• Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Sat internet is so overhyped. As it’s limited by physics cell towers will always outperform them. Simple as that.

    • cities - cables and 5g
    • country side - 4g and cables in high concentration areas
    • middle of nowhere or war zones - low orbit sats.

    This is purely a security issue not a consumer one.

    • witx@lemmy.sdf.org
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      6 hours ago

      Spoken like a true spoiled city person Good luck getting the necessary infrastructure built (cables, towers, et al) to really remote places. It’s probably more expensive in the long run than having a satellite constellation.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        Good luck? Most of the world is already there. I had 3g in deep jungles of Thailand last weekend and even in the most remote places in China have wire these days.

        The main point is that sat is limited by physics so cell towers and wire are upgrades over sat so it makes much more sense to start with better technology now as we’ll never need less connection.

        • witx@lemmy.sdf.org
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          5 hours ago

          And wires are not bound by physics? To run cables over such long distances you have to boost the signal at periodic distances to avoid voltage drops and noise

          • DoPeopleLookHere@sh.itjust.works
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            3 hours ago

            If we can figure out how to put them on the bottom of the ocean and pipelines over just about any terrain, I think we can figure this out

            • witx@lemmy.sdf.org
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              3 hours ago

              Yes and we can also use a solution which requires absolutely no cables and digging at all, and that doesn’t disrupt any natural environments and occupies land.

              And yes I’m aware of the impact satellites have on the atmosphere. There’s no free lunch.

              • DoPeopleLookHere@sh.itjust.works
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                28 minutes ago

                Because building space ports and rocket launches have 0 impact as well.

                But you acknowledge this, so what’s your point? Why pay a techno billionaire when we can publicly fund cables way cheaper and more friendly?

      • endeavor@sopuli.xyz
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        6 hours ago

        Idk i live in a country where we have wifi in some forests and free wifi in every large city. And we’re an ex soviet shithole.

    • sunbytes@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Infrastructure can be a real problem in some places.

      I’m currently on a mountain and since they upgraded to a hybrid satellite/cable system the speeds have skyrocketed. Laying cable/towers is just not viable, especially with dense rock peaks blocking line of sight.

      Also I have coworkers in Nigeria who lose internet multiple times a day (and often don’t have the bandwidth for a video call) but most of them have bitten the bullet and paid the high up-front cost to get starlink at home. And now can do HD video calls with zero interruption (unless they have power issues, but that’s a whole other thing).

      So I think there’s a lot of use-cases for sattelite, especially for people who aren’t considered worth the investment in non-sattelite infrastructure.

      It’s just unfortunate that yeah, space junk is going to one day (suddenly) be a massive problem.

      Edit: ah I may have replied to the wrong comment