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Africans Are Turning to Starlink

economist.com

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Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#261

Post by mothballed »

dreambuffer wrote: post #257
mothballed wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Majority of blacks and SA have been polled as not supporting (or reforming against racist elements of) current bbbee, including citing it being used instead as a vehicle of corruption. 2) You are rebutting a straw man. I said individual blacks deciding on starlink for themselves, not supposed collective decision of some against others via (corrupt) "representatives", precisely because I knew you'd try such decepti…

You can easily look up the lies he has made about white genocide, which even white south africans have debunked. You accuse me of deception for arguing that, in a democracy, the law must be written by averages and not by a few individuals who want starlink. Ok. I'm only addressing those points because you're showing some signals of bad faith conversation and general meanness so I don't want to respond to anything unt…

Lies and evasion. I see why you truly feel the ANC is your representative. Good luck to you.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#262

Post by solid_fuel »

rayiner wrote: post #260
solid_fuel wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make all the excuses you want, it doesn’t change the truth. He illegally cut food aid and directly killed vulnerable people around the world. It is that simple. > My dad worked on USAID’s maternal health and vaccine programs in Bangladesh. Your dad seems like a much better person than you, spending his time helping people while you spend your time here carrying water for a fascist. Maybe you should try being…

[flagged]

> My dad is sad that USAID got shuttered, but his hatred is directed to Antony Blinken and Samantha Powers for how they politicized the agency and interfered with other countries’ domestic politics.

That's idiotic, his anger should be directed at the people who took a chainsaw to the agency.

> So maybe sit the fuck down and educate yourself

Take your own goddamn advice, you're talking about things you don't even understand and defending actions that have killed thousands just because you want to defend a billionaire against any and all criticism. It's sycophantic and beyond pathetic. So basically exactly in line with your behavior here.

Edit:

You might even have a point if any of the criticisms about USAID being a soft form of imperialism had been why it was shut down, but it was shut down by drooling idiots angry about "muh tax dollars" going to "dirty foreigners". Every justification you offer is posthoc - just whatever comes to mind to try and defend indefensible actions. You're a liar and continue prove it every time you post something contradictory like this.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#263

Post by dreambuffer »

mothballed wrote: post #261
dreambuffer wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily look up the lies he has made about white genocide, which even white south africans have debunked. You accuse me of deception for arguing that, in a democracy, the law must be written by averages and not by a few individuals who want starlink. Ok. I'm only addressing those points because you're showing some signals of bad faith conversation and general meanness so I don't want to respond to anything unt…

Lies and evasion. I see why you truly feel the ANC is your representative. Good luck to you.

[dead]

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#265

Post by parineum »

uxhacker wrote: post #103
Polizeiposaune wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the birds are in orbit, satellite internet is vastly superior to fiber in speed of deployment. Fiber requires custom engineering at the city block level and a single rotten utility pole can block deployment. I say this as someone who waited for fiber and is happily using it now.

So in Poland with Starlink I easily get 120 mbp/s but often in Kenya which I visit the maximum speed is just 10 mbp/s. Often the local 5g network is faster. The reason I believe that this is the case is dues to congestion on the Starlink network in Kenya. Ie. too many users in Kenya.

I suspect that has a lot to do with still needing a ground station in the same hex as the signal. Presumably, there's limited bandwidth at wherever that ground station is.

Once the satellites are linked, I bet that improves.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#266

Post by angry_octet »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #255
angry_octet wrote: post #199

Starlink is going to completely gut the local telcos, terrestrial fiber is never going to have the $ to achieve critical mass. So when, eventually, SpaceX or the US Govt wants to apply leverage over Africa, they will have to bend the knee. Or we'll have a hiatus in launches or a space war, and as they constellation burns up so will internet access. Africa will be in the dark.

Anything that causes the constellation to be abandoned will effect a lot more than Africa and be a much bigger problem.

So African problems will be irrelevant if the rest of the world has stock market problems? Please.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#267

Post by overfeed »

rayiner wrote: post #258
overfeed wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus I highly doubt a provincial government contract in Canada will be a major influence on a Elon's dumb twitter politics. I don't think the decision was meant to influence, rather, it's self-defense against said "Elon's dumb Twitter politics." Americans having challenges conceptualizing how problematic Starlink is to non-Americans: imagine the same satellite service was provided by Huawei - but helmed by Chinese…

Imagine Europe importing natural gas from Putin through 2027.

Imagine the US buying rare earths critical for national security from China with no planned end date.

The empirical evidence that your rejoinder is a false equivalence is that the US also expunged Huawei hardware from its telecoms infrastructure.

It's much harder to subvert extractive resources, compared to frequently updated software platforms like 5G switches or internet terminals.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#269

Post by consensus1 »

dreambuffer wrote: post #242
consensus1 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hedges national security risk by saying "well, there's a national security risk here, and we really can't do anything about that, but we can make them pay us off for taking that risk"? You're really stretching on this one.

No you misunderstand severely, some risks are unavoidable and unknowable. You need a telecommunications industry, you can't just eliminate all risks associated with it. So instead you make them pay a kind of insurance to operate in it, just in case the leader of the country you're allowing in one day decides to target your country (sound familiar?). Of course, another goal is just to empower previously disenfranchise…

I agree that lack of a domestically controlled satellite communication service is a national security concern. If SA had a domestically controlled service and required citizens to use that instead of Starlink that could be a real national security measure. But a reseller of telecom services is not a telecom industry any more than a car dealership is an automotive industry. The actual owner of the satellite constellation can cut off access at will regardless of the domestic reseller's objections.

Furthermore this arrangement does not contribute to the economy of SA. It just makes Starlink services more expensive for SA consumers. The reseller is not really doing anything to develop an industry, but rather taking a skim. If the government actually wanted to develop the economy they would just let Starlink in for any real entrepreneur to use the internet access in remote areas to potentially expand business services into areas that previously lacked communication.

Re: Africans Are Turning to Starlink

#270

Post by consensus1 »

dreambuffer wrote: post #76
consensus1 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In South Africa I would be very surprised if that ever happened. This is a country that went from exporting electricity to daily blackouts because of corruption.

It is easy to export electricity when you only need to serve 10% of the population.

Whatever percent of the population the grid serves, electricity production is lower than it was 20 years ago https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRENEL01ZAA656N
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