Starlink takes page from cable firms with $10 monthly rental fee for hardware
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Bringing work with you when you're not working is fucking stupid and people need to knock that shit off. But streaming a movie or something would surely make shitting in the woods less awful.
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rural for like 99% of the US population is still close enough to get electricity, water, and sewage, its just corporate greed and government inaction that has prevented buildout of good internet.
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It's almost as if long term the cheaper play is making it easier to run fiber vs 10,000 satellites.
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It really is as simple as if they have electricity, they should have fiber. We did it with POTS. We only don't do it with internet because that wouldn't be maximizing profit, and if it doesn't turn into C-suite bonuses next quarter, we can't do it.
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That would depend entirely on the movie. I'd rather shit in the woods in the dark and wipe my butt with poison ivy that watch the Melania "movie" or "documentary" or WTF the right wing revisionists are classifying it as.
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How are so many people able to live such charmed lives that they can afford to be off grid for multiple days? Between work and family, I can no longer afford to be off grid for more than a day.
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This.
I like camping, but also options. Sometimes it's hanging out in a tent and eating chilidogs, sometimes it's finding a nice view and killing time with my Steam Deck.
I don't have a Starlink Mini, but I wouldn't mind bringing one on occasion. And I have to carry a battery for my CPAP* anyway, so there's inherently going to be electronics involved. The Starlink Mini therefor wouldn't be a particular increase in bulk or weight.
* I use an INUI 25k mAh battery bank with trigger cable from Amazon (Fthagn or some such) and a Resmed Airmini. As such things go, it's a pretty light load. The Airmini's a bit loud for me...but it beats getting mauled by a bear that couldn't sleep through my snoring.
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Not so idle question: How many miles of fiber can be laid for the cost of a satellite launch?
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Now amortize that over the decades where the fiber will be completely fine vs the satellite that will have to be replaced every few years.
But hey, why pay for the future today when we can pay for the future over and over again forever?
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Talk about timing...! I literally just got home from attending a conference about the new local gig fiber service that's being activated in the next couple of months where I live. Nicely done, Ars staff! haha
I just recently moved from living in town with gig fiber, to a rural area and had to get Starlink, as it was the only viable service with semi-decent speeds.
It works well, but it's not as good as fiber. Plus, I despise Mr. Musk. And, on top of that, I just got the email from Starlink, informing me of the monthly price increase that's kicking in. $130 bucks a month, whereas I was previously paying $60/month for gig up/down via fiber, when I lived in town.
The conduit for the new fiber service has already been buried in the ground in front of my house, so I'll be quite happy to kick Starlink to the curb and go back to a faster, cheaper fiber-based connection.
Really though, I'm amazed that fiber is being installed out where I currently live! I never thought that would happen in my lifetime. The farmers out here aren't gonna know what to do with this "fancy, new Internet connection thingamabob". Lol
I just recently moved from living in town with gig fiber, to a rural area and had to get Starlink, as it was the only viable service with semi-decent speeds.
It works well, but it's not as good as fiber. Plus, I despise Mr. Musk. And, on top of that, I just got the email from Starlink, informing me of the monthly price increase that's kicking in. $130 bucks a month, whereas I was previously paying $60/month for gig up/down via fiber, when I lived in town.
The conduit for the new fiber service has already been buried in the ground in front of my house, so I'll be quite happy to kick Starlink to the curb and go back to a faster, cheaper fiber-based connection.
Really though, I'm amazed that fiber is being installed out where I currently live! I never thought that would happen in my lifetime. The farmers out here aren't gonna know what to do with this "fancy, new Internet connection thingamabob". Lol
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You'd have to model the costs long term. Sat wins short term for sure. But those starlink sats last about 5 years reportedly. So the ongoing costs will be a lot more. There's a crossover point, but it's 25-30 years out.
I have a buddy that works in rural fiber. It's an extremely profitable, and filled with all sorts of self dealing. If you created a quasi gov't organization to directly install the lines you could do it at a fraction of the cost.
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A Falcon 9 vehicle is $67milllion USD in 2025 money.
https://spacenexus.us/guide/space-launch-cost-comparison
Now, trenching fiber varies, a lot. Depending on if you are going through virgin rural farmland, or through a heavily urbanized area where you have to jackhammer out concrete. From maybe $20,000/mile in Nowhere... to $200,000/mile in downtown anywhere. So anywhere from 3,400 miles of fiber to 335 miles for the cost of one Falcon 9.
