I drive a Fedex truck in farmtown Kansas and every week or so I see a Starlink internet box in my truck. The argument for connecting internet via satellite is that in remote and/or rural places installing infrastructure like an internet cable is more expensive and leads to slower speeds.
While this is true, the math simply does not work out in favor of satellites for basically the whole of Europe and North America. Reason #1 is because rockets are ridiculously expensive and connection to satellites very glitchy requiring redundancies. Reason #2 is an internet cable is relatively cheap, it costs more to hire some Mexicans to run a Ditch Witch to install it. Reason #3 is because most rural areas in the English speaking world received good internet cables decades ago regardless of profitability. During the Dot Com Bubble, it was these very cables that generated low revenue and bankrupted megacorps. Yes, many rural areas still don't have the very latest internet cable, but even the older stuff can give speeds akin to a satellite uplink. Where I live there's even a band of fools installing the latest sort of cables in some very obscure places. And even without them, available speeds are good enough that any movie/game can be played in any house.
I'm not saying satellite internet doesn't have a use case, it's that you shouldn't even consider it unless internet is at least partially inaccessible where you are. You will save a lot of money ignoring this current fad of technology and not even notice the difference.
Dear Rural People: Please Stop Buying Satellite Internet. It's Super Expensive, and isn't any Faster.
byu/ElijahNSRose inFrugal
Posted by ElijahNSRose
6 Comments
cable is usually a monopoly in rural areas and charges a lot for bad service. Starlink can be a much better deal. I would have switched from fiber to starlink if I didn’t have too much tree coverage at my cabin, because it was the more frugal choice.
As someone who lives rurally, I disagree.
My internet from a normal provider cannot run fibre and only will guarantee 5mbps – they claim we get 20 most of the time but I dispute this very strongly. I cannot work from home at the same time as someone else downloading something. It becomes very slow around evening time. Starlink has regularly shown in my house to reach over 50mbps. It just is faster.
I hate Elon with all my heart but the internet situation is dire
It’s very handy if you work remote or are on call a lot in the middle of nowhere.
Bruhh not every rural area as decent cable.
I can’t do a meeting on it, can’t game, can’t stream a youtube video. Wtf are you saying
Starlink’s cheapest service is $50/month and is hundreds of times faster than the DSL that exists in most of the country. Laying fiber is completely different than “digging an internet cable” because there isn’t fiber going to the nearest point of presence. Please look into the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program to understand the awful state terrestrial internet infrastructure is compared to other developed countries.
Rockets are expensive, but the scale achieved has made the service cheap enough for the average American to afford. Your “rockets are expensive therefore Starlink is expensive” skipped a few steps.
Also, the internet service is very much not glitchy at all. Maybe in 2019 it was, but not now with 10,000 satellites in orbit.
I don’t think you thought this through and just said that Starlink is bad don’t buy it. $50 is not much different than existing internet plans in most of America.
Canada here. Disagree. I tried a few different options for internet, then Starlink had a promotion in my area so I signed up. I’ll never use another provider if I can help it. Easy to set up, easy to diagnose if there is an issue, only costs a 1/3 more than competitors and the reliability is %100 better.