SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink
SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink

SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink

SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink
SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink
No fucking thanks. Gigabit+ fiber > Nazi-ass satellite internet that doesn’t have even remotely near the needed bandwidth for actual dense population centers.
I got a better idea: a civil war against oligarchs
I have a better idea: don’t do that.
You cannot actually serve hundreds of millions in the US even if you invested the 75B it would cost to give every household a satellite it just can't support the bandwidth.
Going from the most secure, hard wired formats to a con man's satellites would be a fatal error. Any sort of military conflict and the network is all down, atleast broadband keeps secure networks intact.
Gotta gear up for America's century of humiliation.
I say that Emma Stone should divorce her husband and marry me instead.
Publicly funded fibre can be provider agnostic. Starlink can't. Unless Musk is arguing for the nationalization of Starlink, which frankly I could get behind.
We paid for it, it should be nationalized. But they only ever socialize their losses, the profits are private.
It shouldn’t be all or nothing. It should be diversified.
Yeah, there are rural locations where Starlink makes sense but also there are a lot of urban places that it would never work in.
Problem with Starlink is that the satellites need to be replaced every 5 years or so.
Except StarLink cannot possibly provide the same bandwidth, latency, and throughput a fiber connection can. Because of physics.
I can either share my 10G symmetrical connection with nobody, or with 200 others.
And, Fiber costs me $70 a month. Starlink, with worse performance, costs 4x more.
It's not secure either. The next world war will involve efforts to sabotage satellites.
Because of physics.
Pfff, physics, pesky detail! Clearly you are not a true visionary like Musk! /s
In principle I agree with you, but as a network guy, somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared. The only question is just where and how much bandwidth (well network throughput) there is to share. I work for a large university and our main datacenter has 10GbE and 25/100GbE connections between all the local machines. But we only have about a 3-5gb connection out to the rest of the world.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’d 100% rather have a symmetrical fiber connection to the ISP than something shared like radio or DOCSIS. I used to live in a neighborhood where everyone had Spectrum and about 5-6 PM the speed would plummet because cable internet is essentially just fancy thinnet all over again. Yes I’m old since I used to set up thinnet :)
PS: I would kill for $70 fiber where I am now. Used to have it but we moved to the sticks and I miss it terribly.
Starlink has no answer to dark fiber.
TIL 120 is 4 x 70....
Edit to add everything below this line
Downvotes for facts. I pay 120/mo. It's either this, 3Mbps DSL, or T-Mobile home 5G that works when it feels like it.
I’m on the mid tier fiber plan(3gbps) with my ISP which is $100 a month. Here’s the results from the daily speed test my router does.
StarLink is very expensive for the service provided. Its only advantage is the location availability which is essentially anywhere. If they installed fiber to rural areas then its usefulness falls dramatically. I’d rather they invest in more fiber rather than more StarLink satellites that only last about 5 years.
So, not 4x, but 2x.
BTW, did you know HughesNet is cheaper, and works just as well. Or, it will work just as well once Starlink reaches the saturation HughesNet faces.
Starlink is 120/mo. Over the past 30 days my average DL is 144Mb, UL 18Mb, with a 27ms ping. It suuuuuuuuuuuuucks, but the only other option is a literal 4Mb DSL for 80$/mo
Yeah, please..... give me shitty satellite internet instead of a fast fiber line...
I sure am sick of super fast, stable internet connections. Let’s all get something that fucks up when it’s cloudy.
On one hand, Musk.
On the other hand... Telecos.
You can either give billions more to the world's richest asshole, or you can give billions to companies that already received that money last time and did absolutely fuckall with it.
Lose-lose
I mean there is a third option: municipal fiber
But then the gub’ment is your ISP but at least it’s not making billionaires money.
I’d suggest the best case scenario to me would be a fourth option like a community run co-op of fiber to the premises and have it be grant funded. But who am I kidding, that’s almost to socialist for rural America like where I live.
Third option: municipal fibre
We have that here. 🥰
I should really read before I post… :)
Thats illegal most placss.
So twice as cool as well as functionally superior.
Not really. Most of the rural plans in the US are run by utilities companies that are local.
To quote Dan Harmon out of context: "If you ask a toaster, "What's the most important thing in the world?" it's going to tell you, "Bread." And if you ask a toaster its opinion of bread, it's going to tell you, "It's not toasted enough."
