[HN Gopher] FCC rejects LTD Broadband, Starlink RDOF bids
___________________________________________________________________
FCC rejects LTD Broadband, Starlink RDOF bids
Author : walterbell
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-08-10 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fiercetelecom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fiercetelecom.com)
| cm2187 wrote:
| Stupid question. In Europe or the US, we wired the whole country
| all the way to the most remote house to connect them to the
| electricity grid. Then again to connect them to the telephone.
| What has changed that makes it so difficult with fiber?
| wmf wrote:
| Political will and lobbying.
| cm2187 wrote:
| It seems to be the same problem in most european countries
| that have different political systems. Doesn't seem to
| explain it to me.
| rjbwork wrote:
| I forget the name of the phenomenon, and my search-fu is
| failing me, BUT - there is something like the "first mover
| disadvantage" or "innovator's curse" when it comes to
| infrastructure and technology.
|
| Compare somewhere like Romania with the US. Sure, the size
| of the country matters, but they started their modern
| network buildouts WAYYYY after the US. They US was heavily
| invested in copper and coax. Romania was able to leapfrog
| our legacy technology and move straight to fiber +
| neighborhood based local ISP's. While both technologies
| performed similarly very early on, the ceiling of
| performance and lifetime of the line is far higher for
| fiber than copper or coax (barring physically destructive
| actions like an errant shovel.
|
| So, in effect, they _started_ with something can be
| upgraded continuously to this day. We started with
| something whose performance ceiling was much lower, and
| whose effective lifespan was over 10 years ago or more in
| many cases. So now that old stuff has to be maintained
| while doing the capex heavy infrastructure work all over
| again to get the new stuff in there. Meanwhile, we 're
| still paying them every month and their shareholders are
| collecting their dividends, so why would they want anything
| to change? It's not like they're going be able to charge
| some insane premium for their new faster fiber lines over
| their old and slow coax and copper.
| noahtallen wrote:
| Not sure that's completely true -- I've heard great things
| about fiber availability in Romania, Switzerland, and
| Nordic countries for example.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| I can't speak much to European history, but near-universal
| electrical and telephone service in the United States is the
| result of a very substantial regulatory and subsidy effort from
| the 1920s-1970s. Some of this was achieved through regulation
| (e.g. AT&T's requirement to provide telephone service in all
| markets that met certain triggers regardless of profitability,
| which resulted in AT&T charging higher prices elsewhere as a
| form of subsidy) and through direct legislative facilitation
| and subsidies (e.g. the Rural Electrification Act and resulting
| Administration, which offered extremely advantageous loans to
| rural electric and telephone co-ops).
|
| These programs still exist to some degree in the form of the
| Universal Service Fund (USF) and Universal Service Fund
| Administrator Co (USAC), and the chunk of money here (called
| RDOF) is actually a specially earmarked portion of the USF.
| That said, USF's impact on improving broadband across the
| country has been somewhat limited because USF's focus tends to
| be on areas and individuals with _no_ service (e.g. due to
| rural locations or poverty), rather than improving
| competitiveness of service in markets that have it. For
| example, the "Free Cellphone" popup booths you see in poorer
| areas of the US are an implementation of USF programs to
| provide subsidized connectivity to low-income individuals, as
| are the $10/mo ISP plans available to low-income households.
|
| This set of priorities is in no small part because, as you can
| imagine, the incumbent ISPs lobby against USAC actions that
| would subject them to more competition. But it also comes out
| of the history of the concept of "Universal Service" which was
| born in an era when regulated monopolies were the norm for
| public utilities, and so inter-provider competition was simply
| not something being discussed. At that point in history, areas
| with inter-provider competition were generally viewed as _bad_
| for the consumer because in areas with competing telcos (for
| example Los Angeles in the 1910s with LA Telephone and LA Home
| Telephone) you could only call people that used the same
| telephone company as you... requiring businesses to have two
| phones and list two phone numbers. The present world of
| multiple competing but interconnected providers wasn 't really
| something that was contemplated when most of the regulatory
| system was built, and post-1982 (AT&T divestiture) the
| regulatory system has never really caught up... which we can
| fairly confidently blame heavily on extensive lobbying by both
| divested AT&T companies (USWest, AT&T, etc) and their
| competitors that forced the '82 monopoly busting (Sprint/MCI,
| GTE/Verizon, etc).
