iptrans

No.

As noted, there is a significant risk of Starlink going out of business. The RDOF grants are not venture funding, and should not be used as such.

The FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund exists to bring high speed fixed broadband service to rural homes and small businesses that lack it.

I do not believe that Starlink would have excluded the areas it got subsidies for from service had it not gotten the subsidies.

Starlink must have ALL the money to launch and operate ALL the satellites it needs to become profitable. The subsidies do not even cover the cost of replacing deorbiting satellites.

> It is true that plenty of companies operate that way. However after 20 years of running companies, it is extremely safe to say that Elon does not. In fact he tends to take every scrap of money that his company is generating, finds ways to borrow or raise more, and then reinvests it into even more ambitious projects.

This is not proper use of RDOF money either.

Not quite.

The subsidy isn't large enough to pay for all the satellites they need. They have money to launch more satellites and will be doing more launches subsidy or no subsidy.

The subsidy will only go directly to their bottom line.

> The fact is, starlink is the absolute best option in quite a few places - sparsely populated, far from dense urban areas.

If it were only subsidized there. Some of the Starlink areas are next door neighbours to subsidized fiber builds.

The Hughes grant is highly questionable too. Luckily they only got about a million.

> In the age of COVID-19, any investment in ISP infrastructure is beneficial.

Not if you end up having nothing to show for it.

I am glad we agree, me being both the one you are replying to and the OP you are referring to.

For the avoidance of doubt, here's the link to the FCC RDOF auction and the relevant quote:

"... Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to bring high speed fixed broadband service to rural homes and small businesses that lack it."

https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904

> If it helps ensure the diversity of ISP competition in the US market, then yes

The US ISP market is already fairly diverse. There are some 3000 ISPs in the US.

> $886m is a bargain if it helps meaningfully with that (assuming it's not a frequent subsidy).

Aye, therein lies the rub. Starlink will require a frequent and recurring subsidy, unless it can become profitable on its own.

Each and every satellite they put up will burn up in five years.

> There is a large difference between putting up a few percent of their constellation to reach initial minimum viability and putting up enough satellites to properly cover the rest of the world (a very expensive endeavor that will take years).

Maybe Starlink should have been required to demonstrate viability before allowing it to qualify for government subsidies?

> Plus, the US Government may directly benefit in a very big way from utilizing Starlink and that may make it a bargain compared to the alternatives. If US defense contractors were building that constellation, they'd be spending ten times what SpaceX is. > > And that's before we get to the potential for intelligence gathering globally. The powers that be will be all over that, no matter what SpaceX claims to the contrary (SpaceX will have a gun to their head and will not have a choice, just as the Prism gang had no choice).

If the DoD wants Starlink then they should pay for it themselves.

I think you have misunderstood the purpose of RDOF grants.

The RDOF grants are not there to establish competition. RDOF grants exist purely for some company to provide broadband service where there is none.

If anything it's funding a local monopoly.

Riddle me this, would SpaceX not have built out Starlink if they didn't get this subsidy?

Since they already put Starlink satellites in orbit without any guarantees of subsidies, was this good use of government funds?

I find it interesting that these comparisons always pit AWS againsta colocation.

It would be much more interesting if the comparison was between AWS and dedicated servers. Dedicated servers have all the benefits of colocation, only you don't need to deal with the hardware. The DC takes care of the hardware, all you have to do it administer the server.

I find dedicated servers to be very cost effective. You can get off the shelf servers in minutes and if you need custom hardware that's only a quote away. Most providers will offer month-to-month billing, so there is no lock-in.

Often dedicated servers are even cheaper than colocation when you add up all the costs of hardware, racking, sparing, financing, etc.

> Is YouTube profitable yet?

Google doesn't disclose that. Only that Youtube have revenues of $15 billion last year.

I cannot find any hard data on their Free Space Optics technology, or anything to back up their claims.

This is rather worrying.

AFAIK Monkey Brains uses plain old radio frequencies for their wireless backhaul.

I don’t understand what your problem is? You can read, can’t you?

Google even pops up a box with the relevant information immediately. Here, let me help you if that’s too hard:

“The cost of completing the nascent fiber-optic network connecting the capital cities of Sub-Saharan Africa and the main submarine cables is modest at $316 million, based on a cost of around $27,000 per kilometer.”

And that’s just the top result. You can look up the per km cost of almost any cable system trivially.

