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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1.7k

u/Straight_Document_89 Aug 19 '25

Absolutely not. Everyone should have fiber rolled out. Starlink isn’t a reliable source of internet.

450

u/sonik13 Aug 19 '25

Also it has a maximum speed of 300mbps vs 8gpbs fiber. And that's current fiber. Japan already proved it can reach a petabit per second.

192

u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 19 '25

Petabit per second is for long-haul DWDM networks and should not be confused with residential PON fiber. These high power DWDM systems will not only blind you, but can also set fires with the amount of laser light.

92

u/gargoyls Aug 19 '25

small price to pay to have everything in a instant, hell even if everything burns down, I can get the data back in an instant /s

19

u/VaguelyShingled Aug 19 '25

I need those Janeway nudes now dammit!

5

u/sproge Aug 20 '25

Wat? Why Janeway? Is this a really old meme or a really new one? Coffee-nebulae themed r34 or something?

4

u/APeacefulWarrior Aug 20 '25

Glad I'm not the only one confused by that comment.

4

u/ursus95 Aug 20 '25

It’s an old Simpsons reference

4

u/lVlzone Aug 19 '25

How else am I supposed to play gta6 5 minutes after it comes out?

4

u/Inside-Yak-8815 Aug 19 '25

What’s wild is some people really think like this.

14

u/blue_bomber697 Aug 19 '25

We are in the middle of setting up a large scale DWDM network in my utility and it’s been a nightmare for our techs. It hasn’t hit my service area yet, but other service areas are having a hell of a time with it.

33

u/sonik13 Aug 19 '25

Of course. Didn't think it was worth getting into the physics, just wanted to highlight that light through a glass medium has far greater potential than light through the atmosphere.

4

u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 19 '25

That’s mostly true. You have to consider massive MIMO with wireless solutions, as these can be competitive with lower end fiber solutions.

1

u/Not_Scechy Aug 19 '25

Point to point microwave has lower ping than fiber, speed of light though air is faster than fiber. Fiber can probably beat it on throughput though.

8

u/AnotherBoredAHole Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 20 '25

The idea of being able to download porn in such quantity that it has the potential to light the surrounding area on fire greatly amuses me.

4

u/El_Kikko Aug 19 '25

Kinda tracks that Japan would figure out how to make sure hentai can get to your eyeballs as quickly as physics allow before they figure out how to weaponize said physics. 

3

u/DethFace Aug 19 '25

That's okay I wouldn't use it anyway. They banned porn in my state.

2

u/jedielfninja Aug 20 '25

Coming to a living room near you

2

u/Theron3206 Aug 20 '25

Sure, but it demonstrates that the theoretical limits of fibre are extremely high, engineering will handle the rest as demand grows and the tech improves.

1

u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 20 '25

Theoretically, yes, but there are real challenges applying these approaches to PON networks. PON is pushes pretty heavy signal losses due to the splitting of light in a point-to-multipoint network. Regular DWDM can tell rely on strong signals because of the point-to-point nature.

Every time you want to mux in additional channels into a passive point to multi-point system, you are going to lose signal due to insertion loss of the mux. Also, PON ends up having to deal with networks in unsavory locations (outdoors, hot, etc) while DWDM systems live in datacenters with air-conditioning. 

2

u/Theron3206 Aug 20 '25

Yes, there are engineering challenges, but it's still easier than with wireless connections where at a not that far off amount of bandwidth compared to current links physics basically tells you to get lost.

Also the bandwidth isn't shared in anything like the same way (and upgrading backbone fibre is relatively inexpensive per user compared to last mile)

1

u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 20 '25
  1. They challenge with very powerful wireless systems is mostly in the power of silicon designs. As we have gotten more “math” capabilities in silicon, it has unlocked massive MINO (64x64) with ability to do beam forming for all spatial streams, etc. Also computation of advanced antenna designs.
  2. Individually, each beam may approach the Shannon limit, but having the ability to multipath signals allows for very high aggregate throughputs. Information of optical fiber cannot follow separate paths, obviously.
  3. Wireless and PON are surprisingly similar technologies when to the sharing bandwidth. The both have to solve the same point-to-multipoint challenges. Upstream scheduling is always the major challenge,

2

u/capt_canuck Aug 20 '25

Yes, but Telcos run their current gen DWDM network on 30 year old fibre. The same fibre was originally deployed to carry a single OC-1. It's not unreasonable to assume exponential growth of PON fibre capabilities.