| mattnewton wrote:
| The US is very big and has very sparsely populated areas, to
| the point where it would take some time to recoup the cost of
| the fiber and labor to run it at market rates. Without subsidy,
| the large telecom companies would rather just not allocate
| capital to it and issue a stock dividend or something.
| agp2572 wrote:
| Telephone and electric lines are above ground in most of US. I
| assume adding one more overhead line is easy but just make it
| more ugly and prone to outage due to storms or bad weather.
| btilly wrote:
| We have learned from experience that when you put a new set of
| wires on, a non-trivial risk exists that existing wires get
| damaged. And then people blame the owner of the other wires for
| their problems.
|
| This happens enough by accident that cases of intent are hard
| to prove, but nobody doubts that it happens with intent as
| well.
|
| The result as we've had more and more wires up is more and more
| regulatory costs around putting up wires.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| The simple answer to this is to make point-to-point dark
| fiber a regulated monopoly, just like electricity.
|
| It's illegal for me to start my own electric distribution
| company within the footprint of my power company. It's also
| illegal for them to deny me service, or to expand vertically
| into anything other than electrical local distribution.
|
| It would be so easy to do the same thing for dark fiber. Hold
| an auction, whoever wins gets to buy all the dark fiber that
| crosses property lines within the territory. In exchange,
| they have to divest ownership of any business that isn't dark
| fiber, and must lease point-to-point wavelengths on a fixed
| and published price schedule to any willing buyer.
|
| The electrical companies would be happy to do this. Mine
| already does, but only for certain areas where they had to
| run their own fiber anyways (basically along the major
| highways). They would be happy to expand to every doorstep if
| they were guaranteed a regulated monopoly just like they have
| for electrical lines. That would be a big enough market to
| allow their fiber department to split off from the electrical
| utility and become a standalone dark fiber utility. They
| don't want to be an ISP (they had the chance to become one
| and turned it down). They're just really good at hanging ADSS
| on poles and want to do a lot of that.
| btilly wrote:
| Regulated monopolies have a long history of getting control
| of the regulation, and then becoming abusive monopolies.
|
| All solutions have problems here. :-(
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| > What has changed that makes it so difficult with fiber?
|
| Unregulated monopolies.
|
| Infrastructure that runs to your doorstep is a natural
| monopoly. All of them -- roads, water, electricity, sewer --
| are either municipally owned or else regulated to prevent
| vertical expansion. Except non-voice telecom.
| maxsilver wrote:
| > What has changed that makes it so difficult with fiber?
|
| Nothing. Utilities just got lazy. If an address has ever had
| working landline telephone service or grid electrical service,
| then there's no good reason they don't also have gigabit fiber
| service.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| This would be acceptable if the members of the FCC weren't being
| compelled to take action that would be favorable to Comcast and
| Verizon. I do not accept that they acted in good faith. Hasn't
| anyone noticed that the net neutrality actions initiated by the
| FCC under the Trump administration haven't changed?
| chroma wrote:
| If you look at the authorized bids[1] versus the defaulted
| bids[2], you can see only three companies got any money from the
| Rural Digital Opportunity Fund broadband subsidy. The other five
| companies got nothing, including SpaceX and LTD.
|
| E-Fiber San Juan LLC gets $7.5M to provide broadband services to
| 1,085 homes in rural Utah. Monster Broadband gets $5.8M for
| 11,286 homes in Texas and Tennessee. Northern Arapaho Tribal
| Industries gets $7.8M for 2,408 homes in Wyoming (probably on
| Indian reservations). So a total of around $21 million will be
| spent on 15,000ish homes.
