Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

futurism.com

71–80 of 94 posts

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway has overall low population density, and seems to do fine.

148,729 mi² vs 3.797 million mi²

With corresponding higher amount of people to do the cabling. (Which is still irrelevant, nobody complains about the lack of gigabit ISPs in the Rockies or the Wyoming countryside, they complain that you can't get it in coastal or midwestern suburbia where the vast majority of Americans live.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden has the same regulation but we got widespread fiber anyway

> the same regulation As in, you compared the regulated prices?

It's been a while since I lived in Sweden but I didn't know anyone with fiber from the incumbent, there were lots and lots of national and local competitors (power companies, municipal networks, other telcos, internet startups, local co-ops)

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#73
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.

Here's an anecdotal experience: 1. I live in the UK, in a town 25 minutes by train from central London. The best broadband I can get is ~45Mb, and the best I've seen in the rest of the town is ~120Mb, provided by Virgin Broadband (which, for one reason or another, can't provide that service at my home). 2. I'm currently visiting my family in Croatia, and they've recently got a fibre connection; I just measured 527Mb…

Tends to vary by building in London. Gigabit fiber is available in a decent portion of them. (Though tends to be more in the 700-800 range in practice)

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#74
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.

> highly developed countries like the US or Germany In Germany this is due to regulation. Deutsche Telekom has no incentive to lay cables, as they will have to share the infrastructure with competitors at a price that makes doing so unattractive.

>Deutsche Telekom has no incentive to lay cables, as they will have to share the infrastructure with competitors at a price that makes doing so unattractive.

Seems like a pretty severe failure of government if they actively disincentivised investment into fiber tech...

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#75
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> highly developed countries like the US or Germany In Germany this is due to regulation. Deutsche Telekom has no incentive to lay cables, as they will have to share the infrastructure with competitors at a price that makes doing so unattractive.

>Deutsche Telekom has no incentive to lay cables, as they will have to share the infrastructure with competitors at a price that makes doing so unattractive. Seems like a pretty severe failure of government if they actively disincentivised investment into fiber tech...

That is what governments do, make infrastructure more expensive to build.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#76
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…

> There is active work and lots of money spent by large ISPs and telecoms to prevent deployment of additional networks

You mean lobbying by telcos to make permitting and other things expensive in municipalities and counties.

> This is what happens when you let the state decide who is allowed to offer certain types of services

Yes. Absolutely this.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#77

I'm amazed that the latency appears so low. I used satellite broadband for years here in very rural England, latency was more like 1000ms!

If you take the US to Europe round-trip, the latency is even faster then the cable bound connection, because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber.

> because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber

Pretty sure the speed of light is a constant... You may be confusing the latency of the network framers/etc.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#78
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take the US to Europe round-trip, the latency is even faster then the cable bound connection, because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber.

> because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber Pretty sure the speed of light is a constant... You may be confusing the latency of the network framers/etc.

So, you are wrong. The speed of light is not constant. :) The speed of light depends on the medium, where the reference (or max speed) is the speed of light in vacuum. The speed of light in a diamond is only half of the speed in vacuum for example! This is why the latency of the low orbit satellites is lower then the cable bound connection.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber Pretty sure the speed of light is a constant... You may be confusing the latency of the network framers/etc.

So, you are wrong. The speed of light is not constant. :) The speed of light depends on the medium, where the reference (or max speed) is the speed of light in vacuum. The speed of light in a diamond is only half of the speed in vacuum for example! This is why the latency of the low orbit satellites is lower then the cable bound connection.

IANAS but from what I understand, the speed is constant, but it appears to travel more slowly due to the atoms found along the way, which absorb and reemit the photon.

In the case of the fibers, the light just bounces on the walls of the tube, effectively lengthening the distance it has to travel.

It's like saying that I did not drive a 50 mph simply because I took a longer detour: I still drove 50 mph, but I did not go in a straight line.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take the US to Europe round-trip, the latency is even faster then the cable bound connection, because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber.

> because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber Pretty sure the speed of light is a constant... You may be confusing the latency of the network framers/etc.

The index of refraction of materials is caused by differences of the speed of light in those materials. However, according to the theory of relativity, the speed of light in a _vacuum_ is constant in all reference frames.

There is a neat web page where you can see the speed of light in different materials:

https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/speedoflight/index.....

Post reply on HN