To paraphrase Sam Kinison...'It occured to me there woudnt be a rural broadband shortage if people would MOVE TO WHERE THE BROADBAND IS!!!'
Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
11–20 of 348 posts
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#12So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
I mean...yes and no. Starlink is valuable provided it's cheap: above a certain price point, the number of applications drops off and there's no guarantee the remainder will represent enough to actually fund it.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#13So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
If the area is that congested, it's probably in need of wired connections. All the customers suddenly leaving might push ISPs to upgrade their offerings in these areas rather than seeing the customers as a captive audience.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#14I have Starlink in an Airbnb in Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
It has been a blessing. It used to be that we had to deal with either cell carrier 4G wifi or wait until the phone company would finally extend service one block away from its current service area.
Even if you had access to either, both solutions were pretty bad. They were so unreliable that some coworking spaces had *three* providers: "broadband", 4G, and old-school satellite.
Starlink arrived last year in earnest and... really life changing. It even dropped the price some months ago. The internet _just works_.
Anything that bypasses local monopolies and government stasis will get my business with true joy.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#15Starlink was designed for, and has always been intended for remote people who literally have no other connection option. No cable, no 3G or 4G. If you can get those other options, Starlink is not a product designed for you. Go remote, and Starlink is an absolute game changer without even a remotely close equal.
It's gonna be interesting to see how they solve the financials. Targeting a rural/spare population via expensive satellite connections, that market has to be relatively limited. And with a limited amount of customers, how does it make business sense?
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#16So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
What determines capacity isn't transparent.
Also, yes it may get cheaper, but that’s not a given, if it doesn’t, what happens then?
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#17$65 billion going into rural broadband over the next 5 years. Not finalized, but my read is the feds want fiber. They are wrangling over maps right now.
https://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2021/11/fact-sheet...
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#18So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
The sentiment has been (up until this point?) that Starlink needs to lower costs for the customers, not increase them, as otherwise the customer base will remain as tiny as it currently is. Last I remember, the cost was ~500 USD + the monthly fee, I wonder how many in a rural environment are ready to pony that up for a measly connection. Maybe not difficult for live-on-a-farm-software-developers, but what about the rest of the spare population?
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#19So Starlink has been so effective and so popular that — utterly unsurprisingly — it is becoming more congested and they're raising rates. This is good news and not bad. It's a strong sign that the model fundamentally works and they will be able to fund continuous improvements to meet strong demand.
That's a strange interpretation of a new upstart utility pricing itself out of competition.
Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury
#20I think it probably should be more expensive to live off the beaten path.
The per-capita CO2 consumption of people who rely on cars for everything is far higher than for people who can walk places or take public transport, and those environmental costs aren't passed on effectively to consumers.