|
| The FCC's budget for the RDOF subsidy is around $20 billion for 4
| million homes, so 99.99% of the money is still up for grabs, as
| are 99.96% of the rural households.
|
| 1. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-22-848A2.pdf
|
| 2. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-22-848A3.pdf
| resfirestar wrote:
| To be clear, those links are only for the eleventh batch of
| "ready to authorize" bids that was released today. Other bids
| were authorized in different batches, viewable at
| https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904/releases
| devindotcom wrote:
| I don't think this is correct. The FCC announcement notes that
| $5B of the original RDOF auction has been authorized already.
| It gave out $23M today in a separate announcement.
| chrisjc wrote:
| I have a feeling that Starlink will end up being an indirect
| recipient despite the rejection.
|
| Starlink might just end up making deals with the companies that
| won their bids and sell their services/hardware as rebranded
| solutions. It's probably cheaper for these companies to do this
| instead of setting up their own infrastructure.
|
| Of course the real question is probably whether not following
| through on their obligations and getting fined is less than the
| amount they were awarded.
| themitigating wrote:
| I love how people want to live in rural areas to save money but
| then the federal government makes up the difference for what
| would normally be expensive utilities. Then those same people
| crap on those who live in cities.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Some people can't afford to live in cities...and their life is
| better in rural areas. Some people prefer to own rather than
| rent, even if it's a 100K house on a small plot passed down
| generations. You're essentially saying poor people don't
| deserve internet access. It's hilarious to me that people with
| your position proclaim to be progressive (not saying you are,)
| when there is an explicit hatred of the poor when you start
| talking to them. I imagine -that- is why people in rural areas
| feel a disconnect with people in cities.
| themitigating wrote:
| Life is better when they have access to electricity,
| internet, roads, and other public services that are
| subsidized by the government.
|
| More importantly these are the people who are more likely to
| complain about government handouts and socialism.
| martyvis wrote:
| You eat food right? It doesn't grow in the supermarket? Maybe
| you take vacations outside of the city and you expect the
| people who provide the services you use there to have a life
| and access to the internet.
| djmips wrote:
| I feel like the land and building cost in my city dwarf the
| utility difference.
| testing7787 wrote:
| [deleted]
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| "I love how people want to live in rural areas to save money"
|
| They aren't saving money, though. Everything gets weird if you
| live in a rural area - or heck, a small town. Sometimes housing
| is cheaper, sure, and then you realize that while you don't
| have a water bill, you _do_ now have to get your septic system
| pumped regularly, keep bottled water around because your well
| pump doesn 't work when there is a power outage, and you have
| to drive everywhere. I imagine that Amazon has made it slightly
| cheaper because you can drive less. If you don't want to drive,
| good luck: You can't take your bike on the fastest route and
| the country roads are poorly maintained.
|
| And I'm really happy the government makes up for the utilities.
| You might live in the country, but if you don't have
| electricity and internet service, your time is going to be more
| isolated and miserable. Folks living in the countryside
| shouldn't have to be without because of crushing costs,
| especially when we consider that a portion these folks are
| producing food for the rest of us.
| themitigating wrote:
| Based on voting patterns most people in rural areas don't
| like government spending and handouts
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| Right? There was an article here earlier about running fiber in
| rural Michigan. Kudos to the dude doing it and I agree that
| internet access is important. But 30k per house seems like a
| very wonky investment. At 100$ a month that would be 25 years
| to pay back, which could be feasible depending on what we are
| doing for internet in 25 years. Still seems ridiculous. If you
| wanted to pay 30k per household to build super fast internet
| for everyone in Seattle or Austin, people would laugh you out
| of the room.