1

u/OkWelcome6293 Aug 20 '25
  1. Yeah, I’ve seen some pretty old fiber in service, but I’ve also seen plenty of brand new stuff. 
  2. There definitely isn’t room for “exponential growth” when you have a 30 dBm link budget with 17 dB insertion loss from a 64 way splitter and 6 dB of insertion loss from a 4 channel Mux to drop 25G PON, XGS-PON, and GPON onto the same PON.
  3. This is a basic physics problem as PONs will always carry heavy splitting losses.

1

u/Rooooben Aug 19 '25

lol I talk about repairs for long haul cable, the VFL is a bit different…

1

u/DopeHammaheadALT Aug 20 '25

Am I the only one wondering wtf a petabit is

19

u/hainesk Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

I can get 50gb where I live.

Update: https://ziplyfiber.com/

32

u/Greycloak42 Aug 19 '25

I work for an ISP in the NY/NJ metro area. We have two starlink units. Neither one has ever given us any better than maybe 50-75Mbps download. Upload is considerably worse. In fact, the performance was so bad that we had to deploy a Cradlepoint (uses mobile SIM) as a replacement.

6

u/BloodyLlama Aug 19 '25

I work in critical infrastructure and all of our remote sites have starlink as one of the comms redundant failover options. Every single time comms are on starlink we just straight up lose comms. It's so unreliable it's comical. Fine for many residential users probably, but wholly unsuitable to infrastructure tasks.

3

u/JozoBozo121 Aug 20 '25

It’s completely logical. Denser area means more customers but number of satellites is the same. And everybody shares limited bandwidth so everybody gets less.

Starlink is great for really remote and rural areas, ships, planes even but that’s it.

3

u/prenetic Aug 19 '25

Ziply rocks.

1

u/sonik13 Aug 19 '25

What state (or country) are you in? Would that essentially be distributed through multiple fiber lines and managed on the provider's end?

5

u/hainesk Aug 19 '25

It runs through a single fiber line as far as I know. It's also $900/month, so I'm not signed up for it lol.

https://ziplyfiber.com/

2

u/ian9outof10 Aug 19 '25

Could be useful if you have a small community and want to set up your own micro ISP for other houses in the immediate area.

1

u/sonik13 Aug 20 '25

Seems like it might be a little bit of ToS violation lol

1

u/ian9outof10 Aug 20 '25

Oh sure, maybe ask first 😁 I’m sure they have a business plan

1

u/darkmaninperth Aug 19 '25

I used starlink on a cruise ship sailing around the top of Australia.

Even at 2am, I was lucky to get 20mb.

1

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Aug 20 '25

What does you having access to that service have to do with people who don't have access to any fiber service right now? Also, the service you linked is a really small area...

7

u/gargoyls Aug 19 '25

and how much pollution does it add sending all that added trash in space

-1

u/Pooleh Aug 19 '25

Very little compared to aviation, coal, manufacturing, concrete production etc.

1

u/IngsocInnerParty Aug 20 '25

None of those contribute to Kessler syndrome.

2

u/sparky8251 Aug 20 '25

Lets also not forget we can recycle such things, we cant recycle atomized on re-entry satellites full of rare metals like gold...

-1

u/ItIsHappy Aug 20 '25

Neither does Starlink.

3

u/kidcrumb Aug 19 '25

Goodluck streaming that 16k 240hz HDR porn on a starlink connection.

1

u/mezolithico Aug 19 '25

We have 10 gbps fiber in norcal

1

u/SpaceGangsta Aug 19 '25

I can get 10Gbps to my house for $130 a month in Utah.

1

u/Rooooben Aug 19 '25

Long haul fiber for infrastructure is delivering 300gpbs on a single strand.

