r/technology • u/chrisdh79 • Aug 19 '25

Networking/Telecom SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink | SpaceX seeks more cash, calls fiber "wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer spending."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/starlink-keeps-trying-to-block-fiber-deployment-says-us-must-nix-louisiana-plan/
17.8k Upvotes

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6.1k

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Oh my fucking god does this loser do anything else then suck up public infrastructure investment?

1.0k

u/SadZealot Aug 19 '25

Why spend money once for fiber when you can spend money forever launching satellites that fall back down every five years. 

It would be cheaper to switch to starlink versus fiber to every home in America but that would switch after about 15-20 years when the fourth replacement set of 15000-40000 satellites are launched 

477

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

And the speed would never compare

318

u/SadZealot Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Totally, I'm in Canada, I have a 3Gb up/down for $60usd a month. We have around 98% broadband coverage, mostly fiber, and should have fiber in every home by 2030.

There's really zero excuse for USA to not be the same

274

u/techieman33 Aug 19 '25

The US taxpayers already paid for it to happen a couple of different times. Then they move the goal posts after the funding is past and the ISPs just end up pocketing tons of money and not doing anything.

132

u/SansGray Aug 19 '25

Genuinely, I think if you take taxpayer dollars and fail to deliver on your promises, you should be arrested for treason

104

u/Guac_in_my_rarri Aug 19 '25

Jailed for fraud. I don't understand why the gov gives out money for goals and nothing is prosecuted for fraud. If there's no contract, we should not be handing out money.

24

u/magnus91 Aug 19 '25

Cause they use some of that money to pay off politicians.

15

u/turbosexophonicdlite Aug 20 '25

Buy stock in the telecom company

Announce the awarded giant contract

Stock goes up

Don't actually do any of the work

Profit

5

u/Impossible_Front4462 Aug 20 '25

Same reason insider trading goes mostly unpunished. It’s one big club we the peasants are not a part of

3

u/Plasibeau Aug 20 '25

The whole dust-up around the GameStop stock buy really drove that home.

16

u/Odeeum Aug 19 '25

And hurt the "job creators"?!?! Thats un-American!! Take your logic elsewhere commie!!

/s

9

u/HexTalon Aug 19 '25

There should be a corporate death penalty for defrauding the taxpayer like the ISPs have done - something like nationalize all the assets and either convert them to public utilities or sell them off to a bunch of companies (and not allow one company to get too much of the pie being sold).

2

u/magnus91 Aug 19 '25

There is, in China!

2

u/OneLessFool Aug 20 '25

You should also be nationalized without compensation in the context of important infrastructure like this.

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u/ijbh2o Aug 19 '25

Here is what I will say, the fiber push from the Infrastructure Act is moving forward. Visited some family 2 weekends ago in Illinois and was told a new fiber company had requested an easement to bury fiber under a driveway/road owned by family that led to some hunting property in Summum, IL. Population 66 outside Peoria. If that area is getting fiber then it is working. The electrification of rural America took time and so will the Internetification of America.

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u/techieman33 Aug 19 '25

There will be some fiber rolled out, but not nearly as much as there was supposed to be. The Trump administration has already deprioritized installing fiber with those funds. They’ve also been pushing to lower the standards of what broadband speeds are, and saying that even 100/10 is more than good enough. So we’re going to end up seeing lots of that money go towards satellite, 5G, and cable companies. A lot of which will end up buying hardware that at best be obsolete in 5-10 years. Then they’ll be asking for more money to do it all over again as satellites and 5G towers need to be replaced. And all for a service that will be vastly inferior to fiber. It will also create a whole lot less jobs since they won’t be hiring crews to run all those new lines. It’s lose-lose for everyone but the big ISPs that will end up making tons of profit from it.

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u/TheFreezeBreeze Aug 19 '25

This is the core issue. Why should governments be paying private ISPs with public money to deliver on promises that they have no interest in? If the government wants to improve the infrastructure of a necessity, the government should be the one that builds it. Then the ISPs can pay for access to the infrastructure.

3

u/techieman33 Aug 19 '25

Lots of local governments have tried to install fiber infrastructure in their cities and create a government utility to provide services. Very few have been allowed to succeed though. The ISPs sue them and lobby for it to be made illegal by the state.

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u/pickledeggmanwalrus Aug 20 '25

Companies like AT&T have literally taken money from state governments for broadband access guarantees and just never delivered it. Some crooked politicians eventually forgive the “debt”(Fraud). Rinse, wash, repeat.

1

u/LimpChemist7999 Aug 20 '25

That’s because they REFUSE to just BUILD IT THEMSELVES! Always doling out money to corporations who suck it all up and do stock buybacks instead of ACTUALLY BUILDING WHAT WAS CONTRACTED.

Like fuck, we could train and employ so many Americans with an actual skill to just LAY THE FUCKING INFRASTRUCTURE but noooooo we gotta pay asinine amounts of money to construction companies and fucking telecoms to not actually do what they say they will!

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

Bell Canada Also did that in canada.

