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Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

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Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#61
post #28
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

It's hard to not see fibre internet as a waste of money right now given 4G/5G costs coming down dramatically. For me personally, 4G is extremely fast and cheap while being, importantly, low-latency. Even gaming and other latency sensitive applications are possible on 4G/5G. Why not just roll out 5G networks? Eventually, 5G will outperform fibre on a cost and speed basis (for a long time my FTTH home internet was slow…

I live in rural Utah. Population of our entire county (45 minute radius), is 50k.

For $60/month I get 1 GB down, and about 100MB UP. I have google fi, and yesterday I could barely get reddit gifs to load (it was slow for some reason)... usually it's better, but my FIBER IS WAY BETTER.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#62
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least the US has the excuse of being huge, which does make it much harder to provide good coverage. Why does that excuse America? The continent of Europe is also huge. It isn’t like this stuff is installed by one solitary overworked technician going house-to-house, big countries (and regions) can employ more people to do more work, and can raise more money from more customers.

The US has around 15% of the population density of Germany. It's much easier to provide broadband to larger cities than to rural areas.

Sure, but US has higher urbanisation rate. There's just no excuse not to link up your urban areas.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#63
post #40
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

"[...]a lot of parts in highly developed countries like [...] Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection." Huh? Where do you get that from? "A lot of parts", even? I've lived in one of the most rural areas with basically only villages and small towns (<10000 pop) around. When I lived in my village of 600, we got broadband access in 2005.

You might have different definitions of broadband.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30-40ms round trip generally. It's Starlink's biggest advantage vs. existing satellites, along with greater capacity per user due to the huge number of satellites, so they don't need draconian data caps.

They'll need some sort of congestion control in urban areas. They might just refuse to sell into urban areas, or use fair queuing, but urban users are going to be limited or capped one way or another.

I think Starlink has always marketed itself as a service provider for remote and hard to service areas. I'm not sure why people here keep thinking they will provide service to urban areas.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#66
post #34
post #23

What blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.

There is active work and lots of money spent by large ISPs and telecoms to prevent deployment of additional networks, and to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for new entrants to start up. It really should be a national shame, how much the US has permitted AT&T and Verizon and Comcast and Time Warner et al to derail the correct functioning of a market so insanely critical to the growth of prosperity (bot…

A lot of municipalities in the US have high pole attachment fees, or even worse, sell a monopoly on pole attachment to telecoms.

13 states cap pole attachment fees at cost or at a fixed number. [1] I'd be interested to see this pass in Pennsylvania.

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/ad-hoc-commitee-surv...]

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#68
post #63
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[...]a lot of parts in highly developed countries like [...] Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection." Huh? Where do you get that from? "A lot of parts", even? I've lived in one of the most rural areas with basically only villages and small towns (<10000 pop) around. When I lived in my village of 600, we got broadband access in 2005.

You might have different definitions of broadband.

That's not how it works though. The International Telecommunication Union's definition is relevant here. For instance, in 2010, it was: "[...]downstream speeds equal to, or greater than, 256 kbit/s...".[1]

There was also talk about increasing it to 2 Mbit/s some years ago.[2]

Not that that change would make a difference if you look at broadband accessibility for Germany here.[3]

Point is: What was written was a load of bollocks. There were no facts to back up the statement but people lapped it up anyway.

[1] https://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/material/TelecomICT_Indicators...

[2] https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/committees/scv/Documents/T17-SC...

[3] https://www.bmvi.de/DE/Themen/Digitales/Breitbandausbau/Brei...

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll need some sort of congestion control in urban areas. They might just refuse to sell into urban areas, or use fair queuing, but urban users are going to be limited or capped one way or another.

I think Starlink has always marketed itself as a service provider for remote and hard to service areas. I'm not sure why people here keep thinking they will provide service to urban areas.

Sometimes you have not-great connection even deep in the city. I’m in a city touching Paris right now, 60k persons on a 1.5 by 1.5km square, one of the densest part of France.

Well I have a shit ADSL (not VDSL !) connection, despite everyone else in the street having FTTH, because the HOA of my building won’t bother…

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