Every time I read anything about starlink, it all just seems so quintessentially American.

You’ve got effective monopolies of communication infrastructure, which causes everyone to be underserved, and instead of just fixing the monopoly problem, you fire off infinite rockets full of cell towers that burn up in a year

I’m angry at you because I’m about to defend an Elon Musk project… But Starlink is used in many countries. (in)Famously in Ukraine. The idea has merit for anyone living in remote areas (northern Canada, war-torn areas, etc.).

The idea has merit for anyone living in remote areas (northern Canada, war-torn areas, etc.)

I will grant you war torn areas, and remote islands, but rural continental communities are better served with terrestrial infrastructure. Just because someone's willing to fill the sky with space junk as a means of masturbation doesn't mean it's the best solution for public infrastructure.

Laying 200km of fiber for a town of ~1000 will always be more expensive than it is worth (for an ISP) and that math only gets worse when you look at last-leg hookups for people spread out ~5km apart around the area and not living directly in the town.

Terrestrial includes wireless solutions, which are better suited for many last-leg hookups in situations like these.

Sure, there's a lot of places where these won't work (eg. mountainous areas), but there are also questions about whether people living that remotely even want broadband or wireless.

Do you think xfinity grade router would do 5km?

Also, serving a community of 2k people as far as 1000 km might cost hundreds of millions. So I don’t believe the 2k community would be happy to pay $5k each monthly to make it profitable for the ISP.

Look up LMG when linus wanted to connect to warehouses meters apart with entry level networking solution.

First, no one is talking about standard home-grade routers, though there is technology to make those work at longer distances. We're talking about say a cellular network, which is considered broadband in most of the US and has an existing infrastructure. Many of these areas are already going to have cellular access, and upgrades to existing networks are significantly cheaper and easier to maintain. There are long-range wifi solutions, and those work too, but most require line-of-sight, so as i stated, aren't suited for say mountanous area.

Name one community that is stretched out over 1000k. That's not community, that's a fucking state or territory. Seriously, that's more than 10x the width or height of Rhode Island.

Again, as I said, it's questionable whether those people even want high-speed internet in the first place. You're probably not living remotely to be on-the-grid.

The LMG video is irrelevant. Linus is far from an expert.