Now 3,400 miles sounds like a lot of miles of fiber. But, for reference, my rather average US city of 300,000 people that has sprawled over 80 sq miles...has 2,700 miles of roads to service all the R1 housing stock that is most of the developed land. If you're going to do fiber-to-home to every house, it'll take probably 3,000 miles of fiber and trenching**
**Sidenote, my city DOES have fiber-to-home to every R1 house in the city. That is permanently dark and will never be used. Before Time Warner got bought by Spectrum...they bought a State law making it illegal for a public utility to compete in the same "market" as a private corporation. So our municipal fiber system is permanently illegal.
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Anybody doing business or giving money to Elon Musk is condoning and supporting his racist white supremacist Nazi ideology- his control of Social media X is used to incite violent racist protests around the world. I couldn’t agree more with Destroying evil Elon Musk.
“X owner Elon Musk shared a post from Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) announcing locations of protests, and another from the far-right Restore Britain party that read: “Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.”
“On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside.
As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks.
As they stormed the property, some claimed to be “liberating” it. Graffiti nearby demanded “local homes for local people”. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: “There’s wee girls inside.”
MF’er Nazi
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...storm-house-in-belfast?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
“X owner Elon Musk shared a post from Robinson (whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) announcing locations of protests, and another from the far-right Restore Britain party that read: “Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.”
“On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside.
As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks.
As they stormed the property, some claimed to be “liberating” it. Graffiti nearby demanded “local homes for local people”. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: “There’s wee girls inside.”
MF’er Nazi
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...storm-house-in-belfast?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
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I think we paid the cable and telecommunications companies to do this but they just took the money and told us to f#ck off.
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Satellite TV hardware is cheap enough dishes were normally abandoned. Beats retrieving used equipment customers would not want.
Don't be too sure about the last bit.
My bro made the mistake of getting some strange at night among bushes. Turned out the "bushes" included poison sumac. He had to buy hilariously loose work pants and have his motorcycle trailered home.
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Well I was sorta kinda thinking about Starlink to replace my much faster (and more expensive) cable modem plan, in spite of not wanting to give Elon any of my money. This change takes it off the table. Good riddance.
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I can't do ANY of that when I'm tethered to my Comcast link in my office. With Starlink I can get out and wander cross country, working in the mornings from glorious locations. It's a life changer for those of us lucky enough to have jobs that can be fully remote!
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Maybe you need more fiber if you can watch an entire movie while shitting.
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<Raises hand>
I was in the Canadian Rockies last week and can tell you that bears definitely shit in the woods.
That scat was not from an elk or moose.
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Electricity to most rural locations is delivered above ground via poles, not trenching. It would be a lot cheaper to just string fiber on the existing poles where available. AT&T did exactly that behind my suburban house last month.
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Is it me or are all things just on enshitification speed runs?
Seems like crack head level can't-wait! sort of twitchies from the 1%
Seems like crack head level can't-wait! sort of twitchies from the 1%
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I've done multiday camping trips for almost 15 years without Internet/devices.
I know what it means to enjoy nature without distractions.
But ever since work/family has demanded more of my time, I have come to realise that having to work remotely for an hour in nature somewhere beautiful is completely worth not having to deal the stress of being off grid.
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We actually need zero.We need more than 1 LEO satellite internet provider. This is cable modem rental fees all over again.
Competition is better for innovation - Elon should agree with that as a conservative flag bearer.
take that money and lay fiber.
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For most things yes. Bandwidth seems to be highly dependent on location. Two and a half years ago I was paying Spectrum $85/month for 300 down and 20 up. The only way to get the bill lowered was to bundle more services or leave for a month and come back as a "new" customer. Problem is the only competition was T-mobile 5G service. And, my T-mobile signal at my house is not good.
Then AT&T ran fiber in my area and I got 500 mbps symmetric for $65. During the process of canceling Spectrum they said they could offer 500 symmetric for $50 over coax. I still declined on principle. then AT&T offered to upgrade my fiber to gig symmetric for just $5 a month more. So, $70/month total.
About 8 months ago Spectrum came back with an offer for 500 symmetric for $20/month. So I added them as a backup internet for my AT&T fiber. It has actually come in handy. Called AT&T earlier this week because I saw they were running some new customer promotions and wanted to see if they could do anything for existing customers. Got an additional $30/month off my bill for the next 24 months. So $40/month for gig fiber from AT&T plus $20/month for 500 symmetric from Spectrum as a backup.