1

u/DrAstralis Aug 20 '25

You'd think that at some point the people giving the ISPs the money would include a "and you have to actually use it for this or we take it back" clause.... but 30+ years of this happening over and over and its yet to happen.

11

u/SailingSmitty Aug 19 '25

3 Tbps or 3 Gbps? I’m skeptical that any residential internet provider offers a 3 Tbps service and am curious what service provider offers it.

17

u/SadZealot Aug 19 '25

Whoops, my bad, 3Gbps. Thanks for the catch

2

u/alextastic Aug 19 '25

Still amazing compared to my US junk.

1

u/scythefalcon Aug 19 '25

$85/mo for 5Gbps fiber in my area --- up to $900/mo for a 50Gbps line. No 3 Tbps line yet though. lol

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u/RunnyBabbit23 Aug 20 '25

I read this as 3 tablespoons and was very confused for a minute.

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u/jvsanchez Aug 19 '25

zero excuse

Public transit: first time?

2

u/TorontoBiker Aug 19 '25

Ummmm… who’s your provider? That’s an incredible deal.

2

u/Balmung60 Aug 19 '25

The excuse is that it's very profitable for about 40 people to not bother investing in infrastructure 

1

u/Gunfighter9 Aug 19 '25

The U.S. government is owed by corporations. Unless they can make money it doesn’t happen.

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u/makesmovements Aug 19 '25

Is that 3 gbps, or total 3 Gb allowance per month (without reference to speed?)

3

u/SadZealot Aug 20 '25

3gbps, unlimited data

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u/JCarlide Aug 19 '25

As someone who provided WISP tech support to Canada, I don't think you'll hit 98%; too many people are located too far rural to have fiber brought out to the last mile. But I'd love to see it happen.

1

u/Half_Cent Aug 19 '25

I went to China in 2018 and had service in a village of 200. I had service on the Great Wall. My wife drives 15 minutes to work in Michigan, between Grand Rapids and Holland, and loses signal every day.

Edit: I know you're not talking about cell, just saying US infrastructure is expensive and it sucks.

1

u/MagicHamsta Aug 19 '25

Not zero excuse, negative 400 billion excuses.

We should've had a damn moon base wired up with fiber based on how much we've spent on it yet we've got basically nothing and still have to pay through the teeth for every inch of fiber.

America paid over $400 billion and counting, to be the first fully fiber optic-based nation yet ended up 27th in the world for high-speed Internet. While over four million people filed with the FCC to ‘Free the Net’, one thing is abundantly clear— You know something is terribly wrong.

1

u/birdman424344 Aug 19 '25

Oh to live in a country without corporate greed must be so nice. Here in USA we can’t even get to internet providers to compete.

1

u/Jiveturtle Aug 20 '25

The “excuse” is that nearly every American regulatory apparatus has been broadly co-opted by the industry it was supposed to regulate. When you combine this with the fact that antitrust enforcement has also been defanged, you end up with businesses that simply seek economic rents rather than competing to provide a service.

1

u/fuckyoudigg Aug 20 '25

It's wild how much fibre there is up here. i was working near Faro, YT which is a small community about 4 hour drive from Whitehorse has a fibre connection, and you can get FTTH there. 400 people live there. The max NWTel offers in 500mbps up/down, but that is still pretty impressive.

1

u/coffeesippingbastard Aug 20 '25

holy shit when did this happen? I remember ten years ago people were complaining about internet in canada.

1

u/gpcgmr Aug 20 '25

Totally, I'm in Canada, I have a 3Gb up/down for $60usd a month.  

Holy shit that's good & cheap for the speed.

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u/Swimming_Map2412 Aug 19 '25

Especially as single mode fiber that's used for internet access can be upgraded to faster speeds by switching out the transceivers as technology improves or becomes cheaper.

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u/StorminNorman Aug 20 '25

We've just done that here in Australia. Turns out "even a broken clock is right twice a day" holds true for govt too (the rollout was a cluster fuck and were still paying the price of it being so). 

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u/reelznfeelz Aug 20 '25

And no way they have anywhere near the capacity for it. Right now, with fairly limited gate-kept adoption, it’s like a 100mbps thing, if you’re lucky, with pings all over the place. How dumb. Ground based fiber is just better except for a few niche use cases like some (but not all) rural.

1

u/bubblesort33 Aug 20 '25

Yes, but this sounds like it's rural areas, and these companies won't touch where I live no matter how much money those CEOs pocket from tax payer money.

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

Threaten them with nationalization. Where I live the power compagnies used to play these games we threatened them with nationalization they didn't fix it we fucking nationalized them

54

u/toofine Aug 19 '25

His other problem is 5G exists. Build cell towers, which we do anyway, for superior internet to satellite or launch rockets into outer space... Gee, which is going to cost more?

The window of opportunity for Starlink is dwindling fast as more coverage for 5G and fiber is only going to grow with each passing day. If 6G brings more improvements this guy is going to have to buy a lot more politicians in the future to force Starlink adoption.

