solution, but I have to assume blasting rockets into orbit is expensive both short term and long term, especially considering space trash.
- vablings 7mo agoFor just ONE Starlink v3 it weighs around 2000kg and right now falcon heavy has an estimated cost per kg of $1,500 dollars so $3,000,000 per unit to orbit and let's say around $1,000,000 for the v3 itself. According to SpaceX each satellite can support 60 Tbsp downlink (I highly doubt this just purely based on the compute required) but assuming that is true that's 60,000 Gbps or 60,000 customers at 1 Gbps. The biggest issue here is that each satellite only lasts for approx. 7 years in LEO before its deorbited vs a fiber link last basically forever
- olelele 7mo agoThe externalities need to be weighed into the cost too no? How much global warming and environmental destruction is caused by launching rockets? A grid is built once and can be maintained for a very long time at a much smaller operating cost. Space stuff is expensive...