Seems a good opportunity for Starlink to get some RDOF funds
Current internet service there is provided by Frontier Communications. They offer "advertised" speeds of 6 Mbps but for years my parents internet came in around 1 or 2 on a good day. Service is abhorrent and they are still using phone lines that will likely never be replaced. They've taken serious advantage of the state of WV and even after a class action lawsuit in 2015 that they settled on I doubt it will ever improve.
My parents finally got starlink setup ~3 months ago, it's around 100 mbps (roughly 100x as fast) and way more reliable even though it's satellite.
It's nice to have Starlink as an intermediary solution for rural people while the "fiber everywhere" approach takes slow adoption.
Contrast that to a fiber system which has very few active parts.
I'd imagine that coaxial cable still dominates in many places because it was installed in the 1980s and 1990s. When the cable company wants to upgrade the system it is cost-effective to replace the uppermost nodes of the network with fiber and still leave coax for the last half mile.
I know a rural "cable" company that today runs fiber optic plant in communities with favorable economics. Their primary product is an analog cable signal that is exactly what goes over the coax just modulated on a light beam. It's an economical and reliable system now and it is straightforward to upgrade to GPON or more advanced technologies in that future.
For instance if there is a phone company with a copper plant that can charge $60 a month for DSL it is obviously unaffordable for them to upgrade to fiber so they can charge $70 a month.
Some other entity might find the new plant is worth investing in but it still fights against the old plant. For instance the phone company is making crazy profits on $60 a month DSL and can probably still make profits on $40 a month DSL. This puts a downward pressure on pricing for a fiber service and also means the fiber plant is going to bypass many possible subscribers because there are plenty of people who will put up with a 100x drop in performance to save a few dollars.
This book
https://www.commentary.org/articles/leslie-lenkowsky/the-zer...
works an interesting case study that was fundamental to the Democratic party becoming advocates for free trade. In particular, the steel industry in the US in the 1970s still depended on open hearth furnaces that were obsolete in every way to the basic oxygen furnaces used in Germany and Japan.
From a marxist perspective, capital is the "master class", maybe even the capital itself (as opposed to the capitalist), embodied in those furnaces. Instead of replacing the furnaces, the US steel industry pursued protectionism which was harmful to the competitiveness of other sectors of the economy: inferior and expensive steel is an ingredient for inferior and expensive cars, buildings, etc.
To analogize, however, the problem is that the copper phone network exists. So long as it exists there are strong incentives to keep using it. It might not be a problem of encouraging investment in fiber as much as forcing disinvestment in copper.
Utilities may have been buried 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago or more. Without regard to future access, changes or modifications.
Here in south-eastern Canada we were some of the first to be in the Starlink coverage area. From what I hear it's doing well not fantastic but better than up to x speed which always seems to end up being less than 1MBps. Luckily I am in a town with lots of options but still the cost is high $100/month for 350Mbps.
Setting aside Musk's abrasive personality, any typical satellite Internet issues, orbital clutter, escalating costs, it's at least something. Internet access is more than just for entertainment these days.
While I live in a suburb now, my last home I moved out of in 2016 was 2M/256k wireless internet, that was $60/month, and only 5-6 miles south of downtown Madison, WI.
Between Starlink and the 5G home connections t-mobile and verizon have been selling lately, its going to be interesting that Rural locations will suddenly see good internet choices. I may be able to finally buy a place in the middle of no-where. Working from home has made that not possible previously.
Street side pedestals wrapped in plastic garbage bags and such.
What you've got there is probably dialtone POTS copper phone wiring that was installed in the 1960s to 1980s at a very long loop length from where the DSLAM is installed. And wet, dirty connections, noisy with crosstalk.
Until they come up with a firm financial commitment to overbuild their legacy POTS dialtone copper phone wiring outside plant with singlemode fiber it's only going to get worse.
It's public knowledge that they intend to launch a lot more satellites before that, so they are probably counting on that to help them.
Yeah, but they also want to substantially increase the number of subscribers. It seems a shame to add capacity and not users just to get a cheque from the government for hitting some arbitrary numbers. IIRC they could have bid for a lower speed target that they would probably be hitting today.
... I think they will be doing both. They currently have ~2500 sats in the ~53° constellation. The V2 system that has been approved and is targeting similar latitudes has 3 times the sats, and each sat is claimed to support 9 times the bandwidth of the current ones. So if they need to triple bandwidth per user, they can still increase subscriber count 9-fold and meet it.
I too am curious with how far they can push performance though. I've got a hunch that it has something to do with balancing satellites, users and regional coverage, but only time will tell if they make good on their promise. Even if things stay the same as they are right now though, there's nothing else that comes close in my area.
I don't think 10 people has anything to do with a single household but maybe I'm just an out-of-touch liberal coastal elite. But seriously, one person can use around 25 Mbps which is why there's discussion of defining broadband to be 100 Mbps per household.
The RDOF performance requirements are much more subtle than just average speeds though, there's details about percentiles and time of day and the like. I'm hopeful someone is being thoughtful at the FCC
- Others will end up shipping rebranded/white-label versions of Starlink
- Starlink will provide backhaul to others in hard to reach places. Then they'll set up their microwave or 5G based off of that connectivity. (but wouldn't the first option just be easier?)
But is it cheaper to ignore your rural obligations, pocket the money and incur the fines than it is to enter into a contract with your competition?
Somewhat reminiscent of how Tesla took advantage of zero-emissions credits from legacy auto manufacturers that didn't want to (or couldn't) produce their own zero-emissions vehicles.