[_ph_]

That this works on most of the planet. If you can get fibre or good DSL for a reasonable price, take that. But even in the US large parts don't have fibre available, especially in rural locations. Many countries don't have any networking infrastructure. It will be a total game changer once mobile versions (airplanes, ships, yachts) become available.

[ghaff]

For some level of density, wires/fibre is usually going to be the better bet. But even though where I live isn't exactly rural, it's definitely not urban or conventional suburban, and cable is still fairly marginal.

[izacus]

The question is: will this stall development of more scalable fibre optic infrastructure and municipal fiber - to support a proprietary single corporation solution?

[Sebb767]

Can fiber rollout actually be stalled even more?

But on a more serious note, with fiber you can supply a whole street with symmetric gigabit links pretty easily and for what is pretty much a one-time cost of laying the fibers. Upgrading the line to 25 GBit and up is done by only switching the receivers, once that becomes economically viable. Even if the satellites can handle multiple hundred gigabits (they can't), it would be impossible for them to compete with fiber in either bandwidth, price or latency.

[tzs]

When the entire constellation of Starlink satellites is deployed the aggregate bandwidth of all of them will be less than a handful of fiber optic cables.

Starlink is not designed to compete with fiber or copper in areas where you have a high density of internet users over a significant area.

It is for less dense areas, or those few people in areas otherwise well served by fiber or copper that have a house that ended up in a gap between infrastructure build outs.

[wyager]

Fiber is not and probably never will be economical for rural areas. Most of the rural fiber rollouts that exist today are pretty transparent subsidy milking schemes.

I was thinking about buying 40 acres in the middle of nowhere earlier this year. It had no electrical power within a mile, but there was a buried gigabit fiber line running down the dirt road. It probably cost at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve fewer than a hundred people. I called the ISP to ask about pricing. It was cheaper to buy a fiber/phone combo than just fiber. Why? “We get more subsidies that way.”

Starlink is clearly a superior option in cases like this.

[tim333]

It's quite expensive. I imagine fiber can still make money.