Hacker News Reader

Comment by person_of_color | Hacker News Reader

The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?

Metros are not the target market at all, in part because starlink (nor any other satellite internet) cannot serve above a certain density of customers (because there's only so focused you can make radio waves). Even with their planned upgrades and perfectly even distribution of their customers across the continental US, starlink could not serve more than a few percent of households. (Even Musk has said that it is not competition for the big ISPs, but that hasn't stopped a hype machine on the internet for assuming it will be).

That this works on most of the planet. If you can get fibre or good DSL for a reasonable price, take that. But even in the US large parts don't have fibre available, especially in rural locations. Many countries don't have any networking infrastructure. It will be a total game changer once mobile versions (airplanes, ships, yachts) become available.

The question is: will this stall development of more scalable fibre optic infrastructure and municipal fiber - to support a proprietary single corporation solution?

It's quite expensive. I imagine fiber can still make money.

Can fiber rollout actually be stalled even more?

But on a more serious note, with fiber you can supply a whole street with symmetric gigabit links pretty easily and for what is pretty much a one-time cost of laying the fibers. Upgrading the line to 25 GBit and up is done by only switching the receivers, once that becomes economically viable. Even if the satellites can handle multiple hundred gigabits (they can't), it would be impossible for them to compete with fiber in either bandwidth, price or latency.

When the entire constellation of Starlink satellites is deployed the aggregate bandwidth of all of them will be less than a handful of fiber optic cables.

Starlink is not designed to compete with fiber or copper in areas where you have a high density of internet users over a significant area.

It is for less dense areas, or those few people in areas otherwise well served by fiber or copper that have a house that ended up in a gap between infrastructure build outs.

Fiber is not and probably never will be economical for rural areas. Most of the rural fiber rollouts that exist today are pretty transparent subsidy milking schemes.

I was thinking about buying 40 acres in the middle of nowhere earlier this year. It had no electrical power within a mile, but there was a buried gigabit fiber line running down the dirt road. It probably cost at least hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve fewer than a hundred people. I called the ISP to ask about pricing. It was cheaper to buy a fiber/phone combo than just fiber. Why? “We get more subsidies that way.”

Starlink is clearly a superior option in cases like this.

For some level of density, wires/fibre is usually going to be the better bet. But even though where I live isn't exactly rural, it's definitely not urban or conventional suburban, and cable is still fairly marginal.

That this service is designed for customers who don't have other good internet options and are therefore somewhere between willing and _thrilled_ to pay $100 a month for good service.

Exactly. The absolute fastest I can get without Starlink is a flakey WISP with ~20 down (they advertise more, but well, it's a lie). That's why I bought Starlink as soon as I could.

Metro areas aren’t the target. There is a large, underserved market that doesn’t have access to broadband internet, and for those customers this is a breakthrough.

Also while we aren't really used to this being the case with ISP's, lots of products get cheaper from when they are first offered. I think they're pricing a bit higher to start off with to just make sure they don't join the giant heap of bankrupt satellite internet companies.

It’s sad that it is even necessary in the US. Telcos were given massive amounts of money by the government with promises they would do this and then they simply didn’t and said cell phone service was good enough. I would posit that a populace educated on cell phone internet is largely responsible for the rise in intense anti-science stupidity and lack of fact checking we are experiencing. People on phones are too easy to manipulate and sway, the ad giants have mastered it.

> It’s sad that it is even necessary in the US.

Isn't it fantastic? The system of (mostly) free enterprise has created an affordable high speed service product that can be accessed anywhere on the planet.

I live in the city center of a major city and the only wired provider available at my address peaks out at 0.3 Mbit/s upload during workdays.

4G is better, but not by much (given that apparently everyone of my neighbors has already switched to that in favor of the cable provider).

One of my neighbors has already pre-ordered Starlink.

I lived downtown in a major city and my landlords had an exclusive deal with AT&T so while my neighbors were getting 400 Mb cable I was getting 15 Mb DSL.

Try to downgrade to 3G, it is in phone setting, you should get 3 Mbps easily.

Many carriers are now reducing radio bandiwdth available to 3G due to reallocating spectrum to 4G (or even 5G) so this isn't a viable long term plan.

3G is much slower than 4G on my network. Most 3G networks in my country are scheduled to be switched off in the very near future.

Isn't starlink a service aimed at areas that can't easily get the sort of internet service that's cheap to provide to metro areas (i.e. rural areas)?

Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those areas by 4G mobile phone network?

Have you seen what they do to install just a few blocks of 5G antennas? Ripping up pavement, trenching fiber and power. And that is just in a high density city.

4G does not require as dense a cell network as 5G.

My in laws live In the middle of nowhere. Their option for many years was 3G and eventually 4G. Having to visit them, 4G was just unbearable. Eventually ATT said they could just barely get 1.5Mbps down service.

That was superior to the 4G service they got. Just because it is 4G doesn’t mean it is services well and not overloaded even in rural areas.

Starlink will be the first real viable high speed connection they will have ever been able to get

My dad's house in Maine is at the very end of a DSL connection. He get up to about 1Mbps down with a tailwind--which is barely usable even for non-video. I couldn't really work from the house. (And there's essentially no cell service at all.) And the neighbors further down the road basically have nothing at all other than conventional satellite.)

Have you tried using 4G as your only connection? Even carriers that provide “unlimited” transfer typically throttle your connection after a certain amount of usage.

I use 4G as my primary Internet connection in Oslo, Norway. The apartment block where I live has a 100 years old copper line and DSL gives like 10 MBit/s with 100ms ping.

For about 90 USD/month one can get 60 MBit/s connection l both ways with ping bellow 20s. The connection is only throttled after 2 TB of data. But then you need a router and an antenna.

Or one can pay like 15 USD/month extra to upgrade the mobile subscription with 10 MBit/s connection and the throttling limit of 1TB. The ping is about 30.

I am in Europe on unlimited data plan for 35euro, it gets throttled down to 8Mbps after 600GB.

I think Starlink would give a realistic option to deploy those 4G base stations in rural areas—they need connectivity as well.

Starlink would also give a realistic option to deploy a communal ISP somewhere isolated.

You still need fiber to the towers for good connectivity. The amount of infrastructure needed to install even for 4g in remote areas is very expensive compared to these now that spacex can get the satellites up for very cheap as secondary payload with the most of the expense is borne by the primary payloads.

It would be interesting if they had a plan to promote using them as a redundant path, where the cost was lower unless you actually used it.

I doubt they'll price it that way but I'd definitely consider getting it as a backup where I live because my cable Internet is "OK" but definitely a bit glitchy and inconsistent. Especially as I've been pretty much full remote since pre-COVID I'll pay to get more reliable Internet at home.

That it's not trying to compete in the metros, and that lots of humans live outside the metros?

New York already has a subway system, why do cars exist?

I wonder how much ignorance in the world will be required, before HN stops downvoting people for asking questions?

I mean the question itself is pure ignorance and also shows a kind of lack of care of others. As one other commenter responded "New York City has subways, why do cars exist?" is the kind of question it was.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com