Someone really needs to explain the fundamental limitations of shared medium internet connections (pretty much anything wireless) when compared to exclusive medium internet connections (one wire/fiber per end point) to politicians and other decision makers. Banning the advertising of shared medium speeds as if they were exclusively reserved for you would be a good start.
Oh, I see.
You think this is a “politicians don’t understand the tech they’re supposed to regulate” issue, and not a “Elon Musk is bribing every greedy asshole in Congress to prop up his businesses at taxpayer expense” issue.
I think one of the issues with taking bribes is that even corrupt people don’t want to completely ruin the economy because you don’t want the people trying to bribe you lack the money to do so. Or in other words, even apart from any moral issues you don’t want to kill your golden goose.
They can ruin the economy all they want. The people who are bribing them aren’t going to run out of money.
Maybe not the top 5 out of those people but the rest certainly will.
They won’t. Not even the top 100. Politicians are relatively cheap to buy.
What does it matter, the rest didn’t bribe them anyway…
you underestimate how shortsighted republicans are
Counterpoint: the fact that the moral “don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs” even exists is proof that people are indeed greedy and/or stupid enough to do that very thing.
They were never building that, let’s be honest.
Edit: rural broadband is like the new affordable housing, high speed rail, or better public transit… It’s something that’s completely possible to do but they’ll always find some excuse to do nothing so they can campaign on it again next cycle
It was basically up to the states this time around, they could allocate BEAD funds more or less as they wanted and absolutely build fiber out to the vast majority of residences (look at North Dakota, it’s evidently possible) through models like municipal fiber.
Ultimately it’s a political issue more than anything else, Americans just can’t get anything done anymore, politicians would rather enrich themselves and voters only care about the culture war.
I wish there was more municipal fiber. It’s absolutely insane that the big ISPs fight it and often win.
This is proof of why Direct Democracy is better than “Representative” “Democracy”
Every single time the land line ISPs have gotten money for rural broadband, they use it for something else and don’t build anything. Starlink actually built a network that works. Many places have gotten decent 5G home internet too.
I have been promised fiber for over a decade yet the only wired connection available is a DSL network that’s been so poorly maintained that it barely even functions.
Do you mean works or falls out of the sky routinely to litter the earth? We build lots as far as smaller ISPs go. You just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
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.
Pros of fibre:
- cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
- faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
- very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
- high stability: does not give a crap if it’s cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it’s just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
- long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
- lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.
Cons of nationwide fibre:
- billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
- monopoly Internet Service Providers won’t be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
- people will tell you “uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons”, but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.
There’s nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.
As someone who wrote their CS thesis on networks I find starlink infuriating. Its such a terrible option that basically persists through memes and highly niche use anecdotes.
You can literally cover entire landmass of earth with fiber and cell towers for pennies on a dollar what low orbit satellites would get you.
Not to mention is objectively better technology which we would have to setup anyways if we want low latency networks and why wouldn’t we want that in the future? There are countless benefits to reduced latency so it’s really unavoidable. Now some want to prioritize worse technology when it’s at peak cost. It’s so fucking stupid.
Ah yes, who needs fiber when you have an inferior product that will be worse in every calculable way?
Pay no attention to the person who stands to benefit from this deal. There’s definitely nothing illegal about it.
So what if the owner of Starlink just happened to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to get the current president elected? That surely has nothing to do with the abysmal Starlink service stealing away funding for critical infrastructure.
Hope you like satellite internet.
Not as much as I revile Musk.
This would be REALLY CORRUPT if the CEO of Starlink was ALSO cutting HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of American Jobs and SLASHING BILLIONS in Social Funding (like Social Security) just so we could Give Him these CONTRACTS! But FOX NEWS told me that was NOT true so it’s OK!
They’re doing the whole California rail thing again and a big part of Americans is cheering for it. You wanted a greater America? Enjoy the privatization of everything :)
Shouldn’t the 5G covid brain control serum chip nanobot people be upset about this?
Inb4 “The satellites are beaming mind control into your head”
I miss dial up. Like local providers with 2 or 3 numbers to try.
I don’t, dial-up sucked.