Low orbit satellites will never replace fiber because physics of latency, bandwidth and error correction.
As far as things go today well never need less fiber. Even if we cover the sky with satellites eventually we'd need to upgrade to fiber because its literally impossible to beat. Except for scifi tech like quantum entanglement networks which might not even be possible or practical and wouldn't need the satelites anyway.
As an infrastructure bet it makes absolutely zero sense except for covering rare niches like war zones or oceans.
Fiber is like rail transport for the internet: expensive, high throughput infrastructure along a defined path. But when it's already there, it's very hard to beat.
Oh right, Musk stopped the discussion of proposed rail expansion with his Boring tunnels and Hyperloop, now he is doing the same thing to the internet.
The term "tech neutral' brings back terrible memories of the conservative Liberal successful campaign in #auspol against the #NBN (national broadband network) 😞
Musk is still hitting the special K.
I've been WFH for at least 10 years and live in rural area. Starlink was like 150-200$ a month for an unpredictable 5-150mbps and did meh. When I finally got fiber it was sub 100$ a month for 2gbps stable. Not a hard decision :)
"Give me all your money" says world's richest person, in a fit of originality.
They’re welcome to say that, as long as their ruler doesn’t enter the political or policy arena and have the moral depravity to act despite a conflict of interest. As long as corporations don’t have undue influence on politics from lobbying or donations.
We don’t have to listen.
Our representatives should be representing us. ….. alright alright you can stop laughing now
"Humans should give me chicken" says Cat.
Nah we don't support nazis
glances at the state of the nation
What would things look like if we did?
Yes. Lets tie our expansion of desperately needed internet access in rural America to massively carbon emitting rocket launches. Thats definitely not gonna back fire on us.
SpaceX should deliver the service and access at the cost given and complete before the fiber team put a shovel in that ground.
SpaceX should dump all their space plans and give back their grant money.
I’m so glad other countries are coming up with their own satellites just for the expressed interest to boycott musk.
Telsat Lightspeed, from the Canadian company that invented commercial domestic satellite communications in 1971.
Fiber all the way, especially if it is owned by the community. That would simply ensure that Musk nor TelCos can't fuck around with people. Fast speed, no data caps, low prices, and not being at the mercy of some wealthy jackhole would be wins across the board.
Also, if America has a 2nd Civil War, fiber will be much more safe than relying on sats - those can be shot down, or worse, Musk can cut off the good guys from having internet. It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors. As seen in Ukraine, the fucker has absolutely no compunctions against disabling the internet at key moments.
"fiber will be much more safe than relying on sats"
Spoken like someone who has never had some idiot in a backhoe chop a fiber bundle...multiple times in a week.
We have a saying in IT. Always carry a 1ft section of single-mode fiberoptic when hiking. If you ever get lost, just bury that sucker and some dipshit in a backhoe will be out there in a hour to cut it in half.
lol. Of course it does.
Hmmm ditch lightning fast and stable fiber for the mediocre speed and unstable micro satellite internet connection controlled by a petty asshole...
What to do, what to do?
Hey uh Musk how's that there hyperloop comin'?
A society grows great when old men plant fiber whose speed they know they shall never download from.
what do you mean fiber "plans"? do you guys not have fiber?
Nope... i don't have cable or even great cell service and I live 45 minutes from a major city. Current ETA on fiber is mid 26.
oh my god... I can't believe I'm still getting surprised by how terrible things are in the US. it is the richest, poorest country.
EDIT: holy shit i just saw a 2019 OECD report that says the us had less than 20% of its fixed internet users connected by fiber which is way below the average for the 37 countries studied in the report, which was 27%.
funny thing is i remember reading about this very report in a news article, which was about how my country was way below the average; noting countries like japan, south korea and a bunch of european countries had above 50%. but i think the number for my country was something like 22%. we're not even in the EU and we had higher coverage than the US? that's crazy.
I live in a backwater northern U.K. town. We have fibre. I’d have thought somewhere like USA was rolling it out to most places.
Musk = POS Nazi.
all you can eat latency and an oversaturated network on devices with a limited lifespan.. what else could you ask for!
Well, to be fair, the dishes do make great outdoor cat beds!