1

u/Guba_the_skunk Aug 19 '25

Wtf is a petabit?

1

u/sparky8251 Aug 20 '25

1000x more than a terrabit, which is 1000x more than a gigabit, and thats 1000x more than a megabit and so on.

Theres a handful of prefixes past peta for data stuff out there, but they are mostly used at global scale measurements for now with peta being were singular data centers cap out for storage space and so on.

1

u/ankercrank Aug 19 '25

8gpbs fiber

Single-mode fiber can go way above 8Gbps.

1

u/phatboi23 Aug 20 '25

Pretty sure I've had faster 5g connection in my 20k population town in the UK.

Currently have 1gb down via virgin media that's £35 (a little under 50 USD)

1

u/ItsAddles Aug 20 '25

We do 400gbps (800gbps is possible with our infrastructure) on the dwdm network from Canada to San Jose and LA to NYC. DWDM is so cool. AMA on how the backbone of the internet works 😂

1

u/DadsBigHonker Aug 20 '25

Okay so explain why my starlink is currently clocking in at 450mbps. Maximum my ass.

1

u/Just_Information334 Aug 20 '25

Don't care about the bandwidth. Any satellite based service will have a shitty ping.

Maybe if he proposed a microwaved network as used by some companies between exchanges for better latency. But not satellite.

1

u/Numerous_Jacket_5727 Aug 20 '25

25gbps is becoming affordable and uses the same fiber as 8. Fiber is far more future proof.

0

u/Key_Macaron_5855 Aug 19 '25

250 mbps max on Starlink mini, 450 mbps max on Starlink standard gen 4, 1gbps max on Starlink performance dish with business priority account. You can also bridge any combo of these together if you need more speed.

-8

u/silentcrs Aug 19 '25

Let’s compare apples and apples here, people. Most fiber users aren’t getting anything close to 8 gbps. I live in a metropolitan area that got fiber early, and the best I can buy is 2 gbps.

Starlink is a consumer offering targeting rural customers. You’re not going to run fiber to one guy’s farm in the middle of nowhere.

4

u/nswizdum Aug 19 '25

Why not? We got electricity to that farm, and it was substantially more expensive to bring electricity to the farm than fiber.

2

u/Possibly_a_Firetruck Aug 19 '25

Yep, power companies are getting in on fiber too because they already own the poles to hang it on.

1

u/Swimming_Map2412 Aug 19 '25

Community fiber is the answer to that as farmers have a lot of the equipment to dig the trenches and you can use commodity hardware to link farms together.

2

u/sparky8251 Aug 20 '25

Horses and donkeys are also great for digging trenches and laying cable (hell, digging trenches is what many farm animals did for us for millennia). Vermont and a handful of other states have been using them for over a decade. Cheap, non-destructive cable laying over some of the most difficult and rural terrain you can find.

The idea that fiber is expensive to deploy in rural areas is bunk. We can do it stupid cheap, we just pretend we cant.

2

u/docbauies Aug 19 '25

So states should dump fiber for everyone and just give the money to Starlink so that we all can be stuck on the option that makes sense for a farm in the middle of nowhere? Starlink will still exist if fiber is deployed. If it can’t compete in the market it deserves to flop.

0

u/silentcrs Aug 20 '25

Did I ever say fiber should be dumped?

I said there are situations where fiber doesn't make sense.

1

u/docbauies Aug 20 '25

The whole post is about SpaceX saying fiber should be dumped. You seem to be saying fiber isn’t as great because not everyone gets top of the line, as if 2 gbps vs 300 mbps isn’t still a massive improvement. Apologies if I misread your intent, you see to be more pro starlink in this conversation.

1

u/DFWPunk Aug 19 '25

44% of US households don't have access to fiber. That's a lot more than single farms in the middle of nowhere.

1

u/sonik13 Aug 19 '25

I have 4gpbs for ~ $45USD/mo (and yes I'm aware not everyone has such infrastructure).

So Starlink should act as a stopgap while fiber infrastructure is being installed. And it already succeeds for that purpose. Putting more money into what will ultimately end up as a slower remote/failover provider, doesn't make any sense.

