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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

> Starlink, which is already in black

But which isn't the business people think it is.

It is making the majority of its revenue from populated areas in wealthy countries [1].

Making it very susceptible to the improvements in the rollout of fibre which is happening in most countries. For example in Australia they are upgrading our fibre network to 1Gbps which is 10x the speed of Starlink.

[1]: https://www.satellitetoday.com/finance/2024/05/09/starlink-o...

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The US makes up a majority of their user base. My property isn’t even that rural and I doubt I’ll get fiber before 2050.

5G is much more likely. It’s just too cost prohibitive to bring fiber to most rural areas.

> For example in Australia they are upgrading our fibre network to 1Gbps which is 10x the speed of Starlink.

I don't know of anyone using Starlink in areas with fibre, only rural areas with no fibre.

In Australia for example rural areas are all being wired for fibre.

And you only need to lay fibre once and you can benefit at least for the next century if not longer as we continue to invent new ways to multiplex data.

Do you have any source on the plans for rural fibre? My parents just keep being told to be content with Sky Muster. Australia is huge, it's going to take multiple decades to build out to even a fraction of the communities.

>My parents just keep being told to be content with Sky Muster. Australia is huge, it's going to take multiple decades to build out to even a fraction of the communities.

Starlink was designed for your parents, and everyone else in that situation.

Yep, my parents are on Starlink right now and are loving it.

GP was saying that fiber is coming to all rural areas though, so I was wondering if there was any truth to it.

Personally I think anywhere that has copper right now (and my parents do have an old crusty POTS line running to their home) should be built up to fiber - if we could do it before we should be able to do it again.

We have slightly different ideas of rural areas. My parents will never get fibre, nor their neighbours. Starlink is a game changer for them all

My mother lives in a small town half an hour outside a major city and has starlink because all of the national telcos, regional fibre ISPs, or local WISPs didn't want to take on the capital expense. If it weren't for starlink they'd be using 4G hotspots for everything.

It's pathetic, so many areas got copper POTS but will never get fiber.

>In Australia for example rural areas are all being wired for fibre.

What? Thats simply not true at all. I'm guessing you don't live in Australia, or you'd realize how much rural area there is, and how ridiculous that sounds.

What is actually happening is some areas previously served by FTTN (fiber to the node) or FTTC (fiber to the curb) or other, older technologies such as coax are being upgraded to FTTP (fiber to the premise), but there are around 500,000 Australian homes and businesses served by fixed wireless (4g) and around 400,000 additional homes and businesses only served by satellite.

I am willing to be corrected, but I have not heard of any plans for the NBN to upgrade anybody currently using a wireless/statellite connection to fiber.

I live in Australia and worked for NBNCo.

The intention has always been to upgrade everyone to fibre but there is obviously a question of budget and priorities. So in the interim they will continue to align the technologies on speed as best as they can.

But you can skip the queue so to speak if you're willing to pay for it:

https://www.nbnco.com.au/learn/technology-choice-program

The bigger satellites that are coming to starlink will allow much narrower signal beams, which in turn will allow far faster speeds for the same interference-to-gso budget.

Not an either-or, if I need internet I need it, and have all manner of backups for power and internet. I added starlink to complement fiber, cable, and mobile broadband. Simply put I cannot be offline for any reason other than medical incapacitation / death

Yikes

You’ve assumed that the customers in developed nations are primarily fixed installations. Starlink is wildly popular with the rv/sailboat/second home crowd.

I also wouldn’t be betting on US terrestrial internet providers to outcompete anything.

Also people living in stealth campers (fancy converted vans with no windows), of which there are more and more every year in HCOL cities. You can only get so much data with 5G.

But will it do 1GBPs in the middle of the Gibson desert?

No one lives in the middle of the Gibson desert.

But they did run fibre through all of the regional towns in WA.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/the-nbn-project/overcoming-rol...

that will be easy

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