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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

Vietnam is smaller than California with a larger population. That cell towers can be made to work is not really in dispute, it's the cost (both initial and ongoing) for reaching the increasingly sparse population areas (like Wyoming and Montana) or geographically hard-to-cover areas (like the Rocky Mountains) that make satellites more economically viable.

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Sure but between the current situation and the outskirts of Wyoming and Montana there's plenty of low-hanging fruit.

For example, my neighborhood is 1.5 mi away from gigabit internet. Good luck with that last mile and a half so Starlink it is.

The study I'm linking here says it would cost $80B to fix the current situation. That's chump change. I am so fed up with the tiny minded thinking that is trapping America in an endless loop of failure. But watch trillions materialize instantly if we have to go to war with someone again.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/striking-a-deal-to-streng...

I'm having trouble finding how much Starlink has currently cost to deploy, but per wikipedia in 2018 (yes, 4 years old):

> The cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation was estimated by SpaceX in May 2018 to be at least US$10 billion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink]

Which would be 1/8th the cost you describe (though probably more by now, I haven't found any figures yet). It also covers a larger geographic area (and therefore a larger number of people) in a shorter time than any cell tower + cable solution would, short of conscripting every possible technician in the US to accomplish the effort.

Starlink also gets to piggyback on other SpaceX launches so they aren't eating the entire launch cost themselves, it's subsidized (or can be) by their other customers. This is what I'm talking about when I say that presently it's more economically viable. It sucks about your situation (being so close to gigabit Internet without access), I've been there, too. Cable companies and ISPs in the US suck.

EDIT:

https://www.ft.com/content/4f992537-59f6-4d09-b977-c33945dba...

More recent, June 2021. Musk is expecting to spend $30 billion to cover 12 countries, and expects to have spent $10 billion before becoming cashflow positive with Starlink.

EDIT: Fixed link above, not sure why I ended up with a link to a subheading.

However, starlink isn't a product yet. It's hard to separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns out to be a practical alternative still needs practical demonstration. Or to put it another way - I'm sure you've heard of a few of the teething problems early adopters have, but it's not so clear whether those are merely small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg of nasty practical problems that will render the network uneconomical.

The idea is definitely very attractive, but it's not quite yet proven itself - and it's definitely unclear how realistic those cost guesstimates are.

What are you talking about it's definitely a product. I use it right now in my rural area (USPS doesn't even deliver here) and I'm getting 30ms latency with a 150/40 Mbps link. Rock solid for months straight even during snow storms.

And varelse, the one who I was responding to, is also using it right now. There are around 145k current users of the system. Which is certainly not enough to keep it afloat if it fails to grow in customer base, but it is a real thing being used by real people.

Yeah, that's what I meant - there's a beta out (i.e. a development tool), not a self-sustaining product. The scale is still too small; for this to be economically viable they need to show they can scale much larger and at competitive prices. I'm not saying that won't happen; but let's not go counting chickens before they hatch either.

that's not what it means to be a product. it's a beta service that's nowhere near capacity. it would be like saying a website that served a hundred people is clearly capable of providing the same service to a million.

> However, starlink isn't a product yet. It's hard to separate the hype from reality; so whether starlink turns out to be a practical alternative still needs practical demonstration

Yeah, it's a product. It's out of beta. I know people using it, I've video-chatted them for hours without a single hiccup. It's a real, practical alternative and it's here now.

> I'm sure you've heard of a few of the teething problems early adopters have, but it's not so clear whether those are merely small wrinkles, or just the tip of an iceberg of nasty practical problems that will render the network uneconomical.

I haven't, actually - the people I know using it have had it running for 5 months without any issues. The only issue I've seen online is someone's humourous photo where their cats sat on it because it's warm.

I stand corrected; I had entirely missed that!

I'd misremembered and thought that reviews such as https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/starlink were more recent; time flies ;-).

The caveat here concerning economic viability still stands, even if it's not looking bad. Without insider knowledge concerning costs it's hard to say how many customers starlink minimally needs to sustain itself, but I get the impression that that number is going to be at least in the millions. Still, that might be just one order of magnitude to go, if they're lucky.

Interesting - I'd be curious when that article was written - it states Sept 2, 2021 at the top, but towards the end of the article it mentions speeds improving to 200Mbps "as of April 12". Their experience sounds quite likely for those early days, but not at all what my relatives experienced (they got theirs in late August 2021). I think their dish placement is also poor - the app basically showed my relatives that the roof was the only place with good enough sight of the sky (they have similar amounts of trees to what's in videos on that article)

> The caveat here concerning economic viability still stands, even if it's not looking bad.

Yeah, for sure - however much you trust Elon's internal messaging, he suggested it is minimally viable as-is, needs starship to be a real moneymaker [1]

[1] https://spaceexplored.com/2021/11/29/spacex-raptor-crisis/

You say we can't wire up America, but what's your source? I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people as possible. Starlink looks like it will be half the price, but Musk has gone on record saying this is for rural areas.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/03/musk-...

Further, I was getting 150 Mb a few months back, but now I'm down to 30 Mb. This isn't a polished product yet and it's in danger of losing federal funding.

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/2021/12/starlink-download-spe...

> You say we can't wire up America, but what's your source?

I did not say that, reread what I wrote and quote where you think I said that.

> I'm not personally seeing a problem with a TVA-level engagement to bring high-speed Internet to as many people as possible.

That's basically what I was getting at with this:

>> short of conscripting every possible technician in the US to accomplish the effort.

But, sadly, it is politically not viable in the US. If it were, I suspect we would have seen such an effort (though probably not telecom focused) post 2007/2008 financial crisis. Instead, a crap ton of money was dumped into the hands of contractors to spend on infrastructure that barely went anywhere. Just like a crap ton of money has been dumped into ISPs that still can't be bothered to cover the last 1.5 miles to your home.

What I did write:

>> [Starlink] also covers a larger geographic area (and therefore a larger number of people) in a shorter time than any cell tower + cable solution would

The first part is pretty obviously true, but the parenthetical does remain to be seen. It depends on how effective the fleet actually scales with connecting additional users, and they're only at ~145k right now.

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