Starlink Thread (split from SpaceX)

[YNM]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Who would pay for it for a few hundred houses? The ground here is also rather full of rocks. Large rocks (I have a few inside my house, actually—like in this room behind me, lol). Digging is expensive.

Are the electric lines to your house buried or overground ? Ours used to be completely overground, only in recent times have the main 3-phase distribution moved underground (but the last 1-phase is on poles).

The telephone lines and the internet lines just follows that.

[tater]

All buried.

[YNM]

1 minute ago, tater said:

All buried.

If I'm being honest I don't get the need to bury everything these days either...

Then again our housing complex are mostly wall-to-wall buildings so it doesn't look any much worse with cables on top of our heads.

[CatastrophicFailure]

2 minutes ago, YNM said:

Maaaybe make the chance non-zero.

Legislations, legislations...

Unlikely. I once caught a lineman at a gas station during a really bad power outage, don’t worry, I let him go again, Had a very interesting conversation about why, in a place like this that’s known for its trees just as much as its wind, are utility lines still run exposed on poles that are so vulnerable to said wind and trees? Long story short, it’s actually better here. Burying power (internet) lines is expensive, and while problems are much less likely to occur then, when they do occur, they are much much harder just to find, let alone dig up and repair. Where I am, we’re never going to see a mass burial of utility lines, not without a massive suburbanization effort, which would meet a resistance bourn upon the fury of hell itself and would see any such proponents literally tarred and feathered, then maybe set alight. 

As such, we will always have power outages during windstorms, which will always bring internet outages with them. The local phone company has buried fiber, if you’re lucky, but I rate them below even Comcast, and if you’ve any familiarity with the latter that should tell you something. Even if completion could acquire the land rights to bury more fiber, it’s an inherently limited thing in an inherently limited market, so we’ll never see any real competition unless it comes from above. 

There are millions out there in a similar situation, and we like our rural living, we don’t want suburban subdivisions. We are the target market of these megaconstellations, not the cities and suburbs, at least not yet. One way or another, these constellations are coming, we’d all better figure out how to coexist now, while such things are much easier to do. Yes, there are problems with megaconstellations but they are solvable problems. 

10 minutes ago, tater said:

I have a few inside my house, actually—like in this room behind me, lol)

Pix or it didn’t happen. 

[YNM]

1 minute ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

There are millions out there in a similar situation, and we like our rural living, we don’t want suburban subdivisions. We are the target market of these megaconstellations, not the cities and suburbs, at least not yet. One way or another, these constellations are coming, we’d all better figure out how to coexist now, while such things are much easier to do. Yes, there are problems with megaconstellations but they are solvable problems. 

... and I live on an island 1000 km long with 150 million inhabitants on it yet somehow we have a dozen active volcanoes on the same place and we still can go and visit a village and rice paddies.

Also I'm pretty sure the US have spent a lot of money in the past making roads to nearly all that exist on their continent. Can't see why they can't replicate it with a cable or two.

[CatastrophicFailure]

3 minutes ago, YNM said:

... and I live on an island 1000 km long with 150 million inhabitants on it yet somehow we have a dozen active volcanoes on the same place and we still can go and visit a village and rice paddies.

Also I'm pretty sure the US have spent a lot of money in the past making roads to nearly all that exist on their continent. Can't see why they can't replicate it with a cable or two.

Your island is smaller than my one state, with less than 8 million people living here. When you have that kind of population density it greatly changes how you can do things. Burying cables is expensive, and brings other issues, to only serve a very small market. The legislature can’t just wave a magic wand and make that less so, at least not without introducing... other problems. There’s a scant 50k people on my island, most of them clumped on one end. The rest of us literally can’t even get a pizza delivered, to say nothing of reliable internet. 

[YNM]

4 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Your island is smaller than my one state, with less than 8 million people living here. When you have that kind of population density it greatly changes how you can do things. Burying cables is expensive, and brings other issues, to only serve a very small market.

What I was saying is that it's probably possible to properly do the cables even over the ground to withstand the forces they will be facing. Granted we have no strong winds and stray trees have brought down half the island's electricity once but it's not something you solve merely with tunneling - probably better design, construction and maintenance.

Probably cheaper than tunneling, too.

Also maybe do the cable works (if you still want them underground) with when they redo the road.

We're only a backwater 3rd world country most of the time, but we have done things that barely means a jump to something satellite-based (apart from the remote islands but the gov't are looking over them very closely).

Edited May 8, 2021 by YNM

[tater]

16 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Pix or it didn’t happen. 

Spoiler

 

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

@YNM What I’m saying is, it’s not worth the cost. No provider is willing to put up the kind of money that would require, let alone ford the local bureaucracy (“if you do X you must also do Y, and pay for it, because reasons”) and fight the inevitable NIMBYs who want nothing different ever ever. It’s just not worth it for the tiny market they could serve. You’ve also got a tax base of 150m people to subsidize rural fiber for pennies, we don’t. 

