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Africans Are Turning to Starlink

economist.com

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Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#161

Post by Veserv »

from_memory wrote: post #132
zuzululu wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man I am happy to hear that. in Europe there is still widespread cynicism and vitrol against anything Elon Musk especially Starlink. I think that many people appreciate Starlink in rural parts but your story is one of many that are just amazing

I get that he is an ignoble dude, and I dislike him as much as anyone, but why do we judge an entire company by the largest shareholder's personal scruples? There are likely thousands of hardworking people making that ship sail, and it's really short sighted to just write them all off because he is a dumbass. We are SO ready to judge but so unwilling to THINK. Why?

Why do we judge an organization by their leader and head executive who has complete control over direction and operations? Who individually has a controlling interest which can and has been used to elect himself the leader? Who regularly, openly, and publicly talks about how he needs to have control over the operation of the organization to be willing to run it?

You would be hard pressed to find a person who is more responsible or more representative of their organization than that.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#163

Post by toast0 »

fluoridation wrote: post #95
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you happen to live within line of site of a cell tower buying a MIMO antenna and beaming internet off of a data plan is also somewhat viable, but Starlink is probably better on bandwidth and packet loss

I wonder about the economics, though. Intuitively it doesn't seem like it can be more efficient to launch constellations of satellites than run kilometers of cables, even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop? So around two orders of magnitude cheaper than a satellite? Something isn't adding up for me.

> even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop?

I don't know if we're still talking Africa or in general, but $10k doesn't get you anywhere near 20 km around me. I got municipal fiber recently, and our agency passes through the costs. On a 7 drop project of about 1 mile, aerial on existing poles, my share was $5k; plus I had to pay my own way to get conduit installed from the pole to my house, that was nearly $7k. Underground utilities are expensive!

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#164

Post by questiona »

rapind wrote: post #150
dmix wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ontario ended a $100M contract with Starlink to help connect 15k rural and first nations households because Elon was connected with the US administration when tariffs were announced https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/starlink-deal-void-on... AFAIK there has been no replacement contract since it was killed in 2025

Elon has total control of Starlink and he’s currently enjoying his bond villain phase. I am very happy my tax dollars are not going into his pockets. It’s not a crusade. You send him your money if you want. It’s none of my business. Pretty sure they are doing a bunch of AI training with your data now too. Opt-in by default. So yeah, no thanks.

The primary purpose of Starlink and SpaceX was from the start to support military goals, civilian goals were never the primary purpose. SpaceX and Elon Musk claimed that reaching Mars was a primary goal, but these are blatant and repeated lies, also by shills in this comment section, as is evident by Michael D. Griffin, under secretary of defense for research and engineering from 2018 to 2020, being involved from the beginning. Strangely enough, no comment in this Hacker News section seem to discuss the role Starlink plays in Ukraine currently.

> In early 2002 he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia, where they attempted to purchase ICBMs.[8] The decision to found the company SpaceX was made on the flight home, and Griffin briefly considered serving as chief engineer,[9] but eventually he instead became president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests.[10]

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#165

Post by leonidasrup »

zuzululu wrote: post #126
rayiner wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Starlink shout out! My brother in law worked on a salmon fishing boat in Alaska a couple of summers ago. They are at sea for weeks and keep fishing until the boat is full. He's done crabbing trips before and was basically out of communication for a month. On this trip, they had Starlink and were able to send us pictures and even FaceTime. Starlink delivered a huge quality of life improvement to guys who work…

man I am happy to hear that. in Europe there is still widespread cynicism and vitrol against anything Elon Musk especially Starlink. I think that many people appreciate Starlink in rural parts but your story is one of many that are just amazing

Elon Musk is quite cotroversial figure for Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy

On one hand Elon Musk and JD Vance supported far-right German party AfD, a party with strong links to Russian. On the other hand Starlink helps Ukraine in the fight against Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfD_pro-Russia_movement

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/02/24/germany-...

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#166

Post by leonidasrup »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #56
mbreese wrote: post #13

Isn’t this a similar argument to how Africa adopted mobile phones significantly faster than other regions? When you don’t have an established wired infrastructure, it becomes significantly easier to jump technology generations. Especially if there’s no infrastructure needed to install. As others mentioned, It’s a very similar situation for rural America. My dad lives in a rural setting, and for years could only get s…

> When you don’t have an established wired infrastructure, it becomes significantly easier to jump technology generations. Same with electricity: there are many rural places in Africa where solar panels + batteries are a revolution. But then there's a reason why a country with more than 3x the number of people in the US was "missing" technologies: Africa is, overall, very poor (GDP per capita in Africa is something l…

[flagged]

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#167

Post by [deleted] »

toast0 wrote: post #163
fluoridation wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about the economics, though. Intuitively it doesn't seem like it can be more efficient to launch constellations of satellites than run kilometers of cables, even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop? So around two orders of magnitude cheaper than a satellite? Something isn't adding up for me.

> even if you have to run 20 km for each customer. That's, what, $10k a pop? I don't know if we're still talking Africa or in general, but $10k doesn't get you anywhere near 20 km around me. I got municipal fiber recently, and our agency passes through the costs. On a 7 drop project of about 1 mile, aerial on existing poles, my share was $5k; plus I had to pay my own way to get conduit installed from the pole to my h…

[deleted]

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#168

Post by cyberax »

Zigurd wrote: post #23
mbreese wrote: post #13

Isn’t this a similar argument to how Africa adopted mobile phones significantly faster than other regions? When you don’t have an established wired infrastructure, it becomes significantly easier to jump technology generations. Especially if there’s no infrastructure needed to install. As others mentioned, It’s a very similar situation for rural America. My dad lives in a rural setting, and for years could only get s…

Africa is mostly on 4G networks, and while 3G isn't a majority of the connections, it's still the next biggest share of infrastructure, far ahead of 5G which is relatively scarce. This is in the context of a population that really depends on mobile wireless for market information if they are farmers, and for payments. Having a mobile phone can take priority over having a flush toilet. Starlink has both opportunities…

The problem is that 5G needs fiber connectivity and electricity for the towers, and this is not easily achievable in rural areas.

You certainly can use microwave backhaul links between towers, but the existing solutions don't provide nearly enough capacity to justify the 5G upgrade.

To oversimplify, 4G works in the 1 Gbit world. 5G needs 10-25 Gb.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#170

Post by snayan »

cactusplant7374 wrote: post #86
snohobro wrote: post #84

I worked on the Starlink program in the Redmond facility during the growth from a couple sats as proof of concept to thousands of sats regularly providing internet. I’ve since moved on to other ventures, but I’m still incredibly proud of what I did there. Mostly because it brought internet to those unserved and those who no one was ever going to serve, at least any time soon. I believe the internet and access to the…

> take full advantage of the wealth of knowledge provided by the internet Seems like a bit of a stretch in modern times. Do you have any idea what percentage of traffic is TikTok/YouTube/Facebook?

Ahh yes, the ole throw the baby out with the bathwater retort.
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