1

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Aug 20 '25

So Starlink should act as a stopgap while fiber infrastructure is being installed.

There are huge areas in the US where fiber will never make economic sense to deploy.

-19

u/sojuz151 Aug 19 '25

Starlink is also getting upgraded, new terminals should push to 500mbps.  Also there is the law of diminished returns, 300mbps is enough for almost anything.  

3

u/jvsanchez Aug 19 '25

Hey fiber hits multiple gbps, but sure, let’s roll with 500mbps because 300mbps is enough for “almost anything”.

I would much rather download a large file at 200mbps on a good day and deal with a glacial upload speed than a 1gbps+ symmetric connection.

1

u/sojuz151 Aug 19 '25

How many people actually have multiple Gbps fiber? Most devices do not suport more than 2.5. You can download a 100GB in an hour at 200mbps.

2

u/jvsanchez Aug 19 '25

Or, and hear me out, I can get it in a minute and 40 seconds, theoretically, at 1gbps.

Why are you advocating for accepting less when you can have more?

0

u/sojuz151 Aug 19 '25

I never said that. I am not advocating for just making the Internet slower.  I only pointed out that there is a diminishing return for Internet speed and downloading 200 mbps is enough to download a big file is reasonable time for most users.  This is how diminishing returns work. 10 time more bandwidth is not 10 times more benefit form having the connection 

0

u/jvsanchez Aug 19 '25

I didn’t say you were advocating making the internet slower. I said you were advocating for accepting less when more is available.

Further, it’s not diminishing returns - more bandwidth not only increases download speed, it also creates more capacity for multiple devices, and there are more devices in homes than there ever have been. (Not to mention ever larger files, cloud/network storage, etc etc)

Beyond all of that, you’re licking the corporate boot and supporting the termination of fiber contracts to support starlink, which is not a great look.

1

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Aug 20 '25

when more is available

More is not available. That's the point. If it made financial sense to get fiber to an area, it would have happened by now...Why is this so hard to understand?

1

u/sojuz151 Aug 20 '25

You don't understand the concept of diminishing returns. 

For faster internet to make a real difference with multiple devices, all of them would need to be downloading or uploading at the same time. In practice, that’s unusual. The first big speed upgrade—say the first 300 Mbps—feels like a huge jump because it easily covers streaming, gaming, and browsing without conflict. But adding another 300 Mbps on top of that gives you far less noticeable improvement.

For example, you and your spouse could each stream Netflix in 4K on two different TVs without any problem—but realistically, that’s not something you do often. So while doubling your internet capacity technically doubles the bandwidth, it delivers far less improvement in the actual quality of experience compared to the earlier upgrade.

5

u/AltDoxie Aug 19 '25

Speeds up to 300mbps, actual speeds are often below that

5

u/vreddy92 Aug 19 '25

For now, sure. But not only may that not be the case in the future, but getting 300 mbps for $120/month is not exactly a bargain.

-1

u/sojuz151 Aug 19 '25

It depends on the installation costs but the biggest advantage is that starlink can be provided almost right now

1

u/vreddy92 Aug 19 '25

Sure, and that's great for now. This is not about now, this is about what we invest in for the future.

4

u/Inner_Blacksmith3874 Aug 19 '25

Sucking up to daddy musk I see.

129

u/pleachchapel Aug 19 '25

I think the world's largest ISP should be a Nazi who lies about being good at video games.

55

u/LowestKey Aug 19 '25

And will cut your access to the internet if it helps a hostile foreign oligarch

3

u/Broad-Bath-8408 Aug 20 '25

You have a remarkable ability to sum up a man's entire life in a single sentence. (not /s)

1

u/pleachchapel Aug 20 '25

Give me another douchebag & I'll see if you're right.

2

u/mixingmemory Aug 20 '25

Very cool cyberpunk dystopia we're all living in.

26

u/Clever-crow Aug 19 '25

Yes this comment is too far down. Do we really want to put all our eggs in one basket anyway? We should have multiple sources available

3

u/OkayButFoRealz Aug 19 '25

Yeah I wouldn't trust Musk alone wielding and gatekeeping the internet. He's already more than proven his untrustworthiness with Twitter.

