this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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There are actual use cases for satellite internet. I heard from an evacuee from the Northwest Territories in Canada here that he was basically only able to get updates on what was happening—i.e. what roads weren't on fire and where evacuation centers were—because of a couple of people with starlinks. There are huge areas up there with little to no internet infrastructure, and this summer much of that was damaged in the fires.
Ground infrastructure is expensive to run out to extreme rural areas, and it's also vulnerable in different ways from satellite infrastructure. In the US, yeah, it's dense enough that ISPs mostly need to get their shit together, but there are very large areas where running a cable has a lot of problems.
You don't even have to go extremely rural to get no internet choices.
I am 20 minutes, or 15 miles, from a town of 150,000 people down 1 of the 4 major roads leading out of town. Without cellular or starlink we would have nothing.
Right, but the point is, instead of going to Starlink that taxpayer money could be used to get access to where you're at.
Comcast will take the taxpayer money, run a shit 5mbps line to the rural area, charge you out the ass for it and pocket the difference from the subsidies.