A subscription that somehow still manages to use surge pricing? I’m assuming that’s the next logical step.
What's dumb about this statement is all Elon would have to do is market to all the places where broadband companies refuse to go and be affordable. tRump already killed the rural broadband initiatives. There's literally no competition and word-of-mouth could probably pull in more who are unhappy with their broadband provider.
However, capitalism and greed are cancers that know no limit...
Like cancer, greed doesn't know that it is killing its host.
I’m a starlink customer and think it’s one of the best advancements in the past decade as it provides real access to rural addresses. The side effects of this is nearly immeasurable.
Spacex needs to STFU about this though. Fiber should continue to be deployed where possible.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours (and should've been a long time ago). Instead, that money was funneled to the likes of Time Warner and Comcast who never even followed through on their part of the deal. Now, SpaceX is getting funneled the cash.
I'm super thankful that WA State supports and gives assistance to counties building out public LUDs for fiber access, many paying attention to rural communities first. I escaped Comcast two years ago because of it.
Time Warner and Comcast need to have all that grant money clawed back. They contracted with the taxpayers to deliver a service and they didn't even make a good faith effort to start.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours
I don't disagree, it should be deployed to rural areas. It's never going to happen though, it's just not profitable.
Sure, electrical infrastructure was deployed to the whole country, but it doesn't need to be replaced and upgraded as frequently as Internet infrastructure does. Even if some rural areas do get fiber at some point, don't expect the infrastructure to be upgraded regularly enough to stay comparable to denser areas.
You're never going to find a company willing to do that job. We could do it at the national level, but I have my doubts that the country is headed in that direction.
It can’t, and the taxes you would pay to support fiber to my home would be extreme.
But fiber to a local wireless solution? Sure. But even that’s not possible for everyone, and they were expensive and unreliable until starlink started showing up. LEO internet has its benefits.
Hello neighbor!
Fiber also has far better performance that satellite can never match.
The side effects include filling orbit with space junk, crashing satellites to Earth, and blinding our ability to see meteors with a collision course for Earth. The side effects may not be predictable, but they're definitely measurable.
Seriously, this is in the "well, we know you want all the free money you can get, but: no. Now go do your thing on your own dime."
Fiber in the ground is infrastructure like paved roads. Satellites? One counter-orbiting frag bomb can take out a satellite constellation in less than a day.
Starlink has been much better than every other option where I am, but I will switch to fiber as soon as it gets here.
They've been promising fiber here for over a decade, but I can finally see them installing it two miles up the road now. Hopefully it will actually be available sometime soon.
Fibre is an investment that can be used and upgraded for decades. Starlink is a subscription service forever to a private company.
Fiber fucking rules
SpaceX can suck my cock including the biggest welfare queen Elon Musk.
Goat says garden needs more carrots.
Honestly, I think starlink is a fantastic idea in general, but this is clearly bullshit. Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It's just never going to be as cost effective as installed fiber. Fiber is obviously the right technology to use in heavily populated areas i.e. for the vast majority of Internet users. And where the population is sparse and laying fiber for individual customers is cost prohibitive, that is where satellite connectivity shines. If SpaceX or anyone else is pretending otherwise, they're being blatantly deceitful and malicious. That's not in Internet users' best interest.
Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It doesn't even work well in tandem.
Starlink has a single benefit going for it right now: Lack of uptake.
They only have a swath of spectrum, and that has a physical upper limit to how much information it can carry, in total. So does fiber. But, Starlink gets to share that with all users (Much like how cable internet works, its shared bandwidth for everyone on the loop). Fiber, you get your dedicated pipe.
This isn't even getting to view obstruction (A plane will cause a drop out), latency, jitter, etc. These are all physics problem that just cannot be solved without violating the laws of physics. Latency, at a minimum, is 2.6 ms, and that's just for the first leg.
It's crazy to say it doesn't work well in tandem... I mean, it's demonstrable, If it didn't work, people wouldn't use it, but they do. And there is no other way to reach users in some places. Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
Look, I don't like Elon, I don't like monopolies, I'm not a secret shill for SpaceX, but I can admit the truth right in front of me. You don't have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn't a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it? Why create a false narrative? Why get all defensive about a technology?
And finally, I do not see any reason to care about an extra 5 ms latency.