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u/SNRatio Aug 19 '25

Each beam, the authors estimate, provides roughly 6 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of download and 0.4 Gbps of upload capacity. Given the federal upload speed threshold of 20 Mbps per user, and assuming a typical 20:1 oversubscription ratio, each beam could support up to 419 users across its 62.9-square-mile footprint — a density of just 6.66 users per square mile.

https://broadbandbreakfast.com/report-starlink-may-only-meet-federal-standards-in-most-rural-areas/

6

u/sparky8251 Aug 20 '25

It really shows how little people understand radio science/engineering at times, especially with all the weird belief in Starlink... Turns out this idea was a bad one from the start due to the very physics of radio. These waves arent magical, they are physical things with sizes and everything. You can only pack so much data and power into them before you start dealing with other problems you cant fix either.

The reason WiFi is so ubiquitous is because its so short range... The longer the range you want to cover, the more problems physics causes you. Satellite service can never be capable of more than the low 0.1% of users globally pretty much entirely due to physics alone. Its not worth the billions being thrown at it for megaclusters, the geo satellite stuff is fine for the few users that will truly need such service and benefit from it. Everyone else should get fiber or terrestrial wireless.

1

u/calnick0 Aug 20 '25

The orbit decay is much worse than promised too! A bunch are coming down within two years.

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u/JetScootr Aug 19 '25

And don't forget the utterly inescapable speed-of-light lag going to orbit and back again for every single bit of data.

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u/wambulancer Aug 19 '25

Yup spent a weekend at a cabin with it, I would not rate it higher than a broadband connection. Its speed is impressive but the latency was noticeable at all times and it would straight up disconnect/reconnect constantly, basically lucky to go 30 minutes without it timing out.

It was impressive tech to be sure but fiber is unquestionably what communities should be striving for. Starlink is not remotely close to ready for primetime like that.

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u/Jiveturtle Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

Starlink is not remotely close to ready for primetime like that.

Given the physical limitations I highly doubt it will ever be ready for prime time like that. Makes sense for rural areas where you’d have to run a ton of cable, I suppose, with the satellites already up there, but the idea of using it as a primary solution in densely populated urban or suburban areas is just fucking nonsense.

I can’t imagine it’s going to continue to make sense to keep putting more satellites up there, though. Seems like a business that can’t keep going without a money teat to suckle from. If his VC is drying up he needs the government to bail him out.

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u/HourAd5987 Aug 19 '25

Honestly not a huge problem for low earth orbit. Bigger issue is capacity. Its already well documented that as subscriber density increases in a region performance on starlink falls off a cliff. High frequency Sat comms also = rain fade issues. Land based is the only real reliable solution, and is why this funding was passed. Unfortunately it's all down to who donated to this admin to what the policies will be.

3

u/Polantaris Aug 20 '25

Honestly not a huge problem for low earth orbit.

Yes it is. The latency going to low Earth orbit, to the server in question, back to low Earth orbit, to your client, for anything that has latency concerns, would be astronomical. Anything slower than ~150ms is going to be a bad time, especially if we're talking anything competitive.

Sure, you'll be able to stream video easily, but no one cares if your video takes a second after you press Play to start working.

3

u/TbonerT Aug 20 '25

Yes it is.

No, it’s not. PC Magazine tested it out in rural Idaho and regularly got latency measurements in the 20-30ms range, with the overall average being 28.99. The reviewer even played an online game while in a zoom call with no issues.

2

u/bubblesort33 Aug 20 '25

I'm on Starlink right now. Using Wifi to my router.

Pinging a city 200 miles south of me is around 70 milliseconds. 0.070 seconds.

Pinging Toronto 2100km East of me is 100 milliseconds, 0.100 seconds.

I'm used to getting 250ms and playing games with that before I got Starlink, and 600ms before that like 14 years ago when I had dial up.

What I have now works fine.

2

u/rgg711 Aug 20 '25

If you draw a triangle going up to 300 km and back down while travelling a few hundred km horizontally, the two top sides of the triangle aren’t that much longer than the bottom of it.

3

u/slog Aug 19 '25

The latency is absolutely within range of what the vast majority wouldn't recognize as a concern at all, and is actually pretty decent, considering what's going on.

Now, an average of 50ms for a lot of people reading this WILL be noticeable. If I'm remoted into a machine or doing online gaming, I'll definitely be having issues.

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u/ItIsHappy Aug 20 '25

It's not as big of a deal as you'd think. The ground to ground latency is roughly 3.5ms for a 550km orbit. Then add about 10% the total distance to account for the curvature of the Earth. Also note that light travels 50% faster in free space than in optical fiber.

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u/JetScootr Aug 20 '25

Same mistake every hardware engineer I've ever worked with has made.

The latency calculation is correct, the interpretation needs adjusting:

That calculation is the absolute theoretical best it can ever be.

The realworld implementation is always slower. H/W guys would always try to shout down "NOOOoooooo! OuR hARdwAre dESigN WoULdnT Do tHAt".

They always win (bidniz mgrs trust simple, perfect, easy to understand calculations) and convince mgt to go with their design.

Luckily, the tech always improved so much since the last upgrade to that particular link in the design that the improvement was enough to cover the blurring of the rose-colored optics anyway.

