Starlink

[John_Mc]

I install Fiber for a living and trust me, there is no such thing as cheap fiber. We have all buried fiber, we don't do any aerial. Yet. In rural area's it is just cost prohibitive to get your money back in a decent amount of time. I have approximately 20 subdivisions I work in constantly. We sell our 1GB with free gateway and free installation for $65 a month all in. No contract. You can't beat that price. But the return on your money is very quick when you have a concentration of 100 homes within a 1/2 mile radius. Lots of local rural COOP's doing fiber but the up front cost for the consumer is pretty pricey. It costs a lot of money to put fiber in the ground and do the build out. So in rural areas it just doesn't make sense to plow fiber to homes 1/2 mile or further apart unless you can pass that along to the consumer and most folks wont pay for it. But they will ***** about it, that's for sure.

It made even less sense to run electricity to a lot of places in the US, but it was done. Now, at least the poles are already there. (No one seems to be putting fiber in the ground in VT, at least not in our area.)

In our case, about 2/3 of the 1.5 mile run from the nearest fiber to the edge of our property is aging copper that is not reliable even for voice calls. Every pair of wires in the run is currently in active use, with the exception of the ones that have been flagged as no good. No room for adding another house, or someone who wants a second line, or change to "bonded DSL" The phone company knows they need to replace it. A group of us at our end of the run have offered to pay the difference between the cost of running new copper and running fiber. We can't even get the phone company to respond at all, let alone agree. We hold out some slim hope that all of the federal money being dumped in to this might result in getting fiber extended out to our area.

 

[square1]

Have to hand it to Musk. So far he's delivered very little on Starlink but that isn't stopping him from starting to take orders for his new Starlink Premium service for $500 a month

 

[kcflhrc]

I think the best hope for us Rural Folks is upgraded Cellular Data. Much easier to run fiber to a single tower and then let the wireless take over. Lots cheaper than getting fiber to each home.

 

[Fixastuff]

Have to hand it to Musk. So far he's delivered very little on Starlink but that isn't stopping him from taking orders for Starlink Premium service for $500 a month

That's not what the people who have it think.....

 

[kcflhrc]

It made even less sense to run electricity to a lot of places in the US, but it was done. Now, at least the poles are already there. (No one seems to be putting fiber in the ground in VT, at least not in our area.)

In our case, about 2/3 of the 1.5 mile run from the nearest fiber to the edge of our property is aging copper that is not reliable even for voice calls. Every pair of wires in the run is currently in active use, with the exception of the ones that have been flagged as no good. No room for adding another house, or someone who wants a second line, or change to "bonded DSL" The phone company knows they need to replace it. A group of us at our end of the run have offered to pay the difference between the cost of running new copper and running fiber. We can't even get the phone company to respond at all, let alone agree. We hold out some slim hope that all of the federal money being dumped in to this might result in getting fiber extended out to our area.

I can only speak for our area and we bury everything. I'm sure other areas of the country aerial is much more prevalent but has more risk of failure than buried. Some would argue the fact that good Broadband Service is just as important as electricity, not for me. And you certainly cant have one without the other. We haven't put any new copper in the ground for years, doesn't make sense to. The fiber in the ground or in the air is a small cost to all the electronic gear it takes to light it up and make it functional. I knew going in that when I moved to the country internet service was going to suck and I just deal with it. I can get 25 meg over my AT&T Cell Data and there is nothing I cant to with that. I can access my camera system, thermostat and anything else remotely. Stream anything without buffering so it works for me. I live close enough to a major highway my LTE Speeds are pretty good.

 

[JasperFrank]

Maybe this is a very, very stupid question..... I'm okay with that, cause I love stupid questions, but why can't we run a tiny modulation on top of the Power Grid, we already have in place?

 

[kcflhrc]

Maybe this is a very, very stupid question..... I'm okay with that, cause I love stupid questions, but why can't we run a tiny modulation on top of the Power Grid, we already have in place?

It's been tried but has failed miserably

 

[JasperFrank]

Still, all it takes is a good filter, and some safety fuzzing. Why did we go this way to have so many other ways?

 

[LouNY]

It works there was not enough demand for it. Also it doesn't handle passing through transformers good.
You can get Power Line network units for home use.

 

[kcflhrc]

So in my area most homes have their own transformer dropping the voltage to 220 VAC, so not much good to anyone hence the lack of demand so pretty much worthless.