Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by “High Demand”

Ma Bell had several decades to gain good ROI with POTS, while the rate of technology change today shrinks that outlook to just one to two decades. Plus the most profitable high income areas to be installing fiber now often have local laws requiring much more expensive underground installations so residents don't have to see the ugly poles with wires hanging between them.

Seems like every other 4x4 has one on the roof, every camper, people even mount them on their motorcycles.

they were, for months, literally giving the hardware away. no hardware cost. no recurring fees. just 20 bucks for shipping, then the whatever for the actual internet plan itself. a flat $80/mo i think the lowest cost one was. i have a few users on it that bought into that deal. i think it was just before the ipo where they started tacking-on an extra monthly fee.

I'm not in a remote area, just a geographically inconvenient one. Two blocks over they have fiber. Not in my neighborhood. I have been complaining about this for well over a decade.

TIL about Kessler Syndrome. Thanks.

Starlink is extremely competitive for rural customers, due in no small part to the USA’s extreme reluctance to make telecoms with monopolies actually reach people.

They aren't price gouging rural internet subscribers it's the opposite they get half priced subscriptions for as long as they keep them. It is the people who try to sign up that already live in a congested area that get fuck off prices. You can sign up and get a rural deal and then move to a congested area with fuckoff pricing. That is what I did inadvertently.

destroying the ozone layer

This made me ask "wait, is that true" and apparently it is. Super, skin cancer for everyone. 🤦

5G in rural America is terrible. I can't make a phone call in my house, let alone get an internet connection. I'm not even in a particularly remote area.

There are Starlink dishes everwhere you look here because it's currently the only real option. It will probably be a while until they get some competition from Amazon.

Tell me you know nothing about rural living without telling you know nothing about rural living

I think that makes a lot of sense, it would be nice if they clarified if you could BYO router. My guess is you can, as long as it has a sim slot, but can't be too sure. Make sure T-Mobile coverage is good in your area first as well

https://www.pcsforpeople.org/ is another organization with low-cost internet for low income households. they some have hardware, too. they've expanded a lot since their first location opened in minnesota in 1998. (note: i am not affiliated with them, i just occasionally refer people to them)

That looks pretty good

Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by [Musk’s] “High Demand” for more money ketamine

FTFTFY

In China they probably would execute him.

Biden’s broadband equity program earmarked over $42MM to expand broadband; past admins were incentivizing telecom to take action, but lo and behold, doge slashed a gutted to move funding toward starlink.

Is there any source of high speed internet? You could look into a community mesh network.

If you're out on a farm, you fit the intended use case for starlink.

The issue is that all them city folk see starlink as a way of escaping the locked in municipal ISPs. So they clog up satellite bandwidth when they have fibre/5G/HFC/wireless/xDSL options literally at their front door.

Depends on the place. In a lot of countries, the countryside has complete coverage of 3G and 4G. There are also places with at least coax, and even fiber.

In places like the US, companies like Starlink have lobbied so that no cable is installed and no nationwide 3G/4G coverage exists (5G coverage would be near impossible due to the limitations of the technology).

Imho we should be focusing on running cable everywhere instead of trying to maintain a massive network of thousands of satellites in LEO. It's probably cheaper in the long run, and it doesn't ruin scientific observations or the ozone layer.

Probably cellular-based internet.

Even my keyboard has trouble coping with the concept of a trillionaire.