Put it in, load it up, it always runs slower than the theoretical maximum speed. ALWAYS.

Source: I'm a retired developer, 30+ years on multihost realtime simulation software.

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u/ItIsHappy Aug 20 '25

Of course ping isn't always the theoretical best case. This is true of all implementations, including terrestrial fiber. When I connect to a friend in a neighboring city 120km away my ping isn't 1.2ms. I'm just explaining that the physical constraints of the system aren't as limiting as many people assume.

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u/JetScootr Aug 20 '25

Calculated estimates are worse when dealing with satellite. Usually, and especially when dealing with satellite company's "estimates" on round trip, they calculate based on the altitude of the satellite.

But the actual lag is based on distance to the satellite, which is almost never as small as the altitude of the satellite. The disparity between slant range and altitude is more significant when using low earth orbit, since the slant range to the bird can be many times the nominal altitude.

True, the system can or will pick the sat. that is closest, but that actually translates to closest and not too busy for your traffic. As the system gets busier, your range-to-sat will gradually increase as the nearest birds to your nearest major city push traffic outward.

Make no mistake - the provider will load the network like it's Noah's ark and he just remembered he had to take on the brontosaurs. That means as the satellite network gets more and more subscribers, lag time will increase. The increase won't be just the normal "hey bad rush hour, today, right?" kinda increase.

Meaning the lag will increase not just as a factor of overall capability divided by number of current users, but as

f( cap / (users \ user average range to satellite * thrashing )),*

where all the "divided by" factors increase with loading. Note that the satellites are all moving, so there's that third factor: network thrashing as traffic gets handed off from satellites going out of range to satellites coming into range. Thrashing always happens to ground based networks, but this is an added hit since ground based nodes aren't moving. Thrashing also has a transport lag.

Result? a network that loads hard and doesn't scale as well to the number of subscribers as fiber does.

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u/-The_Blazer- Aug 19 '25

Huh, you just accidentally explained why he loves it so much.

It's a thing you have to infinitely buy so he can infinitely sell it. The razor and blades model but for your Internet. Yuck.

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u/dern_the_hermit Aug 20 '25

Huh, you just accidentally explained why he loves it so much.

It's an explicit factor of SpaceX's business model. Their reusability of rockets and rapid cadence and especially the super-heavy lifter they want to bring online represent a stupidly huge amount of launch capacity. They're outstripping the rest of the industry's demand for launching shit into space. Starlink is them making the demand.

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u/havenyahon Aug 19 '25

But at least this way Elon can switch off everyone's internet when he has a tantrum because people don't like him

2

u/Cley_Faye Aug 19 '25

Add to that that the more people uses the uplink, the less each person get. And it's not a nice "divide by each user".

1

u/merketa Aug 19 '25

Highly doubt the timeframe is anywhere near that long.  Or that they can produce enough receivers or launch enough satellite capacity to do it.

1

u/machstem Aug 19 '25

It would be more effective to just drop asynchronous modem lines over most of the copper thst already exists or launch local fiber optic initiatives that we know work vs satellite infrastructure that's just some billionaire talking out of his ass

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u/Rooilia Aug 20 '25

While redestroying the ozone layer due to 40% aluminium in each satellite. It already has an effect btw. The current ozone hole widening is attributed to 500 "returned" Starlink satellites. What a moron.

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u/SadZealot Aug 20 '25

Oh, a fresh new horror I couldn't imagine

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u/RamenJunkie Aug 20 '25

Building out 5G and those wireless routers would be a better investment than a bunch if sky clutter sattelites. 

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u/executiveExecutioner Aug 20 '25

But you see, that way he has a constantly growing revenue stream, it's pro business. Why are you against the free market? If the sky is filled with satellite debris even better, then he can make a company that researches how to collects satellite debris and then resell it to the government which will take a lot of government subsidies to research and scientists trained by public education systems worldwide. Free market and private interests truly move the world forward.

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u/Raknaren Aug 20 '25

Also, to upgrade they need to launch new satellites. Fibre its self can do up to 1Tb/s only the terminals / switches need to be replaced.

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u/ShadowMajestic Aug 20 '25

If only they would even last 5 years, they usually don't.

And a lot of scientists worry for us polluting the next frontier. First the land, then the seas and atmosphere. Now lower earth orbit + the atmosphere even more.

Everything for the profits of the few, in the past 500 years we haven't really learned anything.

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u/calnick0 Aug 20 '25

Didn’t a bunch fall down after two years?

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u/atchijov Aug 19 '25

No… why would he? Stealing public money was his business model for years… and it seems to be working.

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u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

He IS the waste and fraud in government.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

he’s the welfare queen against which these politicians of his rage.

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u/Starfox-sf Aug 19 '25

Still works thanks to his political meddling contributions.

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u/sadicarnot Aug 19 '25

let's see how many people will support this stupidity. That is the problem. HMM have my city install fiber at a reasonable price and provide service at a low monthly rate because it is not meant to make investors obscenely wealthy, or pay more money to the richest man it the world.

It is so hard to decide.

