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Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

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Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#141

Post by lstamour »

mschuster91 wrote: post #134
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

> All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. Partially. The thing is, the US is so unbelievably huge that it is economically infeasible to serve extremely rural areas with high-speed wired (i.e. fiber, DSL) or wireless (microwave, 4G/5G phone) internet, even with massive government subsidies - and that ap…

Yes, the US is huge, but if an area can get power, we should be able to rollout fibre along the same routes. It just takes a bit of work.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#142

Post by Nursie »

killingtime74 wrote: post #130
Nursie wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australian resident here - Like the other poster I agree it's a band-aid. I agree it's not the world's best connection (there is considerable latency sometimes). I agree I shouldn't have to be paying Elon Musk 140 bucks a months to get a decent connection but ... I am, because that's all I can get here. We're just outside Perth, less than a k from a new(ish) suburb development and our only NBN option is "Fixed Wirele…

I moved from Sydney to Auckland and now can get up to 7700Mbps. 1000Mbps costs 60 something AUD. One of my colleagues in Melbourne got the fiber upgrade (under 10k) and claimed the install on his tax so there's that to reduce it a bit.

I moved to Aus from the UK about two years back. In Southampton I was getting 1000/40 for the equivalent of 100AUD a month, but a new fibre company had just started to offer 900/900 for 35AUD.

It’s been a bit of an eye-opener moving back here! I left at the end of the Gillard government, when the future of the Australian internet connection was bright, and came back wondering what had gone wrong!

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#143

Post by whermans »

lazide wrote: post #66
anaganisk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you can't just launch satellites into orbit randomly without govt blessing it or stream data to ground stations legally (Eg: India doesn't like satellite phones), at a certain point Starlink could itself be the monopoly you dread.

Well, you CAN do all of those things - until a gov’t comes knocking anyway. Paperwork isn’t required to launch a rocket, just to not get arrested later when they try to find who did it.

I get what you're trying to say, but the paperwork isn't just to not get arrested. It's also to make sure your rocket doesn't flatten a building when it comes down uncontrolled, doesn't hit an airplane on the way up, doesn't crash into any other spacecraft in orbit, and doesn't turn into yet another piece of untracked space debris cluttering Earth orbit.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#144

Post by robertlagrant »

tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

> All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service.

Lots of core utilities aren't rolled out everywhere. You might need a different water source or use a septic tank rather than roll out central services everywhere, because it's so expensive per capita. Internet from a satellite seems a valid equivalent to that.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#145

Post by iggldiggl »

mschuster91 wrote: post #134
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

> All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. Partially. The thing is, the US is so unbelievably huge that it is economically infeasible to serve extremely rural areas with high-speed wired (i.e. fiber, DSL) or wireless (microwave, 4G/5G phone) internet, even with massive government subsidies - and that ap…

> other large-area countries such as Germany or Australia as well

Putting Germany in the same category as Australia or the US seems a bit weird when the former two have truly continental dimensions whereas Germany is a bit smaller than California, although there's an interesting twist: Going by population-weighted density, Australia definitively comes out ahead and even the US is somewhat denser than Germany in that regard.

Though on the other hand the United Kingdom is much denser population-weighted-wise than all three of them, and yet from what I've gathered it's no perfect shining example of highspeed broadband rollout either…

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#146

Post by runsonrum »

teekert wrote: post #118
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

Meanwhile here I am in the Netherlands (semi-rural I'd say), having two fiber modems installed because we have 2 competing fiber networks here. At least one of them goes to 2500/2500 for about 75 eur a month. Probably it'll go much higher in the future.

cries a little

I too am in Australia

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#147

Post by sumedh »

me551ah wrote: post #132
tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

Meanwhile in India, I am paying ~50$ a month for 1 Gbps fiber connection. On speedtest and fast.com, I easily average about 800+ Mbps download speeds on ethernet.

India towns/villages dont have reliable electricity. So not sure what is the point of bringing up India.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#148

Post by noirscape »

tedk-42 wrote: post #22

All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service. I say this as an Australian who watched one government plan a national rollout of fibre while another came in justifying most people don't need a connection better than 25/5 (based on usage data at the time) and went ahead and gutted the project. We're now trying…

Starlink is also having a bad side-effect in other areas - apparently the frequencies on which it communicates muck up weather prediction technology[0]. I'm sure it works great if you're rural/have literally no other means but if you have the infrastructure for it, don't use Starlink.

[0]: https://nltimes.nl/2023/01/27/dutch-meteorologists-say-musks...

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#149

Post by capableweb »

Zigurd wrote: post #25
capableweb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take a look at 5G extended range FWA. > This innovation extends mmWave coverage from a few hundred meters to more than 7km That doesn't seem very impressive... That doesn't even come close to what various long-range WiFi connections have been able to do.

5G extended range FWA piggybacks off 5G infrastructure. You can do similar things with WiFi or proprietary mmWave FWA, but it requires purpose-built infrastructure.

But how much 5G infrastructure is there in rural areas? Around my parts, not a lot. So the piggieback argument feels less relevant here.

Re: Starlink internet is going from rural savior to unreliable luxury

#150

Post by yazaddaruvala »

n8henrie wrote: post #57
LightHugger wrote: post #41

It went up only 10$ per month in congested areas, and went down by 20$ in uncongested areas. It's still 90$ if you are rural. They are trying to encourage against people using the service in urban congested areas. Starlink, at least right now, is not ideal for urban situations, that's not very surprising, maybe with newer gen sats capacity will raise, but if not, it's not an "unreliable luxury", it's still perfect fo…

$90 if you're rural?! I'm now going to be paying $120. I live in a small town on the Navajo reservation. We don't have postal service, many here don't even have running water or electricity. The alternative ISP is 6 mbps max. Any idea how I apply for this rural pricing?

Do you know if the issue of congestion is bandwidth, or if its bound by satellite to ground connections?

If its the latter, have you tried finding a neighbor or two and paying $60 each or $40 each?

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