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by toofy 76 days ago
i’m sorry, but no, starlink is not comparable to fiber.

better than dsl? i mean, sure? but absolutely not even close to better than fiber. there’s a reason data centers in rural areas run fiber for miles and miles to their centers and aren’t on … starlink.
2 comments
axus 76 days ago
My charitable interpretation: adding a turn-key competitor is a better way to incentive the incumbents than a long fight to add a government competitor.
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JumpCrisscross 76 days ago
> starlink is not comparable to fiber

Straw man. It doesn’t need to comparable. Just sufficient. If a rich rural community wants to pay to lay fiber into the boonies, they can still do that. But it shouldn’t be a shared cost across society. (I live in a rural community.)

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hakfoo 76 days ago
What exactly made it possible to get copper wire into effectively every house in the country?

We didn't say "if a rich rural community wants telephones or electricity in the boonies..."

Maybe we need a new Ma Bell that's Uncle Fibre. Give them a very tightly bordered but lucrative monopoly in exchange for mandates to actually build and maintain the network. Perhaps some sort of scheme where consumers actually pay the regulator instead of the service provider, so they can hold payments hostage in the event expansion and QoS goals are not met, giving it real teeth.

It might end up being the same ~USD75-100 per month for 1Gb that many of us are paying for cable now, at least initially, but the cost would be funding making sure people in rural counties are getting modern infrastructure, and gradually ticking up speeds as more and more infra is paid down, rather than on yachts.

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JumpCrisscross 76 days ago
> What exactly made it possible to get copper wire into effectively every house in the country?

Subsidies.

> making sure people in rural counties are getting modern infrastructure

Sure. This is inefficient when an alternative is more than sufficient.

Again, I live in a rich rural community. I have gigabit fiber to my home. I have neighbors ditching wired internet for Starlink because it’s cheaper and good enough and they can also put it on their truck when they travel.

My property value does well from the subsidy. But it’s inefficient.

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