this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Great. Another $900 million wasted. We could have laid a lot of fiber with that money.
Running fiber globaly is very expensive. The satellite solution has its cons, but it's available to a lot of people who otherwise might not have access.
It is expensive, but in SOME rural areas it's still affordable. Obviously not in poorer ones, but it might get cheaper over time. Or it might not. Who knows.
I recall that the decaying orbit means that they constantly have to put more satellites up. All that energy, all that propellant, and all that space garbage. Billions of dollars wasted. Better spent on fiber. Once installed, baring cuts, it will last for nearly 100 years or more. It has benefits for some, but, IMHO, resources are better spent on fiber.
Universal global fiber is sadly unlikely to happen. I wish it wasn't so, but the fight for me to get fiber in a town has been a decade.
I spent five years and gave up on it because Republicans.
Different country here, I'm getting it in autumn.
Humans who punch down have no borders.
True. We've just managed to keep ours mostly in check. It helps that they scored multiple blunders before the last election, otherwise it would've been scary.
Wasted how? Because some satellites moved to dodge debris?
Fiber is too slow when you want to charge billions for letting High Frequency Trading bots running arbitration across different markets to get a few miliseconds advantage over those running through fiber.
Having a mesh of satellites running on "laser through vacuum" to go around the globe, can get you those billions. Which, let's be clear, is the real business goal of Starlink.