| calgoo wrote:
| It's all about where you pass the cables. If you need to dig
| up the street then 30k is not a lot of money to do the
| installation. If you can install the cables on already
| existing poles, then that reduces the cost a lot.
|
| It's also cheaper to do a group of homes then it is to do 1
| as the cost of bringing the workers, the machinery and the
| permits is spread across all clients. That's why we hear a
| lot of cases where someone has a fiber cable passing close by
| but the cable company did not see enough profit to finish the
| last mile (or they asked at the time of building and not
| enough homes signed up at the time).
| newjersey wrote:
| I don't get it. Why is fiber to the home so expensive? I
| think in principle, it makes sense for us to pay for rural
| broadband the same way we paid for rural electricity. The
| problem is some companies took the money but didn't deliver
| the results, no?
|
| > In 1936, the REA was made permanent through the Rural
| Electrification Act. It was granted an initial budget of $50
| million for the first two years, then $40 million a year for
| the following decade ($550 million in 1936 is approximately
| $10.3 billion today). Jul 12, 2021
|
| snippet answer from Google search https://www.google.com/sear
| ch?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+muc...
|
| I can't imagine how our government can justify subsidizing
| anything other than fiber to the home in the current year. As
| far as I know, there is very little ongoing maintenance cost
| and glass fiber is much cheaper than copper, no? Coax people
| are saying they can get symmetric gigabit up and down with
| docsis but I will believe it when I see it (low latency
| symmetric gigabit up and down, no data caps, reasonable
| pricing). Until then, we shouldn't give them any money.
| bityard wrote:
| > Why is fiber to the home so expensive?
|
| I guess it costs more than you think to hire someone to dig
| a hole, put something in it, and then cover it back up
| again.
|
| I paid a guy almost $2000 to fix a few feet of sewer line
| in my front yard. Very little work to do once the old line
| was dug up, the main costs were in pulling various permits,
| renting the equipment, hiring crew, etc. Now multiply that
| by a few miles and $30k starts to look like a bargain.
| wmf wrote:
| Any kind of utility is expensive; fiber is no worse than
| electricity, water, or gas. The difference is that all
| those utilities were installed before we shot ourselves in
| the foot with 10,000 pages of regulations written by
| incumbent monopoly lobbyists.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is why a lot of fiber roll-outs happen when
| electrical, water, or gas lines are already being
| replaced.
| jcims wrote:
| What's the increase in property value by now appealing to
| tech/knowledge workers? Would you personally move to a place
| that only offered shitty DSL?
|
| I almost pulled the trigger on a $30k quote from Centurylink
| to run fiber to my home but they proved incapable of
| backhauling anywhere near what i was looking for. I didn't
| give a shit about its amortized cost.
| bityard wrote:
| This might be an odd notion considering the average HN
| commenter but hear me out. It's _just_ possible the guy
| running that ISP isn't doing it to grow into a VC-backed
| unicorn with an exit strategy of getting scooped up by a
| FAANG in 5 years.
|
| He doesn't want to _lose_ money on it, but he's an engineer
| and has evaluated the risks and costs and found them
| acceptable. He's doing it because because the incumbent ISP
| won't, because it's a challenge, and because he wants to to
| serve his community. Or so I've been able to gather.
| stephen_greet wrote:
| But running an ISP requires a metric ton of capital
| upfront. No matter the motivation, how do you get that
| capital?
| chmod600 wrote:
| Downvoted because (a) sarcasm isn't helpful; (b) generalized
| criticism of unnamed people rather than specific ideas.
| themitigating wrote:
| I don't have to name specific people to make a general
| critical statement about a situation. However, if you'd like
| me to be more specific and not be sarcastic- I find right
| wing Republicans who decry government handouts and whatever
| they believe "socialism" is because some receive farm
| subsidies and others have utilities subsidized through rural
| improvement programs by the government. For those that aren't
| political but live in rural areas, please remove them from my
| list.