A compromise is to use a single stage splitter PON architecture. Each ISP is provided dark fiber to the splitter and each ISP can use either splitters or WDM muxes at this flexibility point.

Oh, but you are so very wrong. And in so many places.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25037733

This is very amusing :)

It's a typical rookie mistake to confuse the cable costs with construction costs.

> And for three times that price you can get 144-count which isn't even remotely an option for subsea cables.

I know for a fact you can get 192 count subsea cable.

>> Subsea cable system costs are about 30k$ to 50k$ per kilometer.

> Including repeaters/amplifiers and power delivery?

Yes.

> Link?

  http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=subsea+cable+system+cost+per+km

> Show me a 216-count subsea cable long enough to need repeaters/amplifiers.

I know reading is hard, but repeat after me: "The reason you use 12 strands or less in long haul systems is that it is cheaper to use fewer strands and higher bandwidth rates per strand than to build high count subsea cable systems."

If you want high count subsea cable segments with amps, but which does not use in-line amps, take a look at https://crosslakefibre.ca/

To spell it out for you, subsea cables which are only a few hundred kilometers long do not require in-line amps, only head end amps.

hahahaha. Oh, wait. You're serious. Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

For your edification, look up "malicious compliance".

I'm a little bit wary of only providing layer 2 serivices to ISPs. It very easily leads to technology lock-in and other problems.

The preferred solution is to provide dark fiber and layer 2 transport, ISP's choice.

It's in the planning stage only.

> But if a subsea line is 6 fibres, you’d think they’d license one of the 288 strands on an existing run from some less else for less than that cost.

This is easier said than done.

There may not be spare strands on the route in question, or if there is, it may not be available at a reasonable cost. Remember dark fiber is an unregulated asset, nobody can force network owners to play ball.

The available terrestrial routes between the landing stations may be suboptimal.

The route between landing stations may be required to be diverse from terrestrial route.

There's a whole another level of control between owning a full route and leasing some strands in somebody else's cable.

...

And the list goes on.

> Literally the last sentence of my post is "Newer systems have a lifespan of around 25 years." What is your point?

Cable system lifespan != cable lifespan

> No this is incorrect.

How do you then explain subsea cables that have been in operation since 1989? Facts don't care about your opinions.

Not that I disagree with the listed factors that limit the lifetime of the wet plant. 25 years is a design target, not a hard limit.

Gotta love that $29.00 shipping charge. It's not like they could have afforded to offer free shipping at those prices :)

Cable systems have a design lifespan. This is usually around 25 years.

The cables themselves have a lifespan, but it's far longer than 25 years. Many cable systems have had their lifespan extended beyond 25 years, but is more of a question whether they are economically viable, rather than technically viable.

A lot of cable systems have been retired, purely because they had become obsolete and a new system was more cost effective.

Fiber optics cables themselves are very longlived, if there is no external trauma. There are cables from the 1980s still in use. It's more likely that the amps in a subsea system fail long before the cable. Once the amps start failing, it usually isn't cost effective to keep using the cable system anymore.

Submarine cables need to be marked on marine charts so that boats don't hit them with anchors and other implements.

Crossing multiple national borders is a major political undertaking.

It is far more simpler to lay a subsea cable in international waters, especially when hostile nations are concerned.

As to the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, there really are few or no alternatives, that's why there are so many cables there. It's also why Egypt makes serious bank on permits and other fees. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ships anchors and trawlers are major risks for subsea cables. Deeper is thus better.

Underwater geography is also a major consideration. It's not just the going up and down, it's the risk of landslides, tectonic shifts, volcanoes, currents and icebergs scraping the ocean floor.

On top of that are geopolitics and enviromental concerns.

The cable landing stations provide DC power for the repeaters from both directions. The power requirements are substantial and use thousands of volts.

All the components of the subsea cable system are engineered with reliability in mind. None of the components are to require maintenance over the lifetime of the system. This means components are expected to operate 20 to 25 years at a minimum.

A submarine cable can't just connect two end points by the great circle route. A cable route has to consider subsea geographics and geopolitics. This includes volcanoes and congress. Either one can be a big obstacle.

Facebook is responsible for about 8% of all Internet traffic. They need subsea cables to connect their datacenters and to deliver traffic to end users.

Adding to the above, Starlink doesn't have but a fraction of the bandwidth of a single wave in a single fiber optic strand.

Starlink just can't carry the bandwidth needed to connect the planet. The theoretical throughput of the whole Starlink constellation is equal to just a single subsea cable system.