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Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

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Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#51

Post by jeroenhd »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #39
fabian2k wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has around 15% of the population density of Germany. It's much easier to provide broadband to larger cities than to rural areas.

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

The population spread of Norway more closely resembles that of Canada than that of the US, though. It's very difficult to inhabit large swathes of land in the north and center of Norway, so most people live in the southern and western parts of the country near the coast.

In the US, on the other hand, remote places are a lot more inhabitable. There are just more remote towns in the US, with more people owning more land and being spread out more as a result.

Of course, this doesn't excuse the fact that some dense towns in the US a few miles from a major city still have to deal with shitty broadband because no ISP is willing to invest in hooking them up to FttH. On average, though, the US will probably do worse than Norway for the foreseeable future because of the difference in where and how people live.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#52

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

Darmody wrote: 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.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#53

Post by ftth_finland »

PeterisP wrote: post #35
0xy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to not see fibre internet as a waste of money right now given 4G/5G costs coming down dramatically. For me personally, 4G is extremely fast and cheap while being, importantly, low-latency. Even gaming and other latency sensitive applications are possible on 4G/5G. Why not just roll out 5G networks? Eventually, 5G will outperform fibre on a cost and speed basis (for a long time my FTTH home internet was slow…

For cellular networks the general tradeoff is speed vs range - the higher speed protocols have much shorter range, so you need a more dense network of cell towers. Noone is going to splatter the whole countryside with 4G LTE high-speed coverage, this is going to cover the urban areas only. It's simply not practical to do it for low density areas, you'd have to put up a whole cell tower to cover just a couple people a…

> Noone is going to splatter the whole countryside with 4G LTE high-speed coverage

You are welcome to come check out our excellent unlimited and uncapped 4G coverage in rural Finland.

Proper network coverage isn’t an issues in countries with functioning telecom regulation and coverage minimums in frequency licenses.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#54

Post by BerislavLopac »

Darmody wrote: 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 [0]

[0] https://www.speedtest.net/result/10356498903

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#55

Post by jusssi »

ftth_finland wrote: post #53
PeterisP wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For cellular networks the general tradeoff is speed vs range - the higher speed protocols have much shorter range, so you need a more dense network of cell towers. Noone is going to splatter the whole countryside with 4G LTE high-speed coverage, this is going to cover the urban areas only. It's simply not practical to do it for low density areas, you'd have to put up a whole cell tower to cover just a couple people a…

> Noone is going to splatter the whole countryside with 4G LTE high-speed coverage You are welcome to come check out our excellent unlimited and uncapped 4G coverage in rural Finland. Proper network coverage isn’t an issues in countries with functioning telecom regulation and coverage minimums in frequency licenses.

Unlimited & uncapped, yes.

Excellent, doesn't match my experience. I'm not sure if I've been too rural or not rural enough.

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#56

Post by kalleboo »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #52
Darmody wrote: 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.

Sweden has the same regulation but we got widespread fiber anyway

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#57

Post by kalleboo »

0xy wrote: post #28
Darmody wrote: 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.

It's hard to not see fibre internet as a waste of money right now given 4G/5G costs coming down dramatically. For me personally, 4G is extremely fast and cheap while being, importantly, low-latency. Even gaming and other latency sensitive applications are possible on 4G/5G. Why not just roll out 5G networks? Eventually, 5G will outperform fibre on a cost and speed basis (for a long time my FTTH home internet was slow…

4G is fast and cheap when people's bulk data is being offloaded onto wired networks due to data caps. If you put literally all consumer usage on 4G/5G you're going to have to raise the density dramatically, and then you're pulling fiber to every neighborhood anyway, might as well pull them straight into the homes when you're at it and then you're future-proof to 10 Gbit+

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#58

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

kalleboo wrote: post #56
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #52

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.

Sweden has the same regulation but we got widespread fiber anyway

> the same regulation

As in, you compared the regulated prices?

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#59

Post by kalleboo »

integer42 wrote: post #14
vaidhy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, does that mean 95% of internet users are facing even worse quality of service? or does it mean that given a very small number of participants so far, starlink is able to allocate more bandwidth to everyone? I remember reading an analysis here on a previous posting about starlink that under load, it is going to have pretty limited throughput (on top of higher latency). I do not see how that will get solved.

When 4g/LTE was new, a coworker was an early adopter of whatever cellphone that was one of the first to support it. They were getting somewhere ~250 mbps on speed test. Fast forward to everyone having 4g phones, now in practice I see like 1-2% of those speeds typically. I have no idea the inner workings of starlink's protocol, but these aspects of wireless seem inevitable. once theres more simultaneous connections th…

I can see that just over a day. During off-peak hours, I've speedtested around 260 Mbit/s on LTE on my iPhone (it's 10:20 PM on a weekday and I just got 230 Mbit down[0]), but during peak hours (commute hours or lunch rush), it drops to like... 20 Mbit

[0]https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/4226615772

Re: Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US

#60

Post by TulliusCicero »

jeroenhd wrote: post #51
TulliusCicero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The population spread of Norway more closely resembles that of Canada than that of the US, though. It's very difficult to inhabit large swathes of land in the north and center of Norway, so most people live in the southern and western parts of the country near the coast. In the US, on the other hand, remote places are a lot more inhabitable. There are just more remote towns in the US, with more people owning more lan…

Okay, and how's the internet out there, in the more rural parts of Norway?

But yeah the bigger issue is that often even in urban or suburban areas, the internet is still bad.

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