|
| If you want to reply that city people also take advantage of
| government programs remember they aren't going around angry
| all the time about government spending and welfare. It's the
| hypocrisy that brings out my sarcastic side.
| bityard wrote:
| Do you believe that all rural citizens are republicans?
| themitigating wrote:
| " For those that aren't political but live in rural
| areas, please remove them from my list."
| beart wrote:
| Edit: I was reading two different articles and got them mixed
| up, so I apologize. I thought I was on this one
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411493
|
| The rest of this post will probably be very confusing.
|
| I understand the sentiment. However, real life is more complex
| than that. For example, this article in particular is talking
| about an area around Ann Arbor. I have a friend who lives in
| this area (in a rural house). He's a tech worker. His neighbor
| is a tech worker. His brother around the corner used to be a
| tech worker. I've been to the gun range near his house several
| times, and each time it is populated by a diverse (age, race,
| sex) group of people.
|
| On the flip side, there are folks (without children) at the
| local school board meeting trying to have certain books
| removed. A council in the area recently got into trouble for
| misallocating covid funds as personal bonuses.
|
| It's a constant battle, but painting everyone in a rural area
| with the same brush is a mistake.
| TinkersW wrote:
| People do not live in rural areas "to save money".
| bityard wrote:
| This feels quite a lot like asking why should healthy people
| subsidize the sick, poor, and old?
| jeffbee wrote:
| A federal fund to agglomerate dispersed people into small
| villages where the utilities can be provided at a reasonable
| price is a better use of tax funds than massive subsidies for
| existing settlement patterns. We already had another article on
| here today about how the feds are throwing ~$10k per household
| at some Michigan ISP to hook up people who live miles from
| anywhere.
| emkoemko wrote:
| where do you live that rural costs less? electricity costs way
| more then in a city, heating if you get gas line way more if
| not you pay a lot for heating oil, i have to pay like 200$ for
| electricity even if i didn't use a watt...
| danjoredd wrote:
| "After careful legal, technical, and policy review, we are
| rejecting these applications. Consumers deserve reliable and
| affordable high-speed broadband,"
|
| So make ATT and other ISPs serve the rural market, FTC! The
| hypocrisy in this statement is laughable since rural customer's
| only choice is dial-up, HughesNet(which is worse than Starlink)
| and mobile hot-spots. I think there is more to this than that
| statement.
| refulgentis wrote:
| That's exactly what the grants in question are for
|
| And no, there isn't more to it, the only reason we're even here
| is because they had to play along with Starlink's initial
| application that had too optimistic numbers because it's not
| their job to question pie in the sky numbers, but instead, to
| tentatively approve it until it's proven false.
| wmf wrote:
| Technically, RDOF ISPs have until 2028 to provide the promised
| service but Starlink's application was denied because their Ookla
| speed tests are slightly low in 2022. Appearances matter. If they
| provisioned slightly fewer customers per cell they might have
| passed.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "Cory Hauer, LTD Broadband's CEO, told Fierce it is "extremely
| disappointed in the FCC staff decision" and is evaluating next
| steps. He added "I don't believe the FCC fully appreciated the
| benefits LTD Broadband would bring to hundreds of thousands of
| rural Americans.""
|
| Except of course the facts suggest the exact opposite, where the
| FCC very much appreciated the benefits that you "would" bring, so
| much so as to select you as one of two potential contract
| recipients, but has determined that you lied during the bid and
| in reality can't bring what you claimed you'd be able to bring.
| zw123456 wrote:
| I explain it this way; think of it as a cellular network in the
| sky, except in a terrestrial cellular network, the cell sites are
| stationary and connected via fiber and you are moving in your car
| or walking (or you can). With LEOS, each satellite is like a cell
| site, like a 5G one with phased array antennas, the satellite is
| moving and you are stationary and the satellited are connected to
| each other via free space optics but the backhaul is obviously
| RF, but the hand offs between satellites is over FSO. In fact,
| R17 of 3GPP standards now has provisions in it for 5G direct from
| the LEOS to the user. None deploy yet. but in a couple of years,
| that could be interesting.