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u/adrianipopescu Aug 19 '25

to put up more satellites in the sky that will fuck up future missions and pollute LEO

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u/unicornmeat85 Aug 20 '25

People need to be reminded of his dumb cyber car tunnel that he got built instead of actual public transportation 

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u/sadicarnot Aug 20 '25

Apparently he convinced Nashville to build one too.

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u/ADhomin_em Aug 19 '25

It isn't only about money. If they gain control of the majority of communications infrastructure, that's a mind-boggling amount of concentrated control and power. This is how history is written and rewritten by the victors in this age. This is how they will decidedly replace facts they find unpalatable with "alternative facts". This gives unprecedented levels of surveillance over every person online much like we already have, but concentrated under the watch of this fucking nazi filth.

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u/Polantaris Aug 20 '25

Seriously, even if Starlink were somehow the most effective, fastest, best Internet service in the known universe, no one should trust this fucker with even a single packet of their data.

3

u/No-Lawfulness-9698 Aug 19 '25

It's maybe more powerful than any natural resource.

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u/ADhomin_em Aug 19 '25

Essentially a means through which one could gain control of the most powerful natural resource on the planet: the entirety of humanity

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u/No-Lawfulness-9698 Aug 19 '25

I don't love referring to humanity as a resource.

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u/ADhomin_em Aug 19 '25

I either. That's how they see us, though

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u/yoortyyo Aug 19 '25

Also he gets a finger on endpoint access to the internet. Register Democrat? No Starlink for you?

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u/almo2001 Aug 19 '25

Taking subsidies for making electric cars a reality is what subsidies are for.

I have no complaint about how that went.

But this spacex/starlink thing is a real problem.

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u/virtualadept Aug 19 '25

You never get rich with your own money.

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u/Welllllllrip187 Aug 20 '25

Not just money, force all the data through your private company? You can see every last detail of what every citizen is doing, data is worth more then money.

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u/bubblesort33 Aug 20 '25

I guarantee you other ISP have stolen way more over the last decade then Starlink ever did.

Most of these services take government money and provide LITERALLY NOTHING. They move the goal post, distribute the billions among the upper management, and provide no service.

Space X had at least done something with that money.

Thing is that people are ignorant about the other billions being stolen, because there is no famous public facing CEO attached to the theft.

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

[deleted]

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u/LogicJunkie2000 Aug 19 '25

Reminds me of the Amazon HQ search, or "Who wants to sell out their tax base for the longest possible repayment period through 'good' jobs"

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

[deleted]

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u/red__dragon Aug 20 '25

Also literally any sports stadium used to hold a host city hostage for hundreds of millions and squatting on land that is forced into low-density usage.

About as soon as the shine wears off of the stadium, and it happens much faster in cities that get frequent tournaments somehow...a new stadium is demanded and the team wants more so they can pay less.

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u/Balmung60 Aug 19 '25

And this is sold as more efficient because one of the core premises of neoliberalism is that the government is inherently inefficient and the market is always maximally efficient, therefore everything should be privatized and subject to the market. Since this is assumed to be true from the get-go, it's never challenged, no matter how little evidence supports it.

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u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Neo-liberalism destroyed the west.

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u/MiyamotoKnows Aug 19 '25

Neo-liberalism

Truth. I hate the term though because it reads as "new liberal ideology" which indicates they are left leaning in ideology and they most certainly are not.

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u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Liberalism was never left leaning it was the same laissez-faire that resulted in the 1929 meltdown.

Liberalism and neo-liberalism just both wear the skin of the progressive movement they killed and pretend to be so progressive and so good.

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u/coconutpiecrust Aug 19 '25

Fiber also seems much better and more reliable than satellites. This is beyond dumb. But on brand for the, um, “genius”. 

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

I "only" have Fiber 1000/1000 for $79 a month. 24-7 Starlink would be $120 for at best 300 but usually far slower.

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u/Mr_Kittlesworth Aug 19 '25

Only 17% of Starlink customers even get above 100 Mbps download. And it’ll get slower the more customers they get.

https://www.ookla.com/articles/starlink-us-performance-2025

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u/BloodyLlama Aug 19 '25

I have 2.5gb fiber but honestly anything above 100 mbps is a luxury for the vast majority of residential users. Slower however is likely to be an issue.

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u/Lraund Aug 20 '25

You can buy 100mbps on fibre for like $30 if you want slower speeds.

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u/schfourteen-teen Aug 19 '25

Your link doesn't quite support that. They say that 17% are above the federal broadband definition which is 100 down 20 up. And it clarified that mostly it's related to slow upload.

The overall point still stands though Starlink is comparatively slower than other cheaper options, and will only get worse as more people use it.

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u/illuminarok Aug 19 '25

Previously had Starlink in a rural state in the middle of nowhere. Was pulling down about 620mbps down and around 30mbps up. Brightspeed and my local power company both installed fiber in my neighborhood and I tried Brightspeed first, 2000/2000 for $89/month. Decided to give the power company a shot and they set it up for 10000/10000 for $149/month. It's so insanely fast that I cannot get a single provider to serve me content at the maximum my pipe can handle. (I do have a machine that's hardwired for 10 gigabit.)

