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Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

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Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#201

Post by derektank »

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…

>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

Over three quarters of all residential land in Seattle is zoned single family and the population density of the city is less than a third that of NYC. The geography is not the hard constraint in this city.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#202

Post by pibaker »

jjmarr wrote: post #179
iknowstuff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the United States can choose to live in very rural and sparsely populated areas, far more remote than most OECD countries. It’s not clear to me that we should necessarily massively subsidize their choice to live in the sticks these days. Starlink and 5G are great for this, as is solar energy and batteries. We already subsidize sprawl’s expensive-per-person infrastructure with tax revenue from dense cities.…

Countries subsidize rural living because it enforces their control over the frontier. The United States is difficult to invade because of the oceans surrounding it and the many people with guns in the interior that'll take shots at armies. If you put everyone in a few cities on the coast, the USA becomes easier to invade.

No country capable of landing a single troop on the lower 48 is scared of undisciplined men with AR-15s.

In fact I am not sure if any country can get a troop transport near the US coast without being nuked to the ground first.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#204

Post by BurningFrog »

scottyah wrote: post #171
moduspol wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think we'll look back on this in 10-20 years and conclude that wireless transmission was always going to make more sense than running millions of miles of wires. Especially so for rural access.

Wired will definitely be the rich, elite way to go.

Satellite internet can get several orders of magnitudes more capacity.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#205

Post by shagie »

devin wrote: post #146
TulliusCicero wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people will be really mad about this comment, but it's absolutely correct. Broadly speaking, very rural living is generally a lifestyle choice. Yes, not everyone can afford to live in big cities, but there are typically small towns in the general vicinity of rural areas that are quite affordable. Of course, there are exceptions where you truly need the space, like if you're a farmer, but that's not most people i…

Buddy, many of the people who are being served by Starlink are by no means "very" rural at all. If you get into "lives in a shack in the mountains", then sure I agree, but a HUGE number of people are barely outside of an immediate service area and have no access for one dumb reason or another. This is a demonstration of the failure of our country to do simple, pragmatic things that would benefit our citizens' lives.…

My parents have Starlink. They live in an area surrounded by dairy farms. It's half a mile between mailboxes. The nearest town is 7 miles away (though only 3 as the crow flies - lots of hills between here and there).

None of the neighbors have cable TV. You've got to either go into town or t'wards the highway 7 miles the other direction).

Three years ago, the utility ran natural gas that far out. Prior to that, it was propane tanks (for the past 50 years) for heat in the winter.

The state capital is 30 miles away... so its not that far away from civilization (this isn't Montana or the north woods of the upper midwest).

When nano-cells came out for cellphones my father and I were the first in line at the store (that was 2010 if I recall correctly). It let the house be able to use a cell phone in the yard - before that it was the landline (and it was DSL for the nano-cell backhaul).

In 2020 when school was remote, their grandkids were there. Prior to Starlink my father got a Firewalla (for network load balancing) and got a second DSL link (it was barely qualifying as high speed internet) so that it could support two zoom calls simultaneously (don't stream music or watch YouTube while the kids are on Zoom School).

5G cell coverage sounds great... but those hills I mentioned earlier? You can get cell phone coverage at the house without the nano-cell... if you get a ladder out and climb up to the top of the roof.

So yes, to support the person I'm replying to - there are a lot of people who are 30 minutes outside of a city of appreciable size and are without wired high speed internet.

In https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/location-summary/fixed?version=... the area that they live in has 0% for 100 Mbps for the majority of the northwest part of the county.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#206

Post by galleywest200 »

iknowstuff wrote: post #127
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…

People in the United States can choose to live in very rural and sparsely populated areas, far more remote than most OECD countries. It’s not clear to me that we should necessarily massively subsidize their choice to live in the sticks these days. Starlink and 5G are great for this, as is solar energy and batteries. We already subsidize sprawl’s expensive-per-person infrastructure with tax revenue from dense cities.…

Moving is incredibly expensive. First+Last month rent up-front, plus a deposit equal to one month rent up-front. That could total around $10,000 up-front costs if you are targeting a major city.

Conversely, having quality utilities in smaller communities could incentivize the building up of those areas and they would become less rural.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#207

Post by rconti »

parineum wrote: post #130
rconti wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't justify the cost when they can just rip you off, charging the same amount for a fraction of the bandwidth.. unless and until there's competition. Funny how quickly my internet options went from expensive cable internet, to 1 gig symmetric fiber for $90, to 10 gig symmetric fiber for $50. And now, magically, Xfinity has 1Gbps+ service for $50 as well.

> It doesn't justify the cost when they can just rip you off, charging the same amount for a fraction of the bandwidth... You can start a company right now and lay fiber in these places and start your own telecom. You probably don't have the money for that but, if you put together a solid business plan, a bank would give you a loan. You may not have the experience or expertise to do that, but there are plenty of peop…

Profitable vs unprofitable is not black and white. No doubt there are some places where it's simply not profitable to run the fiber today.

However, there are a TON of places where the business strategy you outline is a great idea, and would be profitable.

..... until the incumbents lower their outrageous prices in the face of the competition, and bam, now your business model is no longer profitable.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#208

Post by Tempest1981 »

nradov wrote: post #196
devin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Savvy executives can also keep their income near 0 by borrowing against their stock holdings.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#209

Post by davnicwil »

whalesalad wrote: post #117
gadders wrote: post #21

I wish my bloody commuter train into London had Starlink. Even when the onboard wifi works you are limited to 100mb of traffic. I get a better 5g signal on the Jubilee line than I do on an overground train.

Just get a good 5G plan? On the ground in a busy metropolis like London, I can't imagine why or how you would need to consider using satellite communication for connectivity. Then again the last time I was in London the cellular service was by and large pretty bad.

yeah, 5g doesn't work on trains very well once just a little bit out of zone 2/3. Actually to be honest any connectivity at all is patchy.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#210

Post by lxgr »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #102
lxgr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their ungodly expensive product Do you have any idea how much other satellite operators charge per megabyte or Mbit/s?

Their competitors isn’t other satellite in most cases. It’s fiber, 5G and so on.

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