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Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies::The FCC reaffirmed a decision not to award Starlink a nearly $900 million subsidy for offering 100Mbps/20Mbps low-latency internet service in 35 states.
Reminder that Starlink is the internet equivalent to the Hyperloop.
There are untold billions that the government gave out as subsidies to increase internet speeds across the nation and bring internet to everyone across the U.S. Which mysteriously vanished.
All the while now Elon has been promising vaporware and bullshit, as he usually does while Tech Bros, billionaires and the media gobble it up.
Eh, starlink at least works by all accounts. I guess the jury is still out if it’s sustainable as a business because the satellites are deorbiting like crazy.
If your business plan involves firing out infinite rockets full of cell towers forever. You should probably just spend the money on copper instead.
I don’t think you quite understand just how remote some people are. Besides, Starlink is also being used on vessels and aircraft, good luck getting copper out to them.
Also, fibre optic is how the cool people Internet these days.
I don’t think you understand that a lot of copper is still less than infinite rockets forever
This is the kind of dumb statement that really gives this platform a bad name. I know people who were quoted a six figure sum to get mains power to their property, fibre would have been a similar cost. And this is people who are at a fixed location, we also have those who are mobile to consider.
There are people for whom a wired connection to anything is out of the question.
If only someone like a government would subsidise the installation just like the subsidised starlink because that also isn’t profitable. But a lot of money today is cheaper than an infinite amount of money from launching infinite rockets forever.
How do you think everything got built thus far? Only in America do you get this logic repeated. Everyone else just builds infrastructure. Yes, even in places with very remote peoples.
First, I’m not in America.
Second, I don’t think you comprehend just how remote some people are. I live in New Zealand, where over 90% of the country has fibre broadband thanks to a government initiative to get everyone connected, and we still have a large number of people using Starlink or other systems to get online, because it is simply not cost effective to wire them in.
Reality does not align with your smug one-liners.
Hey, look, I can instantly downvote you too even though downvotes mean nothing on this platform, and it just antagonises any hope of conversation! Woo. Here’s where you say you didn’t do that. Though probably all hope for a normal conversation went out the window when you started your part by just flatout calling me dumb, funny!
My entire point is that starlink is not more cost effective, it’s paid for by American subsidies and investors. It’s a money losing scheme. But laying infrastructure instead of burning the money up with infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers forever gives you a better return on the money spent as you can continue using that infrastructure for hundreds more years
Still doesn’t help ships
The issue with starlink is the choice to be in LEO instead of using geosats. It lowers the latency but it makes the whole project completely unsustainable.
I suspect they’ll eventually move to a slightly higher orbit, where their satellites can last a decade or so, once the technology is more mature.
Ships don’t need infinite rockets full of infinite cell towers launched forever.
Maybe when we have fusion power and don’t have to waste the resources. We don’t. We have to choose what we want to use. I say that launching infinite rockets with infinite cell towers forever is not worth being able to watch tiktok in the middle of the Atlantic.
There’s always actual satellite internet for the needed communications.
Maybe we should just wait for the subsidies and the investor money that’s actually paying for starlink to run out and see where things quite literally fall.
They need 12,000 of them, which isn’t a huge amount considering you’re covering the entire globe.
Per year, forever. Hence infinite rockets with infinite cell towers.
A lot of glass is much better than a lot of copper.
This makes zero sense. If that was profitable it would have been done already.
It’s not, neither is starlink. That’s the whole point. You have two things, you can either launch infinite rockets forever or lay some infrastructure that we can benefit from forever.
Why America chooses not to lay infrastructure is beyond me. More so why Americans justify it so often. This shit is why America doesn’t have trains.
Preach the truth brother. The single most effective way to spread more internet is more cable and towers.
Bundle it all together! We have tons of electrical that should be moved underground. Throw internet lines into that pool too and put it all under the ground and run the network cables everywhere the power goes.
The fact that you’re talk about laying copper for Internet access shows just how little you know.
I use it because it makes people mad and I think that’s funny, obviously fibre is better. Good for digestion
Also yes copper is still more cost efficient than infinite rockets with infinite cell towers forever
They aren’t sustainable because they are de-orbiting but they’re also supposed to be low-cost and high speed.
If the prices aren’t low-cost, and the speeds continue to decrease, it’s entire purpose is defeated.
Not vaporware. It actually works very well. And if you live in the sticks you thank your blessed angels for it.
Starlink, as a service for those that have it, is not Vaporware. It functions, pretty well.
Starlink as a government subsidized, nationally impactful program is Vaporware
Hyperloop should be halted and replaced with high speed rail, and starlink should be nationalized. Musk keeps rinsing and repeating his grand privatized infrastructure projects where he essentially embezzles public funds.