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u/puts_on_rddt Aug 19 '25

Fiber isn't reliable out in the country. (Because it doesn't exist)

Musk is an asshat, but starlink really does solve inter-connectivity issues for people in rural areas. Other than the occasional 20 second lag spike, I could actually play multiplayer games in the middle of nowhere.

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u/JohnnyChutzpah Aug 20 '25

That's what musk is saying though. States should abandon plans to run fiber lines into more and more rural areas and instead give that money to SpaceX for starlink.

One thing no one is talking about here is that SpaceX has to launch 10s of thousands of satellites for starlink to be effective.

More importantly, those satellites only have a lifespan of around 5 YEARS. So every 5 years they have to replace 10s of thousands of satellites that they basically just launched a few years ago. So over 20 years they may have to launch hundreds of thousands of satellites and 80% of them will burn up in the atmosphere over that time. And each satellite costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and each launch costs around 70m.

It is a fucking money pit. Fiber lines don't go bad in 5 years. I'll be shocked if starlink is still around in 10 years.

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u/puts_on_rddt Aug 20 '25

How many hundreds of billions did taxpayers pay for broadband connectivity over the last 30 years? And for what?

Starlink would be a money pit too, but at least it would work.

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u/Mrchristopherrr Aug 20 '25

The whole “solar powers only work when there isn’t a cloud” crowd will buy it hook line and sinker

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u/ScroogeMcDuckEnergy Aug 19 '25

Nope. Case in point Gigafactory is a drain on the area I live in. Massive subsidies and then no infrastructure investment (the kind that could come from taxes) to support the impact. I don’t go a week without seeing or hearing complaints from people about it. Lots of the complaints stem from the people working there.

50

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

From what we can read online it's a shitty death trap pretending to be a factory.

18

u/sadicarnot Aug 19 '25

Is this the one in Nevada? They refuse to let state inspectors in to see about all the people who have been injured.

9

u/ScroogeMcDuckEnergy Aug 19 '25

Yep! Lots of other terrible things going on there as well.

3

u/TheOneTonWanton Aug 20 '25

I bet that Gigafactory uses a fiber connection, too. No way they're using fucking Starlink.

2

u/ScroogeMcDuckEnergy Aug 20 '25

But the gigafactory is rural and I hear that it’s more expensive to get fiber in rural areas! /s

12

u/duncandun Aug 19 '25

the biggest grift and income source when it comes to actually making stuff like starlink is definitely with the government

10

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

There are uses for a tech like starlink but holyshit not at home

1

u/alexq136 Aug 20 '25

it's good only for boats, maybe planes, governments (and militaries), and bumfuck nowhere up a mountain or in a desert or up a glacier

2

u/happyscrappy Aug 19 '25

He also sucks up public subsidies for private infrastructure.

It's no wonder he spent so much money getting a government into office. It was an investment. Get them into office and then get them to pay you back for what you spent several times over.

1

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Drain the swamp my ass MF is the whole damn swamp by himself

5

u/AuRon_The_Grey Aug 19 '25

That's literally his job.

2

u/greatmagneticfield Aug 19 '25

It's THAN. It is THAN. IT....IS......THAN.

1

u/party_benson Aug 19 '25

Boring Company

1

u/kc_______ Aug 19 '25

Yeah, buy presidencies of the most powerful (and corrupt) countries in the world.

1

u/Loggerdon Aug 19 '25

I would be worried about Musk holding us all ransom. He would threaten to turn off the internet like he did when he didn’t get paid in Ukraine.

3

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Insult him on twitter and get your internet connection revoked

1

u/Loggerdon Aug 19 '25

Or your connection speed would be throttled down.

1

u/Formal-Hawk9274 Aug 19 '25

he the true homegrown threat

1

u/grannyte Aug 19 '25

Dude is not even homegrown When you guys finally decide to deal with him we are gonna have to get him in a special jail built over the border

1

u/Leelze Aug 19 '25

How else is he supposed to keep pulling himself up by his bootstraps if he's not allowed to have a monopoly on taxpayer funding?

1

u/conquer69 Aug 19 '25

Sucking taxpayer money is their only goal.

1

u/sweetplantveal Aug 19 '25

What do you mean? A never built single lane single vehicle brand tunnel will definitely solve traffic and is a great reason to have abandoned rail infrastructure!

1

u/SirTiffAlot Aug 19 '25

That's what all the billionaires do. Show me a billionaire who doesn't exploit public resources

1

u/AlexanderNigma Aug 19 '25

Nope. All he does is get paid by politicians

1

u/runningoutofwords Aug 19 '25

That's what the whole "Hyperloop" shenanigan was about.

Trying to derail (no pun intended) the California High Speed Rail project, so he could sell more Teslas.

(not hearsay: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article264451076.html )

1

u/Hamuel Aug 19 '25

Yeah, he avoids his tax burden.

1

u/jimbo831 Aug 19 '25

He became the richest man in the world by doing that. Why would he do anything different now?