|
| Each satellite paints a spot on the ground using the beamforming
| capabilities of the phased array antenna. The capacity of that
| spot is of course limited by Shannon limit, where C ~ B * S C =
| capacity (think Mbps) B = spectrum (think Mhz) S = SINR (Singal
| to noise ratio)
|
| If you have a smaller spot on the ground, then the spectrum is
| shared amoung fewer users. If you have more powerful transmitters
| and or better antennas, then your C will be better.
|
| Right now based on the specifications I have seen publicly,
| Amazon's Kuiper (their LEOS) will have higher capacity than
| starlink because it will have half the "spot" diameter. That is
| due to better antennas mostly, more array elements mean narrower
| beam width.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Been using T-mobile ISP, I have some complaints but overall, it
| does the job. I feel like some money should be put into 5G towers
| instead. Country wide 5G access + countrywide broadband. Overall
| a net win IMO.
| justapassenger wrote:
| And as a bonus 5G towers don't fall of the sky after few years
| and require constant total rebuilding of them.
| wmf wrote:
| Technically, RDOF ISPs have until 2028 to provide the promised
| service but Starlink's application was denied because their Ookla
| speed tests are slightly low in 2022. Appearances matter. If they
| provisioned slightly fewer customers per cell they might have
| passed.
| malfist wrote:
| Promising 20mbps and delivering 9 is not "a bit low". I want
| starlink to succeed, and I wish they'd gotten the the criteria
| to get this funding, but let's not be deceptive here.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Third-party observations are not mere optics. The company's
| claims simply did not survive scrutiny.
| ajross wrote:
| They're satellites, they move. You can't "provision" customers
| like that. You provide a constellation that gives some level of
| coverage at some level of reliability as a function of
| latitude, and that's what you get.
|
| Now, OK, maybe that's not going to be acceptable to regulators.
| And... that's sort of a shame given the fact that satellite
| services are available literally everywhere. How many people
| not served by existing rural broadband RDOF recipients would
| _love_ to have a subsidized Starlink antenna?
|
| I really don't see how this is helping anyone except a handful
| of cable companies actually doing deployments. The vast bulk of
| the rural subscriber base that fund is intended to assist
| aren't going to get anything out of it.
| bri3d wrote:
| Starlink right now is a bent pipe between the dishy and a
| ground station. Depending on how many customers they have in
| a specific ground station's cell, they need different
| backhaul capacity for that cell.
|
| So, in the case of Starlink, they absolutely CAN provision
| customers like that, and that's EXACTLY how it works right
| now - invites happen per "cell," and each "cell" has a
| capacity quota.
|
| Recently, they've been overprovisioning "cells" for some
| reason or another, and the service has slowed down, so it
| objectively didn't meet the thresholds and they'll need to
| bid again. This also seems reasonable.
|
| I say this all as a happy Starlink customer - negative
| externalities to space junk and obnoxious fanbase aside, it's
| way better than my previous fixed point to point WISP
| experience was, and worlds better than ADSL stretched to the
| bitter end of distance capability over lines from the 1970s
| was.
| ghaff wrote:
| My experience with the Starlink at my brother's house in
| Maine is that it's "OK" relative to wired broadband. Speeds
| are reasonable and, while I've had a couple multi-hour
| outages in the limited time I've spent up there, it's
| pretty usable. I could work up there if I wanted to.
|
| But there are no good alternatives. ADSL was 1Mbps down
| with a tailwind and it was the last house on the road that
| could get it. Cell service is very sketchy, especially if
| not on Verizon. HughesNet limitations are well-known. So
| it's pretty much a game-changer in terms of Internet
| access.
| bri3d wrote:
| That's been my experience too.
