this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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It does have some downsides (orbital clutter in particular) but conceptually I agree
Orbital pollution and atmosphere pollution from the launches. All to avoid laying some fiber :/
I’d be ecstatic if ISPs laid more fiber where I live. But I’d be even happier if they laid any sort of internet cables at all to the outskirts of towns. Back where my family used to live (smaller town) there were plenty of houses on the outskirts of town that don’t have any internet unless they pay out the nose for satellite. It’s literally not worth the ISP’s money to lay any sort of cable out that way since there isn’t enough customer density for the amount of cable they’d need to lay.
The fun part is that the US tax payer already paid the ISPs to lay cable to those houses, but they just pocketed the money, didn't lay the cable, and faced no consequences.
Which is why it is the role of the government to handle that. Are there streets ? Why are there streets? They aren't worth it, right? So how come there are streets? Government can force ISP to lay the cables. "You want to lay any cable in that city? Then lay all of the cable in the region" easy
I wish. afaik in the USA, the major ISPs have been told by the government to expand internet coverage. Even got paid boatloads of money to do so. But the ISPs did jack diddly squat. So they got fined and that’s the end of the story as I know it.
Well... are streets private or public? Are you water pipes private or public? Just a little idea for public policy
Isn't capitalism great? 👍
Don't use your Chinese propaganda for that.
Almost every corner of Europe is capitalist as well, but they have better and faster (and sometimes even cheaper) internet than most of America.
It's not capitalism, it's greed and bribery.
Chinese propaganda? China is the most capitalistic countries of em all...
The government not building infrastructure and rather hand the task over to the private sector is not a problem of capitalism? Dude... It's a prime example of downsides of capitalism and it goes hand in hand with greed and bribery. Don't get me wrong because I think capitalism is a reality we live in and it has some upsides aswell.
I live in Germany and we have very bad internet compared to some eastern European country's. That's because the conservative party decided in the 80s that our internet would have to use copper instead of fiber optic cables.
20 years later we learned that decision was made because the private sector had huge interest in laying copper so they could sell cable TV.
I wonder if the launches produce more pollution overall than the facilities, trucks, excavators, and other equipment required to manufacture, lay, and maintain fiber.
Thats like saying wifi is just an excuse to avoid running some ethernet
Not really. My phone and laptop roam around the house, my house doesn't roam around the street. My router also doesn't need to be launched into space.
i wish packet radio was fast enough that we could avoid isp's altogether. not counting aredn since you need LOS to a nearby i-gate
It doesn't really clutter orbits as they will deorbit unpowered in less than a decade.
the fact that there has to be a shitton of them is the clutter. Deorbiting them after their service life doesn't change the fact that at any one point there's a fuckton of satellites up there, messing up astronomy. And this is just the first of what will probably be several constellations.
Yes but see...
The users of starlink just pay for the costs Elon had to bring those satellites up there and keep them running.
The global costs aka total costs on society will be payed by us all.