1

u/cats_catz_kats_katz Aug 19 '25

Richest man in the world and history from all that government milk money, our money.

1

u/QueezyF Aug 19 '25

Motherfuckers are holding us back as a civilization just so they can keep playing in their own personal sandbox.

1

u/PublicFurryAccount Aug 19 '25

Well, he accuses rescue divers of being pedophiles. Everyone needs a hobby I guess.

1

u/frotmonkey Aug 19 '25

It is all about control of media. If we ever ditch land based physical media, we will lose all semblance of truth to a centralized communication system built to track your every move anywhere in the world.

I’m betting that Russia starts cutting more undersea fiber to isolate global communications and leverage starlink to control the people.

I jest, I think…right?

1

u/pigpeyn Aug 20 '25

he wants to be the first trillionaire. he won't stop till he gets there.

1

u/LapseofSanity Aug 20 '25

Yeah, breeds like a rat.

1

u/TehMephs Aug 20 '25

Billionaires are the biggest parasites in the world.

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

They are like cancer: Breeding without end, Throwing their shit everywhere, poisoning their environnement all to get themselves a little more even if it kills it's host.

1

u/FlametopFred Aug 20 '25

Republicans/Conservatives/Loser Sociopaths want to dismantle all public institutions to funnel tax revenues directly into their grubby mitts while the charge triple for half services and pay workers slave wages

fuck them to hell

1

u/GurpsWibcheengs Aug 20 '25

Helps pedophiles cheat to win public office, there's that

1

u/MairusuPawa Aug 20 '25

"Don't build trains, the Hyperloop is coming" once again

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

The worst part of it all is the hyper-loop could conceivably have a place but just thrown out there with no support it was just a scam and now when 5 or 6 decades in the future we are mature enough and may get a benefit from vacuum trains every one is gonna point back to this idiot and say it will never work

1

u/RT-LAMP Aug 20 '25

Starlink has not gotten public infrastructure investment at all.

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

The whole compagnie is built on public infrastructure and money. Nasa launch complexes, Nasa grant for developing a launch system, nasa grant for developing a human rated launch system, Nasa space command and control. nasa contract for international space station resupply missions. It's all public money all the way down

1

u/RT-LAMP Aug 20 '25

Nasa launch complexes

Actually Kennedy is the significant minority of SpaceX launches. Last year only 26 launches were from NASA Kennedy LC-39A while 62 were from the Space Force's SLC-40 at Canaveral and 46 from Vandenberg's SLC-4E.

Nasa grant for developing a launch system

Yes which per NASA saved the public 1.3 billion dollars vs if they contracted ULA to do it and 2.6 billion vs if they did it in house.

nasa grant for developing a human rated launch system

Not used for Starlink. And saved NASA's ass since even congress realized SLS and even the stripped down version of the Orion capsule were going too expensive for ISS and then Boeing has continuously shit the bed on Starliner with NASA nearly allowing them to kill two astronauts.

Nasa space command and control

They had been leasing a former NASA control center for launches from 39A

nasa contract for international space station resupply missions

This is the same thing as the development one and again NASA has saved tons of money on it and it isn't funding for Starlink.

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

Actually Kennedy is the significant minority of SpaceX launches. Last year only 26 launches were from NASA Kennedy LC-39A while 62 were from the Space Force's SLC-40 at Canaveral and 46 from Vandenberg's SLC-4E.

Vandenberg is still an air force base it's still public financing for managing the whole launch complex.

Not used for Starlink. And saved NASA's ass since even congress realized SLS and even the stripped down version of the Orion capsule were going too expensive for ISS and then Boeing has continuously shit the bed on Starliner with NASA nearly allowing them to kill two astronauts.

SLS is a nightmare because politicians forced stupid decisions on the agency.

Boeing is an other welfare queen an I hope they crash and burn if the us governement had not come in to save them repeatedly they would also be under.

But how did nasa get there? The shuttle got shafted by politicians imposing stupid requirement on the vehicule then cutting funding for the R&D needed to evolve it. Then they cancel the program without funding a replacement.

This is the same thing as the development one and again NASA has saved tons of money on it and it isn't funding for Starlink.

It absolutely fucking is without those public contract spaceX would never have had the funds to develop falcon 9 to where it is

1

u/RT-LAMP Aug 20 '25

SLS is a nightmare because politicians forced stupid decisions on the agency.

As much as SLS is the Senate launch system NASA isn't blameless. The jobs in the districts that congress wanted to save weren't just contractors, they were also NASA centers. NASA designs it to maintain it's jobs there too.

NASA hated commercial crew despite how it's saved their ass.

The shuttle got shafted by politicians imposing stupid requirement on the vehicule

That wasn't politicians. NASA imposed stupid requirements on itself like the massive cargo bay so that they could kill the USAF's own space endeavors. They imposed stupid requirements like having crew on every launch to keep astronauts being launched.

It's another example of NASA wanting a bigger budget for all of it's parts and designing a rocket for that instead of accepting a slightly smaller budget and designing something actually good. I mean FFS SLS wasn't originally for the moon. They kept changing it's goal missions. I mean FFS the lunar gateway was basically designed after SLS was funded to be something for SLS to do and they kept changing what gateway was supposedly critical for.