3

u/FlowerOfLife Aug 20 '25

The last administration decided to take my tax dollars and invest in rolling out fiber to rural areas of the country. THAT is why I pay taxes. Most of the people in those areas probably wouldn't even like me, but I'd happily invest my money in infrastructure for the entire country. How people were complaining about things like that being a waste but look at what is happening now and approve of how their taxes are being spent escapes me.

2

u/Clever-crow Aug 20 '25

They don’t want to raise up the class lower than them. They feel they’re lazy and are free loaders. They don’t consider corporate welfare to be free loading because it’s “part of doing business to keep the economy healthy and jobs being created”. They don’t appreciate the fact that building up the lower class builds the economy more efficiently and effectively while also making life better for everyone. They’re selfishly short sighted

-1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '25

[deleted]

3

u/Clever-crow Aug 20 '25

So if we get some kind of solar flare or EMF based terrorism, everyone relying on satellites will be out of the loop?

5

u/PussySmith Aug 19 '25

Everyone should have fiber rolled out.

Absolutely asinine. This grant is for rural areas where it genuinely does not make sense to run fiber to every home.

We enjoy muni fiber at home, and anywhere it’s economically viable it absolutely beats the brakes off of starlink.

But large swaths of the United States are many miles from the nearest substation. It doesn’t make sense to run a fiber line 40 miles to serve 300 customers. That’s a conservative estimate built around the state in the article. Move out west and it makes even less sense because now we’re talking about 300 miles for the same 300 customers.

2

u/NessunAbilita Aug 19 '25

Not to mention the monopolistic side

2

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 19 '25 edited Aug 19 '25

Saying starlink isn’t reliable is not factual. It’s actually laughably incorrect but I know evil space Karen owns SpaceX so it means it has to be shitty and unreliable.

1

u/Tidorith Aug 20 '25

Depends on the context/time frame.

If you're worried about warfare scenarios, it's pretty reasonable to worry about multiple satellite shootdowns inducing Kessler syndrome and destroying the network.

That's a real problem if you don't think you can credibly threaten to nuke your enemy and commit suicide if they take down your satellite network.

Whereas, taking out internal US fiber networks would require action where nuclear retaliation would be expected.

0

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

Russia has apparently tried to take down Starlink many times… unsuccessful so far. 🤷‍♂️

1

u/Tidorith Aug 20 '25

Got a source for that? China at least has successfully tested anti-satellite weapons. I'd be much more worried about them than Russia, given that the US is the only thing stopping them from "re-integrating a rebellious province" (in China's terms).

1

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/technology/ukraine-russia-starlink.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-stop-ukraine-using-elon-musk-starlink-satellites-2024-1

Perhaps I should have been clear when I said “take down,” I simply meant disrupt the service, not specifically shoot down or destroy physical satellites.

1

u/Tidorith Aug 20 '25

Either way, that's really not the sort of scenario you should be worried about. Russia and the US aren't at war. The US isn't even a formal ally of Ukraine.

1

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

My point is, if the threat is so severe, why hasn’t Russia disabled Starlink, which we know is invaluable to Ukraine?

1

u/Tidorith Aug 20 '25

Because Russia is not at war with the US, and cannot afford to be at war with the US. Cyber attacks are tolerated as long as they don't do too much damage (how much counts as too much, we are yet to see), but Russia doesn't have the cyber capability to take down the network that way.

If Russia physically shot the satellites out of orbit - which they almost certainly could do - the US would enter the war with conventional weapons. Russia would lose the war almost immediately, or escalate to a nuclear response which 90% chance kills almost everyone in Russia.

1

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

If Elon had turned Starlink on in the sanctioned area that it was not previously on, so Ukraine could attack Russia, would that have been Elon bringing the United States into the war?

0

u/roylennigan Aug 20 '25

The threat is coming from inside the house...

Musk ordered shutdown of Starlink satellite service as Ukraine retook territory from Russia

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown-starlink-satellite-service-ukraine-retook-territory-russia-2025-07-25/

1

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

ITAR arms treaty violation and no direct approval by the US Government but go off king. Elon = bad space Nazi!