Starlink still requires ground stations, and those ground stations can and are a limiting factor. I was up at a cabin that had Starlink, and service is still in the "better than nothing" phase.
There is concern for fucking up things like radio telescopes. Also, creating a Kessler syndrome event. "But LEO wouldn't have an issue with that because it would burn up". Two things:
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there's not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
While it is possible for objects in orbit to be knocked into a higher orbit, it's certainly not common. It basically requires a collision with another object in a highly elliptical orbit, this is not a kind of orbit we use very often.
Also, these low orbit constellations are simply nowhere near the majority of satellites, up in geostationary orbit. It's not realistic to imagine any debris from LEO ever reaching GSO, the distance between is just too vast. In general, Kessler syndrome would only extend downward from higher orbit, extending up to a higher orbit would be extremely unlikely.
Also, while astronauts could die, we keep enough emergency escape vehicles docked for the entire iss crew. NASA is full of smart people and they're generally risk adverse these days, I don't think anyone would die, but it would certainly be a shame to evacuate the iss.
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there's not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
This is in fact a worrying situation. Not because I think Kesler syndrome is a realistic concern, but because there's only so much space in low earth orbit. I really don't like one company having a monopoly on low orbit communications, but having layers and layers of satellite constellations also seems like a dangerous situation.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
I'm all for that in theory, but whenever we dedicate funds to that cause... telecoms just walk away with it. If the US isn't interested in holding them accountable, I don't really see any reason to throw more money their way. That said, Starlink is doing fine, I see no reason to throw money at them either.
As fiber is rolled out more, i see less and less why it would be cost prohibitive?
All you need to do to connect a remote place is lay a cable. More expensive if you need dig a trench and put the cable in there. But if it can be done for electricity it can be done for fiber.
Well the companies that want to lay fiber aren't always the same ones who own the telephone poles. If they have to pay for that, that adds to costs.
Also, above ground cables are more exposed and need to be repaired more frequently. Falling trees can sever cables and simply swinging in the wind puts more wear on the cables over time. All together, it means that burying cables is more cost effective in the long term, but present higher upfront costs. Whereas above ground cables are cheaper upfront, but more expensive over time.
The high upfront costs are the bigger deal, but in general, they just don't want to lay a mile of cable for a couple of users, regardless of how they're doing it.
In France they authorised air hanging fiber, so they just use electric poles and hang the fiber under the 220 volt lines, as a last resort.
Cheap as hell. Or, where there's a will there is a way.
We do this in some parts of America too. My grandmother’s local electric co-op provided fiber to her house this way in the middle of no where.
lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.
That's insane.
Yeah! I want my internet connection run by a man baby who turns off your access if he doesn't like you!
That will work out as well as the death tunnel (formerly hyperlink)
Alternative Headline: Billionaire Signals States Should Speed Fiber Rollout
Lol, lmao even
Well I say starlink and f'elon can suck my ass.
I say this as someone who actively pays for starlink out of necessity.
Fuck you, no. Fiber is much better for everyone. Eat shit muskrat.
I had Starlink for over 2 years while waiting for my fiber to be installed. Worlds better than the marginal DSL I had available before (5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up), but I'm far happier with the fiber I have now.
I feel that man. Right now I load balance between tmobile and starlink cause the towers near me suck. I work from home so having consistent internet is really important and in my area, the fiber build out is really slow and expensive. Luckily I'm moving here soon but its been a pain in the ass to say the least.
Starlink is great for what it is. Very important tech but yea, I'm sure most everyone would be happier with fiber.
This country is so cooked
I would burn the money before giving it to the nazi
Remember when our government spent billions of our taxes on getting high speed internet out to as many Americans as possible? Remember how literally nothing happened and they just shrugged when we asked where the money went?
This was during the Obama years too if memory serves correctly.
It doesn't matter what they decide to do. The money will magically vanish and we will all get left holding the bag once more.
Clinton era Telecommunications Act of 1996 was where it all started.
Thanks to corporations for pocketing the money, and the Republicans for blocking Democrats from providing consequences.
You know I'm starting to suspect that maybe corporations don't have our best interests in mind....
While you’re correct and I agree, they REALLY shouldn’t do whatever Elon wants.
Oh absolutely. He can pull himself up by his velcro straps and make his business work without government subsidies for once in his life.
