Starlink introduces 'data cap' of 1TB per month

[IPD]

Starlink might finally allow me to go live like a hermit in the woods.  Because picking where to live has always been a balancing act between population density hitting critical mass of full-retard....and living without basic amenities (such as internet without massive lag) from being too far removed from society (where personal freedom is paramount).

[Roswell]

On 11/8/2022 at 3:16 PM, suicidalfranco said:

took them 4 years but they are finally bringing fibre to my house in the rural part of the commune i live in.

upgrading from 100mbps to 2.5gbps. with a 12€ increase in my contract. going to 37 monthly.

 

difference between italy and north america: infrastructure was never let to devise of cable companies. In this case the fiber network is managed by a wholesale company

https://openfiber.it/en/operators/partner-operators/

 

and this is what competitions looks like

No, the main difference is that the US is like 3000% larger than Italy. Italy could essentially fit inside of Texas, we still have 49 other states and multiple territories after that.

 

You can't compare how much infrastructure and services cost where you live because it costs a fraction to build compared to the US.

[suicidalfranco]

9 hours ago, Roswell said:

No, the main difference is that the US is like 3000% larger than Italy. Italy could essentially fit inside of Texas, we still have 49 other states and multiple territories after that.

 

You can't compare how much infrastructure and services cost where you live because it costs a fraction to build compared to the US.

It scales

You also have 6 to 7 times the population, you pay a whole lot more, and won't change the fact that leaving the infrastructure to be managed by the cable companies as pretty much killed all chances of having any sort of competition and any chances of having it expand where it's still unavailable

[Dabombinable]

10 hours ago, Roswell said:

No, the main difference is that the US is like 3000% larger than Italy. Italy could essentially fit inside of Texas, we still have 49 other states and multiple territories after that.

 

You can't compare how much infrastructure and services cost where you live because it costs a fraction to build compared to the US.

Around 75% of Europe fits within Australia which means that we face the same problem as well. Which is why a service such as Starlink would be fantastic in areas not located on the east coast.

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

It scales

You also have 6 to 7 times the population, you pay a whole lot more, and won't change the fact that leaving the infrastructure to be managed by the cable companies as pretty much killed all chances of having any sort of competition and any chances of having it expand where it's still unavailable

Actually it doesn't

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

Population density in most of EU is well above what US is.  US is 186 on the list at 35 people / square km...Italy is 71 at 197 people/square km.  So lets say if you wanted the same coverage for every person you would be spending about 5x more per person.

 

The government in the US also did fund a lot of the backend stuff as well...it is at least partially a function of population density

[suicidalfranco]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

ctually it doesn't

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

Population density in most of EU is well above what US is.  US is 186 on the list at 35 people / square km...Italy is 71 at 197 people/square km.  So lets say if you wanted the same coverage for every person you would be spending about 5x more per person.

and yet the electrification of the US happened

 

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

The government in the US also did fund a lot of the backend stuff as well...it is at least partially a function of population density

it does, but it does it in what i believe to be the wrong solution: giving the money to the cable company that somewhat operates in that region. using data generated by that cable company to make decisions. and leaving the cable company decide who can or cant use the infrastructure beside them.

 

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

and yet the electrification of the US happened

Outside of Texas, most states heavily regulate power companies. For example DTE our local power company wants to raise rates, they had to seek permission to do so. Internet providers under FCC definition fall under a information service, therefore there is very will regulation on them. While some states do have some regulations on ISP's, not every state has gotten on board with doing that. 

 

8 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

does, but it does it in what i believe to be the wrong solution: giving the money to the cable company that somewhat operates in that region. using data generated by that cable company to make decisions. and leaving the cable company decide who can or cant use the infrastructure beside them.

SOME TIMES, the money does end up in the hands of people who actually care and will do upgrades and expand service. For example Local COOP's who offer internet service, WISP's. There was a guy here in Michigan who Comcast gave a $50k quote to extend internet to his home. Well this guy worked for one of the major backbone providers, he was some hot shot network guy. He managed to negotiate with a provider to get bandwidth and built his own Fiber network. The US goverment gave him grants to expand service. To be clear this is not an isolated thing, like Ive seen this story play out many times over the years. 