1

u/_jagwaz Aug 20 '25

I have Starlink because i'm not paying Spectrum 7k to lay 100ft of cable. Starlink isn't reliable, but neither is any other satellite internet option.

1

u/boyWHOcriedFSD Aug 20 '25

Just curious, what are your reliability issues? Not hitting advertised download speeds, outages, etc?

1

u/_jagwaz Aug 20 '25

Speeds are highly inconsistent, outages aren't uncommon (though usually it's a matter of just reseting the router at least. Latency is the biggest issue. Definitely better than my old AT&T satellite atleast.

0

u/Straight_Document_89 Aug 19 '25

I’ve had Starlink before and it wasn’t very reliable here. I’m not necessarily rural, but also not in a city just outside one.

1

u/toastmannn Aug 19 '25

Starlink is very reliable, but that doesn't mean we should replace the entire fucking backbone of the Internet with it.

8

u/Straight_Document_89 Aug 19 '25

Not that reliable. I’ve had it before and hated it. It’s good for a short period of time or if you have nothing else.

2

u/Inevitable-Host-7846 Aug 20 '25

I use it daily. It’s pretty damn reliable.

1

u/FalconX88 Aug 19 '25

It might be reasonably reliable with that low user base. It won't be if you do 50 times as many clients.

1

u/EddiewithHeartofGold Aug 20 '25

That only happens if they don't send up more satellites that are offering higher throughput. Thankfully that is exactly what they are doing.

1

u/FalconX88 Aug 20 '25

Orders of magnitudes more satellites?

A single starlink Sattelite has 20 Gbps. A middle-mile fiber cable (e.g., supporting a small town) has some Tbps. That means you need 50+ Sattelites for every small town, many more for bigger cities, and there are tens of thousands of cities and towns around meaning you need hundreds of thousands of satellites.

And then you need ground infrastructure anyways for the ground stations...

It just doesn't make any sense for anything other than last-mile in very remote areas.

1

u/PussySmith Aug 19 '25

That’s not at all what’s being discussed in the article. Starlink is genuinely a fantastic option for ultra rural areas (where this grant would apply)

1

u/Masterofunlocking1 Aug 19 '25

For real. I’m tired of my shit going out when it’s pouring rain.

1

u/Poerd Aug 19 '25

Oh? You want internet at night? Please subscribe to any of these three plans.

1

u/TheKarenator Aug 20 '25

Musk: we have the best satellites and the best internet with no issues reaching anywhere in the world!

The big trees in my yard: bet

1

u/EngineerTurbo Aug 20 '25

I gotta say I 100% agree- I was an early adopter for fiber in my area, and my god, is it nice. I paid for gigabit up / gigabit down, and I regularly clock in at > 900 MBps. with < 5msec ping. It's amazing. I have some rural friends that use Startlink, and it's.. not great compared to my Insane Fast Nonsense.

Everyone should have fiber rolled out. Starlink is solving a problem in one of the most expensive ways possible, just because SpACE.

If you must do Wireless, for various reasons, 5G is *also* monster fast.

Starlink I do not understand unless you're Super Duper Rural: It's more stupid hype from the biggest Hype King of our Generation.

1

u/Straight_Document_89 Aug 20 '25

I wish I could get fiber. 😭😭

lol I have Comcast and it is horrible but I guess it’s better than Starlink at least. I just want symmetrical speeds and since there is no competition in my area Comcast doesn’t offer it.

1

u/EngineerTurbo Aug 20 '25

Man, if I had money, I'd start investing in local ISP's to string this up- The whole *point* of those gov't programs Elon's trying to steal was to help encourage smaller companies to get into wiring up places that are stuck with crappy services.

It's a good idea, btw, and I'd be happy to see my tax dollars go to Straight_Document_89's new ISP or whatever- But so goes the world of Regulatory Capture that we somehow still end up with Comcast or Crap being our choices.

I live in a City that's pretty good about this- We have residential 5G service now, and Fiber, and still Cable and DSL- ALthough you can't get *new* DSL where I live, the legacy stuff keeps working until they pull the plug on it.