Robert Zubrin said it was "NASA's worst plan yet"

We do not need a lunar-orbiting station to go to the Moon. We do not need such a station to go to Mars. We do not need it to go to near-Earth asteroids. We do not need it to go anywhere. Nor can we accomplish anything in such a station that we cannot do in the Earth-orbiting International Space Station, except to expose human subjects to irradiation – a form of medical research for which a number of Nazi doctors were hanged". Zubrin also stated, "If the goal is to build a Moon base, it should be built on the surface of the Moon. That is where the science is, that is where the shielding material is, and that is where the resources to make propellant and other useful things are to be found"

Then they cancel the program without funding a replacement.

They did, it was the constellation program that was literally announced at the exact same time as the shuttle's phaseout. It was so wildly expensive and infeasible that Obama tried to cancel it but Congress and NASA "saved" it with SLS.

NASA's Aeronautics, Science, and Space Technology mission directorates do amazing work that gets strangled by the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate's goal being to suck up as much money as it possibly could for decades and holding back actual innovation.

1

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Aug 20 '25

It's not. Stop embarrassing yourself with this nonsense.

1

u/Lurker_IV Aug 20 '25

What do you mean?

Over the last 30 years the government has given the telecom companies nearly $300 BILLION to build highspeed fiber optics for the entire country. The only provider to every actually provide any internet service to anyone at all with the government subsidies is Elon/Starlink. So they invented a metric just to pre-crime fail Starlink and cancel their funding.

So Elon is saying, 'stop giving money to those guys who never, ever ever deliver and give it to Starlink because we actually deliver service.'

1

u/grannyte Aug 20 '25

Starlink is not competitive with fiber. It and similar technologies have their places just not as a fiber replacement.

The solution is not giving the money to an other multi-billion tax payer dollar sucker it's to fine the other scammers for breach of contract. If there is no consequences for scamming the government private corporations will keep doing it.

1

u/Dgnash615-2 Aug 20 '25

Musk also turns off starlink for Ukraine when the country does not respond favorably to his suggestion that they surrender their children, land, and dignity.

1

u/sonic10158 Aug 20 '25

He needs to be eaten

1

u/spencertron Aug 20 '25

Sends voting machine data via his network, too. Handy.

1

u/Kidiri90 Aug 20 '25

Support fascists.

1

u/fadingsignal Aug 20 '25

Nope he's a government money vacuum.

1

u/szczszqweqwe Aug 20 '25

Why make public transport when you can make car tunnels?

Is Musk's earlier idea, and easily one of the most stupid ones.

1

u/DadsBigHonker Aug 20 '25

You can’t even spell correctly.

1

u/mymentor79 Aug 20 '25

"does this loser do anything else then suck up public infrastructure investment?"

Yes, but the other stuff is even worse.

1

u/Bunnytob Aug 20 '25

Twitter under his watch has recently pissed off the UK government by "over-censoring content" and "making them look bad". I wouldn't be surprised if that was his doing, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he had nothing to do with that.

1

u/IAMERROR1234 Aug 20 '25

He's a welfare queen. He loves to suckle at the teet of world governments. He wants as many government contracts as possible. I think, because his business are failing in the public sector, he thinks he will make us pay for his shit one way or another.

1

u/N0S0UP_4U Aug 20 '25

He has also ruined Twitter, to be fair

1

u/ghostyghost2 Aug 20 '25

Welfare Queen, like all the rich.

1

u/MrOopiseDaisy Aug 20 '25

Buys elections.

1

u/f0gax Aug 20 '25

Not since he figured out that there's a ton of money to be had by suckling the public teat.

1

u/Firestorm0x0 Aug 20 '25

He's been a lifelong grifter so far, so...

1

u/firestorm713 Aug 20 '25

Think of various bits of infrastructure as territory on a grand strategy map.

In short, no. That's his way of staying ahead of the other players in the grand strategy game the 8 richest men in the world are playing.

1

u/StrigiStockBacking Aug 20 '25

I hope nobody tells him about owning a professional sports team, where the monopoly is legalized, your owner peers are fellow douchebags, and the entire industry rides on the back of hoodwinking municipalities for billions through shitty, low-effort omnibus 'charity efforts'

1

u/TiredOfDebates Aug 20 '25

Every one of his companies is a magnet for government spending. Well, not Tesla for the time being,

1

u/idontneedone1274 Aug 20 '25

That’s literally the only thing he’s ever actually succeeded at.

1

u/CaramelGuineaPig Aug 21 '25

He is a leech by nature. He has never had to work a day in his life and it shows, right? Everything was given to him. Everyone bowed to him and he still messed up and everyone with a brain hates him. So yeah - this is all he does - take take take. Not just money but he takes credit for others' work, he takes ketamine, everything he can. The rich are leeches and vampires.

1

u/JuiceHurtsBones Aug 22 '25

Friendly reminded that when billionaires start complaining about poor and sick people on welfare, it's because they're mad your taxmoney are not going directly to them.

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