That being said I don't have any faith in our government to actually improve anything for general americans when it comes to internet access. Even if the federal government somehow did everything right the states would find a way to regulate and fuck it up.
The tech behind starlink is good. LEO satellites play a purpose. Upsides are they have less latency than GEO satellites. Speeds are the same though.
Downside is you have to deploy them evenly as a constellation or else you get service inturruption. Which means if you look at any population map 90% of your constellation is going to be underutilized, and the other 10% is going to be full.
The real target audience should be mobile broadband. Airplanes, ships, RVs, cars, phones, etc.
But what do you do in the meantime? Fill in the unutilized constillation with rural residential. You can't compete with fiber tech, so you sue the govt for free money.
Yeah, I can’t imagine a medium sized town all using Starlink at once without issues.
Read this quick before the people selling generators get it buried: https://www.wtsp.com/article/money/consumer/south-tampa-generators-fail-during-hurricanes-teco-peoples-gas/67-144d70da-bb27-496c-8928-ab7e61a53b00
The gas company finally figured out how to deflect their responsibility in the matter: they say that the generator owners "didn't register" their generators, but... now that it has been a year, has the gas company done anything to improve service capacity?
Anyway: the tie-in with Starlink is, anything like this works great until everybody tries to use it all at once at high capacity. When all 53,000 residents of Grand Island Nebraska decide to stream different high definition videos all at once? A good fiber system can handle that, Starlink? I'm curious...
Companies like Viasat with GEO sattelites have the advantage of one mololithic sattelite with massive coverage. They have a ton of little antennas on each sattelite that they can adjust as demand changes. Need more coverage in an area due to demand? They can task an antenna not doing anything over there.
Latency is a B though. Minimum 500ms each way. Which is minimum 1sec round trip just physics not actual. What's interesting is the layperson (non online gamer) doesn't notice much. It's not abnormal for a rando website to take a few seconds to load on my wifi. Or for a netflix stream to take a few seconds before it starts buffering. The biggest problem a company like viasat has is old tech in the sky. They can't handle the load of everyone watching netflix. So, they have to data cap everyone. It'll be interesting to see if their new sattelites later this year fix that or if they keep the caps on.
Not only do you have to deploy them in a constellation, you have to deploy them in a descending constellation. They are constantly burning up all the time and you have to keep launching new ones forever just to maintain current capacity. It’s the perfect business plan to make SpaceX look better on paper.
Heh yep, in fact they're not lasting as long as they were supposed to.
Starlink is definitely faster than all but the most expensive GEO services (and those require specialized hardware)
Sorry, I was referring to the underlying tech and bands. The physics behind LEO doesn't automatically grant it the ability to be faster than GEO. It's faster because the sattelites are brand new not 10 years old.
Of course. In a month or two he can tell trump Dem statez are stupid and he should force them to do that.
While trump looks down and says "don't take it out of your mouth again"
I wish there was a way for the average person to shoot down starlink satellites.
Don't worry, the way things are going the star link satellites are going to shoot themselves. Unfortunately together with everything else in the low orbit.
Business owned by greedy manbaby says to give money to business also owned by greedy manbaby. Hmmm....
Don’t forget Nazi
We should also dump passenger trains for...electric car tunnels?
Yeah, because all the gamers love to play online with a 3 second latency.
Those dial up days on avp2 were peak gaming though. I don't want them to return, but I remember those days very well.
Here's a better idea: nationalize SpaceX and tell Musk to go fuck himself first. Not going to happen? Then no grant money.
SpaceX can suck my ass
katy says spacex should go fuck themselves and go bankrupt
Weird, that sounds anti-competitive.
No
A bunch starlink modems in an area can overload or whatever the nearby satellite. This is not feasible in its current form.
do they know what competing is? fiber is much cheaper, stablier, offers less latency and more speed.
Wireless data transmission should only ever be used for nomadic, temporary, and/or sacrificial links.
They’re useful for quick deployment, but are intrinsically brittle and terrible for resiliency and efficiency.
The longer the dependence on them for a given use case, the less defensible arguments in support of them become.
I’m all for the use of satellite delivery of internet services, but only when it’s used in conjunction with a broader roll out of hardwired infrastructure, at which point it can reasonably be relegated to serving as a secondary, backup diverse path.