My total internet bill is now cheaper with 2 providers for more bandwidth that just a couple of years ago. My 1990's teenage self could only dream of such a future. I'm also pretty sure this is cheaper in inflation adjusted dollars for internet than my parents paid in the late 90's for dialup when you factor in the second phone line with the metro calling plan so I could call ISPs without needing to rack up long distance charges.
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That gives some context. I see where it's ~60 satellites per Falcon 9 launch and "up to" 400 for a Starship; I assume Starship launch costs are much higher. Then you have to add amortized costs for the rockets themselves, not just the launch costs, lifecycle of the satellite vs the fiber install, etc.
If the FCC does not have this exact analysis in hand, vetted independently six ways from Sunday and back, Carr is even dumber or more venal than I thought.
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I live in a little place not far outside of Reno; they shot the Bonanza TV show outside shots here.
It’s not remote but it is rural, about ten miles by winding climbing road from Reno. It has twisted pair on the main road and TNIs at most houses built since the 90s.
Most people here have Starlink at this point because the terrestrial wireless is pretty unreliable, But most of the neighborhood is getting one gigabyte fiber this year as NV energy, replaces poles, and the fiber provider, strings loops and splices.
I cannot wait to stop paying for Starlink as a failover. I sincerely hope (with little real expectation) that as it happens most folks will stop their Elon-enriching 300mbps appliances for 1gbps at the same price.
It’s not remote but it is rural, about ten miles by winding climbing road from Reno. It has twisted pair on the main road and TNIs at most houses built since the 90s.
Most people here have Starlink at this point because the terrestrial wireless is pretty unreliable, But most of the neighborhood is getting one gigabyte fiber this year as NV energy, replaces poles, and the fiber provider, strings loops and splices.
I cannot wait to stop paying for Starlink as a failover. I sincerely hope (with little real expectation) that as it happens most folks will stop their Elon-enriching 300mbps appliances for 1gbps at the same price.
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And the constellation is ~10,500 satellites. That's 175 launches over 5 years, forever.
That'll give you plenty of fiber that will last decades or longer.
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The only person who dies wishing they'd spent one more day at the office is the boss.
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and here in Seattle they added a $500 surcharge for new customers “because of high demand”. Surveillance pricing?
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Short term, maybe. Long term, though? You lay the fibre, and it needs very little, if any, maintenance (assuming no deliberate vandalism or major disaster cutting the fibre). Need a speed upgrade? Just replace the equipment at both ends.
Plus, fibre is a private medium. What you do on your fibre connection has absolutely no impact on what I do with mine, at least until the traffic reaches a common peering point. Satellite is a shared medium: the more people using it, the worse the service gets, all else being equal.
Fibre could be ten times more expensive up front, and it would still be the better choice for those who are serious about building proper infrastructure.
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[Insert de Gaulle-attributed quote about graveyards and indispensable people here]
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You're not getting a dedicated fiber line back to your ISP. "Fiber internet" is pretty much always some flavor of PON - Passive Optical Network. You're sharing the same fiber with possibly a hundred or so other subscribers (though probably fewer). It's much, much, much less congested than DOCSIS though.
However, the big advantage is that fiber isn't limited like the spot beam of satellites. Need to serve more people in a given area? No big deal, you can lay two strands of fiber right next to each other (or just pull Multi-Strand fiber in the first place, the material cost isn't a big deal) and bam, you have completely independent media allowing you to double the spectrum you have to play with and there's no overlap, no crosstalk, no special guard bands or collision avoidance needed.
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Yeah, this is what I've seen too. Growing up, I had family members who loved to come camping, but who would either miss trips entirely, or have to leave a trip for a few days to go do some work that couldn't (or wouldn't) be rescheduled. They were all small business owners.
As much as I think Internet connections are a horrendous chain that we all shackle ourselves to, and I actively seek out vacations without cell service, there are people who can't or won't attend a vacation without it. When our favorite camping spot started having reliable cellular Internet, it meant that one family member went from heading home early and missing large parts of camping trips entirely to just disappearing for a few hours on some days to go do some work up by his car. I think it raised his enjoyment and his family's, even as the rest of us had to learn to ignore the cell signal while camping so we could fully immerse ourselves in the vacation.
I know some people will compare that to the option to just stop doing that kind of work, but that wasn't a decision these people felt they could make. Cellular Internet brought them more vacation time, not less.
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