Fiber optic cable offers more scalability. That is why it is used in urban areas rather than Starlink. You obviously know more about Al Gore and Stacey Abrams than I do.
Fiber optic cable offers more scalability. That is why it is used in urban areas rather than Starlink. You obviously know more about Al Gore and Stacey Abrams than I do.
Starlink is wireless, and no matter how many satellites they launch it will be shared bandwith. So is fiber/coax, but there's far more bandwidth to share. It is not viable in even small cities, but it's far and away the best way to connect less dense rural areas.
Starlink will be far cheaper for rural access than running cables to every house. I live in a county with 10 people per square mile. Half the population is in four towns, and they are connected terrestrially. To connect the other half terrestrially would cost much, MUCH more than simply connecting them via Starlink. It's definitely the way to go to complete the rural broadband part of the new communications reality.
Terrestrial connections for everyone wouldn't be "thousands of times" as expensive, but more like about 10x as much. Until Starlink, it was the only way. The other satellite option, HughesNet, has gotten better, but the latency times from their new geostationary "Jupiter" satellite are too long to support full duplex real-time, i.e., voice and videoconferencing.
Moreover, HughesNet has one, count 'em one, Jupiter bird up there, 22,500 miles up. It's not scalable. Last time I looked, Starlink had about 7,000 low earth orbit birds, with authorization for a total of 44,000. They have become cheaper and their transmission rates are rising. No question, for rural access it's the way to go.
Fiber optic cable offers more scalability. That is why it is used in urban areas rather than Starlink. You obviously know more about Al Gore and Stacey Abrams than I do.
Starlink is wireless, and no matter how many satellites they launch it will be shared bandwith. So is fiber/coax, but there's far more bandwidth to share. It is not viable in even small cities, but it's far and away the best way to connect less dense rural areas.
So it could cost thousands of times as much and it could be years away, but it's the 'best'?
Starlink will be far cheaper for rural access than running cables to every house. I live in a county with 10 people per square mile. Half the population is in four towns, and they are connected terrestrially. To connect the other half terrestrially would cost much, MUCH more than simply connecting them via Starlink. It's definitely the way to go to complete the rural broadband part of the new communications reality.
Terrestrial connections for everyone wouldn't be "thousands of times" as expensive, but more like about 10x as much. Until Starlink, it was the only way. The other satellite option, HughesNet, has gotten better, but the latency times from their new geostationary "Jupiter" satellite are too long to support full duplex real-time, i.e., voice and videoconferencing.
Moreover, HughesNet has one, count 'em one, Jupiter bird up there, 22,500 miles up. It's not scalable. Last time I looked, Starlink had about 7,000 low earth orbit birds, with authorization for a total of 44,000. They have become cheaper and their transmission rates are rising. No question, for rural access it's the way to go.