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Comment by kortilla | Hacker News Reader

> other internet providers dumping tens of thousands of satellites in orbit instead of building municipal internet

Ah yes, that municipal internet in the Pacific Ocean. The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area. The municipal internet to mountain villages. The municipal internet running to airplanes. The municipal internet to the Antarctic research stations.

Tell me you don’t know the point of satellite internet without telling me.

If you want to make arguments against sat constellations so people can make long exposure photos, go for it. But don’t pretend there are actual viable alternatives to LEO sat internet.

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Maybe it's okay for there to be places on the earth where high sped internet is not available?

Always easy to say as the person with internet on the internet where the people stuck in those locations can’t speak.

Maybe it’s okay for you to not have internet.

> The municipal internet in the 1 person per square mile rural area.

Yet that person can receive mail, is within a few miles of a major highway, and is likely connected to or close to the electric grid.

Infrastructure is expensive. LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for.

It’s cheap to deliver mail and even then many of those places don’t get mail to their home. It’s to a shared mailbox.

> LEO Satellite internet is only cheaper because the environmental cost is not being accounted for.

Terrestrial wireless and wired had decades to do something and failed. Trenching fiber for 30km is insanely expensive and requires tons of time to get easements to do it.

Also, it’s a pretty old trope to say “X only works when cost Y I’ve invented and not even quantified is not imposed”. If you want to make the argument that Starlink should pay for something, do that. Otherwise it’s meaningless crap that can be used to argue against literally anything.

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