[YNM]

8 minutes ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

You’ve also got a tax base of 150m people to subsidize rural fiber for pennies, we don’t. 

You're making on average 5 times as much too (purchasing power parity, nominally you're making 15 times more than us on average).

 

Although I'm not just directing this to the US. Honestly I don't get why China even needs something similar, since they're willing to build so much more land-based infrastructure stuff anyway as well. Surely providing internet on the ground is an OK thing with them.

Edited May 8, 2021 by YNM

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, tater said:

The ground here is also rather full of rocks. Large rocks (I have a few inside my house, actually—like in this room behind me, lol).

Let me guess... Either you have a round door, or the password is "melon".

So, why do you want that Starlink? Is the palantir not good enough?

[SOXBLOX]

I'm pretty sure that here in the States, and at least for electric lines, you have to pay for installation. So, if you build a house in the sticks, and the nearest supply is two miles away, you get to pay for two miles of lines and poles. Maybe there are government programs to help you out, but I think that's how it works...

So, for those who are scattered all over Appalachia or the Midwest, Starlink internet is probably a great deal.

[tater]

2 hours ago, SOXBLOX said:

I'm pretty sure that here in the States, and at least for electric lines, you have to pay for installation. So, if you build a house in the sticks, and the nearest supply is two miles away, you get to pay for two miles of lines and poles. Maybe there are government programs to help you out, but I think that's how it works...

So, for those who are scattered all over Appalachia or the Midwest, Starlink internet is probably a great deal.

There are no poles here. I'd have to pay for a few miles of cutting a trench in the roads, laying fiber/whatever, and repaving. A google shows that buried fiber is ~$173,000 per mile. I'm maybe 4 miles from a CO?

Edited May 9, 2021 by tater

[YNM]

1 hour ago, SOXBLOX said:

I'm pretty sure that here in the States, and at least for electric lines, you have to pay for installation.

I honestly never get this part. You don't pay for your roads upfront anyway, instead opting for long-term payments basically, and it's not like people don't need roads so they could go without one. Same should go to electricity, phone lines, internet cables perhaps in the future...

That being said when we redo the road in front of our house to raise it we did it through the whole length of the neighborhood (~40 houses for 175 m of road), everyone paying equal shares. Doesn't end up costing a lot, we get it raised and it's holding well for the past 10 years.

Edited May 9, 2021 by YNM

[NFUN]

1 hour ago, tater said:

There are no poles here. I'd have to pay for a few miles of cutting a trench in the roads, laying fiber/whatever, and repaving. A google shows that buried fiber is ~$173.000 per mile. I'm maybe 4 miles from a CO?

less than a thousand dollars for fiber seems pretty reasonable compared to what you'll be paying for starlink

[tater]

Just now, NFUN said:

less than a thousand dollars for fiber seems pretty reasonable compared to what you'll be paying for starlink

LOL, typo.

(that or I'm really obsessive about tenths of a cent )

 

[Terwin]

22 hours ago, YNM said:

That being said when we redo the road in front of our house to raise it we did it through the whole length of the neighborhood (~40 houses for 175 m of road), everyone paying equal shares. Doesn't end up costing a lot, we get it raised and it's holding well for the past 10 years.

And when 10 of those houses don't want to pay, three of which prefer it the way it is and sue you to leave it alone?

The lawsuits and permitting often cost more than construction, especially when you are talking about messing with someone's view/property.

The US is the most litigious country in the world, and NIMBY is very big here.

[YNM]

7 hours ago, Terwin said:

And when 10 of those houses don't want to pay, three of which prefer it the way it is and sue you to leave it alone?

Nah. It was practically the whole neighborhood (Rukun Tetangga/RT). It wasn't something one person (or the head of the unit) came up in an impulse, it was well talked for a long time before, then people start putting in their ideas and contribution. Making sure there are spaces for people's cars and vehicles etc. as well. When the work was carried out it was done in under a week.

Same thing with when we repaired the whole front access road, four of the Rukun Warga/RW simply pooled money and did it. The local subdistrict (kelurahan) had some share I think, as well as two of the politicians in the neighborhood.

The other option is having your house flooded and the road flooded and you can't go anywhere much, at least once a year. Everyone has had to raise their own house in the intervening time.

Edited May 10, 2021 by YNM

[RCgothic]

Visorsats have been a big improvement over v0.9. Comparison to OneWeb.

[tater]

 

[tater]

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

On 5/10/2021 at 10:32 AM, YNM said:

kelurahan

Officially learned a new word today. 

Thumbs up! 

 

100k terminals at $100 per month? 

Niiise

Edited August 24, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

https://www-rbc-ru.translate.goog/technology_and_media/29/12/2021/61cc28eb9a7947f640a936a0?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru

VTB (Vneshtorgbank) will invest 2 bln RUR (~27 mln USD) in the new project of Megafon (one of major mobile phones operator), "Megafon 1440".

The own Megafon satellite constellation should provide the worldwide communication and internet.

[StrandedonEarth]

 

[CatastrophicFailure]