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Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

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Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#191

Post by devin »

sysguest wrote: post #173
TulliusCicero wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, private companies want to make money by getting customers. Obviously there can be edge cases, but if there's profit to be made by hooking people up, they'll want to do it, and if private companies don't want to get more customers, you have to ask yourself some hard questions about why. I think we both know what's usually happening: people in an area who, as a whole, are rural enough and poor enoug…

this people here don't understand how large USA is -- connecting every corner with copper/fiber, with all the intermediary networking devices means tax money...

Yes, it does mean tax money. Stop corporate welfare and bump the corporate tax rate back to a reasonable value.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#192

Post by deathanatos »

fdghrtbrt wrote: post #70
throwaway132448 wrote: post #66

No internet on flights is one of my favourite features.

Right. I don't know what I find more disturbing: that people are this addicted, or that they don't care. Either way, I'm with you.

… or maybe I have 6 hours to kill?

Would you look at someone reading a book and be like "it's so disturbing that people are this addicted"? Is something Internet connected really that different?

(That said these days I'm thrilled if there is power on a flight.)

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#193

Post by nradov »

nativeit wrote: post #177
nradov wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture is only a secondary reason why many parts of the USA still lack cheap, reliable broadband Internet access. It turns out that running fiber everywhere is expensive, and in some areas the potential customer base doesn't justify the cost.

We do a lot of things that require subsidizing, very much including the things commonly found in/around a lot of the rural farms where these services would target. If broadband internet access is a fundamental need for contemporary communication--much like the postal service, telegraph, and telephones were--then historically we do what's necessary to provide them.

Sure, subsidies are potentially an option to increase broadband availability. But that's not really a regulatory capture issue.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#194

Post by hombre_fatal »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #184
performative wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other than introducing public policy to encourage building more housing, i assume?

The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises. Having watched the WA state legislature go through several years of attempts to fix housing by throwing random policy ideas into the void, I'm not convinced any of it matters nearly as much as a) more money in the state housing trust to help people with down pay…

You offer cities with aggressive anti-development regulations, like max height restrictions, and then suggest things would be the same if they instead had endless high-rises?

Sounds like you've found an infinite-value hack: let developers build infinite housing yet prices stay the same.

How many of those "random policy ideas into the void" were to lift regulations to allow people to build housing? Which sounds a hell of a lot simpler than figuring out how to make everyone wealthier without proportional increases in market prices.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#195

Post by devin »

GMoromisato wrote: post #187
devin wrote: post #126

I've written it elsewhere, but: it is such a shame that the United States saw fit to run electricity _everywhere_, no matter how rural your location, but instead of do the same for rural internet we had to wait for... a private company to launch a global network of satellites. Yes, this post is about internet access while traveling 500mph, which is a different problem, but it is so messed up that people fall over the…

I don't think the math works. There are 23 million rural homes in the US and about 3 million miles of rural public roads. Let's say you wired just the public rural roads (ignore going from the road to the house). It costs $30,000 per mile to put up aerial wiring. $60,000 per mile underground. So we're already at $90 billion for wired poles and $180 billion for underground. And that's just for the wires--we're not inc…

I appreciate you actually taking a moment to think through the cost, but I think we could start with some pragmatism and look to run wires to people who are within a reasonable range of existing systems, of which there are many.

Clearly not every public road needs wiring. Then, consider that you could run wired connections to wireless access points to increase high speed wireless coverage. 1 wire to light up dozens of homes in areas which currently have no service beyond DSL.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#196

Post by nradov »

devin wrote: post #191
sysguest wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this people here don't understand how large USA is -- connecting every corner with copper/fiber, with all the intermediary networking devices means tax money...

Yes, it does mean tax money. Stop corporate welfare and bump the corporate tax rate back to a reasonable value.

A better option would be to eliminate corporate income tax entirely, and raise taxes on the highest income employees and investors to make the change revenue neutral. Corporations waste a lot of resources on financial engineering to minimize tax liability, and that's a pure deadweight loss for the economy as a whole.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#197

Post by modeless »

devin wrote: post #126

I've written it elsewhere, but: it is such a shame that the United States saw fit to run electricity _everywhere_, no matter how rural your location, but instead of do the same for rural internet we had to wait for... a private company to launch a global network of satellites. Yes, this post is about internet access while traveling 500mph, which is a different problem, but it is so messed up that people fall over the…

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.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#198

Post by tayo42 »

htx80nerd wrote: post #56
nativeit wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.

>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet. even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Als…

You couldn't get cable internet in Houston?

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#199

Post by nradov »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #184
performative wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other than introducing public policy to encourage building more housing, i assume?

The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises. Having watched the WA state legislature go through several years of attempts to fix housing by throwing random policy ideas into the void, I'm not convinced any of it matters nearly as much as a) more money in the state housing trust to help people with down pay…

Subsidizing down payments doesn't do anything to improve housing availability or affordability in the long run. It just artificially inflates real estate values and acts as a wealth transfer from taxpayers to property owners.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#200

Post by strbean »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #188
strbean wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, we could zone areas to encourage people to live in towns where it's feasible for both corporations and the government to provide infrastructure and services at a reasonable cost. This is assuming there isn't a good reason why we might want some percentage of the population to be rural. To have farms and ranches, for example.

Sure, if we restrict the subsidy to farmers and others where we need them to live in rural areas, that's fine.

But not the educators teaching the farmer's kids, or the doctors and nurses treating their wounds? What about the clerks at the grocery store serving those farmers? The liquor store?

Trying to create an elaborate regulatory regime to decide who is justified to live in a rural area is absurd and a waste of money. Especially considering that most people living in rural areas are either employed in a necessary industry that needs to be rural, or work in professional or service industries either directly supporting said rural industry (e.g. tractor repair) or indirectly supporting it's workforce.

Furthermore, the marginal cost of providing broadband to all those "slightly-less-necessarily-rural" people is minuscule. Skipping every other house doesn't save you much when the majority of the cost is building infra to get broadband to the town/road in the first place.

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