The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday reaffirmed its 2022 decision to deny SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies.

    • badaboomxx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      I agree. Also the issue that I have with starlink is that an any given time, if musk throws a tantrum, you could get kicked out of the internet.

    • AlternateRoute
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Can’t really help the small islands and all the shipping traffic and aircraft that have started using it and can’t benefit from a high speed connection with buried lines.

        • AlternateRoute
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          2 years ago

          There are also a lot of rural communities in Alaska, Northern Canada etc where the whole communities only option is satellite internet.

          Sure we should get it out to those areas NEAR major cities but there are huge amounts of users where the cost for that would be impractical.

          • alsimoneau
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            2 years ago

            A geosynchronous satellite makes much more sense for those use cases.

            • br3d@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              2 years ago

              Those are much much higher up, which introduces a lot of signal latency. The Starlink types are low down, which makes the Comms faster (and also means they keep burning up in the atmosphere)

              • alsimoneau
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                2 years ago

                Yeah, but the cost of low latency is thousands of satellites that burn up in the atmosphere, need to be continuously launched, are a catastrophe for optical and radio astronomy and crowd LEO, reducing available space and increasing collision risk. All for a barely scalable system.

                It’s not worth it. If you want low latency get a cable run or talk to a ground based antenna.

  • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    2 years ago

    I dislike musk, but this is a stupid decision, given how many subsidies went to shitty providers that did nothing.

      • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 years ago

        So if starlink isn’t getting the subsidy, guess whose prices are going through the roof next year?

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      2 years ago

      So get rid of those instead of giving Mr.Rightwinger more socialism that he hates so much.

    • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      Bell operating companies stretched cable out to the rural areas. That’s a lot more than nothing.

  • jmd_akbar@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 years ago

    Incoming Starlink price increases…

    “New and improved” Starlink, with lightning fast speeds upto 8mbps, now from only $1399 per month…

    /s

    • qisope@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Separating Starlink from musk as much as is possible, it’s been a great service for me.

      My only other option where I live is 20/1 DSL from CenturyLink, a company which, for me, has been far worse to deal with than Xfinity. The 20/1 service wasn’t even that fast when tested. If one device in the house managed to get a decent download going, the uplink would saturate and prevent pretty much any other traffic.

      Starlink meanwhile has been a huge improvement at 120/10 most of the time for me, and very reliable. I pay $120/month.

      There’s zero chance any service provider is going to run better corrections out to my neighborhood, the line of sight service options are not in my line of sight, and cell service is a joke.

      • ReputedlyDeplorable@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        2 years ago

        I have had a similar experience. Previously the only thing we had was a AT&T hot spot that got 10/2 in one specific window. Starlink has been a godsend allowing me to work from home. My job for the last two years has been remote tech support for manufacturing, where I have to regularly VPN into customers sites to help them get up and running again. With Starlink we get 140/15 average and only occasional drops during severe storms. But yes Musk is not a good person and we would switch to copper or fiber if it was available.

        • Patches@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          You’ll be even more to shocked that it’s often a multi-month wait and you need to pay $600 for the Satellite dish. Not including install, or mounting hardware.

          That said - it’s the best option that a lot of people have ever had. They often can use no internet, old-school satellites which is basically 56kbps, and Starlink.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          That’s literally the exact same amount I’m paying Comcast in suburbia. The speed it a little bit better most of the time but it’s not like I can make full use of it.

          If you think that price is insane, go check out the price for legacy satellite internet and the speeds/data cap they provide for it.

      • ripcord@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        It’s weird. Even in the least densely populated county (and one of the poorest), we were able to get fiber. 50/25 is pretty reasonably priced, and could go up to 250mbps if we wanted for still fairly reasonable.

        If they could do it, don’t understand why most places -except maybe the most rural western US - can’t do the same.

        • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          2 years ago

          It’s weird. Even in the least densely populated county (and one of the poorest county), we were able to get fiber.

          Just want to say that capitalism is about doing what is most profit able. That does not always mean it has to be the best service or product. This is one such example.

        • Patches@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          As a counter anecdote. I am 15 miles from a town of 150k people and I don’t have fiber, I don’t even have cable, or copper phone.

          Thankfully these days we have 4G and Starlink. Otherwise we would have nothing.