this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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It's probably the most wasteful way of providing internet imaginable since they have to send satellites up by the dozen every year for them to burn in the atmosphere only several years lates. Yeah I don't think it's a good business model at all, especially considering they haven't been able to turn a profit and rely on subsidies.
Yet many towns where I live saw broadband, yes, broadband, not fiber, for the first time in their life thanks to Starlink. It's easy to talk when coming from a place of privilege.
I would not be able to live where I am without starlink. There isn't even cell signal for 14 km...
I don't like that some portion of the money I'm paying goes towards his insanity. But I put up with it to live in a peaceful forest and continue my job.
Demand more of your local government instead of pulling the privilege card.
The government keeps giving money to traditionally ISPs to expand broadband and they simply lie and say they did to take the money. It's private industry fucking us just as much.
I'm not disagreeing, but who can stand up against corporate bullying? The government. Make the government do it. The corporate world gets away with it because the politicians turn a blind eye because they're not held accountable because not enough people stand together. People have bled for the rights that "privileged" people have, it didn't come free.
It's it really a privilege to live in a city? Sounds more like a choice than privilege. Your choice has consequences and the further you live from the other people, the more problems you'll have with certain infrastructure like water, power, internet.
But I can build my own power and water infra. And I have. I can't build my own connection to the internet, which I need to have in order to make money to do the rest of what it takes to live.
What's your point?
That starlink solves the remaining piece of missing infra that a normal person needs, regardless of the choice to live in a city or not. Even if the CEO is a blight on our species.
Starlink only has a business as long as other ISP's do nothing for rural homes.
Once they do, and they will, Starlink is dead.
I would cherish that day!
It will probably happen if this capitalist wet-dream mellows a bit and government is incentivized to provide their own internet infra regardless of profit. But I am 45 and will probably be long decomposed by then.
But in the near-term - I can't see any land-based ISP covering where I live.
The cost to run 15km of lines to town, when even power poles don't exist, just to service me and the one other nutter who decided to live up here would be prohibitive even for govt funded public internet.
If ISPs weren't greedy bastards that don't care the slightest about their users and gave everyone fiber then yeah, it's wasteful. Sadly, for a lot of people in rural and inaccessible areas and on sea, it's the only way to access internet.