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Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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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.
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.
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.