|
| Here in Colorado my service is actually pretty good - I
| get 20-30mbit during crowded times, and 150-200mbit
| during off hours. Outages were problematic a few months
| ago but have improved and now usually coincide only with
| severe thunderstorms.
|
| Overall, it's a literal order of magnitude better than
| end-of-line ADSL and roughly a 2x gain over my old WISP
| (at 2x the cost). For someone who used to have access to
| a WISP, it's evolutionary. For locations with no previous
| access at all, it's revolutionary.
|
| On the flip side, the hardware is almost offensively
| silly and ridiculous (proprietary connectors and cables,
| router with 0 Ethernet ports but a diagram of Mars
| instead, etc.). IPv6 support disappeared sometime last
| year, and everything is behind a CGNAT. And link quality
| sometimes seems to depend on the dish repositioning
| algorithm picking the correct inclination, which seems to
| be a crapshoot depending on when it was last rebooted
| rather than an ongoing correction process.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| > You can't "provision" customers like that.
|
| You might want to tell SpaceX that, because that's what
| they've been doing.
|
| The satellites near a particular area (at any particular
| point in time) have a capacity as do the local ground
| station(s).
| ezfe wrote:
| They literally do provision customers per cell. The
| satellites move in predictable orbits meaning each cell has a
| specific capacity.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >In a public notice, the FCC cited recent Ookla data
|
| Why is the FCC using Ookla when they built their own speed test
| app?
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-encourages-public-use-its-s...
| pwinnski wrote:
| Because people independently choose to use Ookla, it's very
| popular. Few people use the FCC's app, which depend on people
| at the locations using it to provide data.
| peeters wrote:
| Because if a statistically insufficient number of people are
| using that app, the data shouldn't be used for decision making.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| FCC's app is a white-labeled test on contract from SamKnows.
| FCC also has contracts with Ookla for use of their data. From
| the FCC's perspective they seem to just be using data across
| multiple vendors for more coverage, but Ookla is the biggest
| player and has a lot more data points on offer than SamKnows.
| vardump wrote:
| One issue: I don't know about others, but personally I'm way
| more likely to check Ookla's Speedtest when the connection is
| bad, to see whether my connection got an issue. Not when it
| works as expected.
| function_seven wrote:
| I never heard of FCC's own speed test app. So I tried to use
| it.
|
| 1. Apparently I have to install an app on my phone. I can't use
| a web-based tool from my desktop. (I was thinking there must be
| a version for regular computer users, right?)
|
| 2. Thinking I missed something, I searched for "FCC speed
| test". The results all point back to this app.
|
| 3. On a whim, I tried visiting speedtest.fcc.gov. Of course
| nothing lives there.
|
| Why is FCC bothering with this if they're going to obscure it
| behind app stores? Seems like a way to only get outlier users.
| wmf wrote:
| I think that app is intended to measure cellular carriers. To
| measure wired broadband they used SamKnows routers instead of
| an app.
| kotaKat wrote:
| I love how they call out Starlink's $600 equipment cost but
| completely gloss over many a small-town fiber company that will
| charge $200 easy for an install (or more), and completely ignores
| ViaSat's $10/month equipment lease (or $300 prepaid but you don't
| own it) and Hughes $15/mo lease and $99 setup or $450 upfront
| payment for their dish.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| So who will the money go to, Comcast?
| resfirestar wrote:
| Comcast didn't participate in RDOF:
| https://www.fiercetelecom.com/operators/comcast-adds-323-000...
| pavon wrote:
| The money (and the areas that were bid on) go back in the pot
| for Phase II of RDOF. Starlink can bid on that if they
| demonstrate adequate performance by then.
|
| Edit: Actually it looks like it goes back into the Universal
| Service Fund (which is where RDOF got it's money), and may be
| used for RDOF or other USF funded programs.
| kube-system wrote:
| Frontier is the big name in rural subsidies.