 

Now in my opinion all the last mile of the network should be public owned. Where the local municipality or county goverment builds it out and maintains it via tax dollars. Here in Michgian we vote on Mileage proposals to fund different things. If they want to do upgrades, let the people decide. Each county can have a local exchange where the last mile terminates and ISP's can offer services from there. People would have options for ISPs and what services they offer. But this will never happen because capitalisms also the people who live out in the sticks tend to be anti goverment everything and dont like tax dollars used for these purposes. So they vote against them essentially fucking themselves. That's why rural America is never going to have decent internet service. 

[wanderingfool2]

11 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

and yet the electrification of the US happened

 

it does, but it does it in what i believe to be the wrong solution: giving the money to the cable company that somewhat operates in that region. using data generated by that cable company to make decisions. and leaving the cable company decide who can or cant use the infrastructure beside them.

 

It doesn't change the economics of things.  For every customer you reach you have to have make about 5x more per infrastructure deployment cost.

 

Using electrification as an argument is just a whataboutism...power delivery is greatly different from things such as fibre deployment...and there are lots of places in NA that don't exactly have the best power (power spikes, brownouts, blackouts etc).

[wamred]

This kinda makes sense, I wonder how quickly the average user would run through this?

[wamred]

On 11/12/2022 at 3:07 PM, IPD said:

Starlink might finally allow me to go live like a hermit in the woods.  Because picking where to live has always been a balancing act between population density hitting critical mass of full-retard....and living without basic amenities (such as internet without massive lag) from being too far removed from society (where personal freedom is paramount).

Yeah, this has been what I have been trying to figure out for a long time. I work it IT so I want to good internet connection, but I don't want to live inside the city. So my question has always been how far out can I go while still having a good internet connection. The problem with Starlink is that it is so expensive.

[Donut417]

30 minutes ago, wamred said:

This kinda makes sense, I wonder how quickly the average user would run through this?

It’s less a concern for the average user and more a concern for families. I’ve seen our data usage go any where from 750 Gigs a month to over 1TB a month depending on the month. We have yet to hit the 1.2 TB cap from Comcast but we have come close, like over 90% data usage. 

[wamred]

6 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

It’s less a concern for the average user and more a concern for families. I’ve seen our data usage go any where from 750 Gigs a month to over 1TB a month depending on the month. We have yet to hit the 1.2 TB cap from Comcast but we have come close, like over 90% data usage. 

Ah fair enough lol

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

It’s less a concern for the average user and more a concern for families. I’ve seen our data usage go any where from 750 Gigs a month to over 1TB a month depending on the month. We have yet to hit the 1.2 TB cap from Comcast but we have come close, like over 90% data usage. 

An important thing to note though, how much usage gets done between 11pm and 7am...because you would need to factor out that from your usage.  While the usage between that time likely is minimal...at least for my family we use quite a bit during that period. e.g. watching movies on a weekend starting at 10 or 11...so half the movie is outside.  Streaming twitch until the morning.  Leaving on the PC on twitch, or watching things in the morning.

 

In general though, until we actually see reports on people who hit the cap and see what speeds you get in a congested area...we can't really judge as much.  In cases where there isn't any congestion you won't get throttled.

[ravenshrike]

On 11/13/2022 at 6:40 AM, suicidalfranco said:

It scales

 

Most population centers in interior Europe were established when horseback and river travel were the preferred methods of doing so. In the US it was Conestoga wagon, train, and car. This makes the pattern and cost of infrastructure to be VERY, VERY different.

 

Pop density maps for Europe and the US.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/10/2a/db102af9ea0a569a83a72f140ce5e963.jpg

https://popdensitymap.ucoz.ru/78.Population_density-administrative_boundaries-ma.png

[suicidalfranco]

On 11/16/2022 at 3:03 PM, ravenshrike said:

Most population centers in interior Europe were established when horseback and river travel were the preferred methods of doing so. In the US it was Conestoga wagon, train, and car. This makes the pattern and cost of infrastructure to be VERY, VERY different.

 

Pop density maps for Europe and the US.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/10/2a/db102af9ea0a569a83a72f140ce5e963.jpg

https://popdensitymap.ucoz.ru/78.Population_density-administrative_boundaries-ma.png

https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/pricing/worldwide-comparison/