[chrissnell]

These are some very strange locations. Many of them are way out on country roads, some in places where I’m imagining they had to spent some money to get power service. Check out Panaca, NV, near the Utah border. I’ve been right through here and it’s super desolate. I’ve also been near the one in Evanston, WY and the one outside of Hutchinson, KS. There ain’t nothin’ out there!

What’s the reasoning for these locations? Low RF noise floor maybe? On some major transcon fiber route perhaps?

[jcrawfordor]

The majority of sites in the United States, actually all of them I've checked, are pre-existing fiber shelters, mostly CenturyLink's in the west. They exist at various points on the fiber line for add-drop and power injection. It's not especially unusual to negotiate with carriers to install equipment at these sites as part of your transit agreement. I don't immediately see any aerial photos where SpaceX's equipment seems to have been installed but I would imagine they're adding the antenna and maybe another prefab shelter. But basically everything you're seeing at those sites on Google Maps right now isn't Starlink, it's existing carrier equipment.

[walrus01]

One thing to clarify there's no power injecting going on, unless you mean optically through things like Raman amps and EDFAs...

Long haul terrestrial fiber cables aren't like submarine fiber which has copper lines to carry high voltage power for submarine repeaters/amps. The power at each site is self contained, usually a fairly normal feed from local grid utility, backup generators (diesel or propane), and -48vdc rectifier + battery setups of normal Telco grade equipment.

[jcrawfordor]

Yeah I'm just wrong about that, my knowledge is mostly historical and it's hard for me to get out of the mindset of the L-carriers where amplifier interval was 2-10 miles. The amplifier interval on the fiber these days is long enough they just build one of these points each time instead of having line-powered amplifier vaults.

That said out west where I am it's very common for fiber routes to follow the L-carrier routes and reuse the formerly line-powered amplifier sites for add-drop, but I believe they've had the utility install conventional power everywhere they've done that.

[snypher]

There's an ancient map here that shows a dogleg in the NV cable that may run by Panaca.

https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cyberge...

There is also an article that shows a few(?) cables in that area

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-detailed-pub...

[sneak]

If all you need is power and fiber, and you have to maintain the site indefinitely, it makes sense to go as cheap as possible I guess.

I imagine there are also some minor security benefits from being way out in the middle of nowhere.

I'm super glad for starlink in general as it allows me personally to just need power and water (and a clear view of the sky) and opens up a bunch of extremely cheap land options for viable places to build a house.

[walrus01]

DWDM regen huts on major inter city fiber paths are usually out in some real randomly weird locations. Like the one in Prosser, WA. They're sited wherever they can get cheap land with electricity and a road passable by a normal pickup truck or telecom work van, approximately every 80 km of fiber, plus or minus a bit.

[GekkePrutser]

I bet the noise floor thing. Inmarsat (and the intelligence monitor station beside it) have been trying to block the 3.5Ghz spectrum in most of the Netherlands (up to 100km away or so).

They're now going to move somewhere else but it basically delayed the 5G rollout in the northern half of the country for years.