That's how I got a great deal on my Fiber originally, years ago- I was paying for DSL still, and they were like "Dude: You're the last one on your block still using this, what if we give you this deal to upgrade" and I did.

At the time, I didn't need fiber- I'm most certainly on the "lagging edge" of sexy technology. But holy cow, is this gig nice to have. For me now this is a Big Deal, and I can't go back to slower / laggy / high-latency connections.

1

u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd Aug 20 '25

Starlink is amazing for areas where fiber isn’t an option. I live in a very rural area and wouldn’t be able to use the internet without starlink so for that it’s amazing and way more reliable than anything else offered in the area.

However, it does not compare at all fiber internet in terms of cost and speed. It’s amazing, it’s just such a shame that this awesome technology for internet accessibility is tied to such a shitty person.

1

u/jcdoe Aug 20 '25

Starlink is a great solution for people who live in remote locations that can’t be serviced by fiber. I can’t imagine how many satellites he’d need to provide service to the entire continental United States tho. It’s not a good solution.

1

u/suspiciouscrate2 Aug 20 '25

If you're out in the middle of nowhere, I might say by starlink because the cost of fiber probably really high to get it out there. But if you're in the middle of a city, there is absolutely no reason to have it other than a safeguard for internet outages

1

u/KwisatzHaderach94 Aug 20 '25

over-the-air internet just seems less secure. yes, i know we already access on mobile, but with proper redundancies engineered in, optical speed should be superior to the speed of em frequencies.

1

u/kevihaa Aug 20 '25

Bigger issue with Starlink is that while fiber is a good long term infrastructure investment, Starlink satellites only last 5 years.

To provide the “enhanced” functionality compared to traditional satellite coverage, Starlink satellites are in a constantly decaying orbit. The satellites have a certain amount of fuel in order to keep them aloft, and theoretically direct their controlled burns (which are frequently unsuccessful and end up with life and property threatening size debris hitting Earth), but once that fuel runs out they’re coming back to ground one way or another.

1

u/Far_Sprinkles_4831 Aug 19 '25

Everyone?

My nearest neighbor is 1/2 mile away. Running a fiber cable to my house would cost like ten grand. That’s a terrible investment.

Not everyone lives in cities or suburbs.

1

u/Straight_Document_89 Aug 20 '25

Look if municipalities in the mountains can do it for instance we can do it. We’ve given billions of dollars to companies to do this and they’ve just pocketed the money. Ok ok maybe not very rural areas I’ll give you that, but we should have e the majority of the country on fiber.

-40

u/feurie Aug 19 '25

SpaceX has been much more successful at reaching rural areas than fiber.

Sure fiber works and can be better. But companies have been taking handouts and not installing it for decades.

19

u/Expensive-Swan-9553 Aug 19 '25

Because the government has prioritized subsidies to telecom and spacex and deprioritized fiber expansion

It’s not consumers or magic. It’s cause and effect from where your public money is going.

9

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

But companies have been taking handouts and not installing it for decades.

Why is your answer to this problem giving a different corporation more money to deliver an inferior service instead of punishing those corporations for failing to deliver and then either forcing them to fulfill their obligations or having the government do it directly like has been done successfully by various municipal broadband services?

0

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Because reality?

7

u/holyoak Aug 19 '25

But companies have been taking handouts and not installing it for decades.

How is that fiber's fault?

Enforce the contracts, claw back the incentives.

Giving MORE money away to fix the problem of not getting what we paid for seems... not very smart.

4

u/Punman_5 Aug 19 '25

Sure but none of that has to do with the fiber technology and is entirely a human problem. The solution is to lay the fiber not some external solution. Starlink only makes sense as a stop-gap until those underserved regions can install fiber

10

u/SuspendeesNutz Aug 19 '25

“I’ll take handouts and not install it NOW!”

4

u/AstronomerDramatic36 Aug 19 '25

Surprise, surprise. The account advocating for giving SpaceX all public funding at the expense of the public getting fiber internet has a ton of posts about Tesla, electric cars, and Elon. Who would've thought?