| deltree7 wrote:
| If Starlink was led by a black, trans, lesbian, woman, they
| wouldn't have dared to touch this grant.
|
| But since it is a White Man's company, and a Billionaire to boot,
| it's a political win for Democrats
| dang wrote:
| You can't post this kind of dross here, regardless of which
| politics you prefer.
|
| Since you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly in
| other places as well, I've banned the account.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll
| follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Can someone explain how does Starlink go about using the
| electromagnetic spectrum efficiently? 4G (and 5G even more so)
| relies on small cells to spatially partition the spectrum,
| therefore increasing the maximum bandwidth available in the
| system. Need to serve more users without compromising per-user
| throughput? Split the cells.
|
| Now, the cell of a satellite is enormous, and there's no way to
| reduce the tx power without getting out of range of the surface
| of the planet altogether. Not to mention that those satellites
| are pretty damn fast so they stay over any particular user for a
| very short amount of time.
|
| What am I missing? Or is this supposed to be a low throughput
| system (when added up over all concurrent users)?
| wmf wrote:
| All modern satellites use multiple narrow spot beams; in
| Starlink's case each beam is 22 km wide. This allows spectrum
| to be reused.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Oh, ok. But 22km is still _a lot_ more than a typical 4G /5G
| urban cell. It's basically the size of a city. Whereas I can
| spot multiple stations in my city if I go for a 5-10 minute
| walk.
| wmf wrote:
| Yes, the density of satellite is far lower than urban
| cellular which is why no one is pitching satellite for
| urban customers.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| That, and latency. Or has that improved in the last
| decade?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I wouldn't care about 40ms of latency for my phone.
|
| If by "last decade" you're comparing against
| geostationary, then yes. The satellites are roughly a
| hundred times closer.
| mhandley wrote:
| In principle you've got spatial diversity at both ends - on
| the ground and in space. I don't mean full duplex - I mean
| that the same area on the ground can in principle be
| covered by multiple Starlink satellites simultaneously
| using the same frequencies, so long as the satellites are
| not close together. The receiving phased array can separate
| the multiple signals just as it could if you used a
| steerable parabolic dish, but in software. Of course there
| may not be enough satellites launched yet to take advantage
| of this, but eventually there should be.
| wmf wrote:
| I don't think the FCC will ever allow that config due to
| interference with GSO.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Phased arrays and beam steering are pretty magical. Both the
| satellite and the ground station can aim at each other by using
| hundreds of antennas as a "lens", providing very efficient use
| of the spectrum. If I had to guess, I would assume that
| Starlink's beam size is about 10-50 km in radius.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| There are limits to this magic. While sparse arrays of
| antenna can get you very good angular resolution when
| receiving signals, they're not so magical for transmission;
| as your array of transmitting antenna gets sparser, the power
| density of the beam also decreases proportionally. This is
| why aperture synthesis is great for radio astronomy, but next
| to worthless for far-field power transmission.
| stagger87 wrote:
| There are a lot of people that have written about this, here's
| one for instance.
|
| http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698
| wnevets wrote:
| Starlink isn't capable of meeting its performance commitments,
| this was the correct decision.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Starlink's constellation isn't even half completed yet. It's
| likely that Starlink will get faster when they have more
| satellites. Why are they judging results on incomplete data?
| The other guys get until 2028 to finish their build-out -- why
| doesn't Starlink?
| pwinnski wrote:
| They do. Once they finish their buildout and can meet the
| performance required, they can re-apply.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's a completely different round. There will be
| different rules, and different competitors. They have to
| recompete.
|
| Next year it's likely the Senate will have changed hands,
| so the likelihood of the program still existing is low.
|
| That's like telling the winner of a sports tournament that
| sorry, the prize you were promised is gone. But we might
| have another tournament next year, so that's OK.
|
| Starlink is going to sue over this, and they'll win. By
| 2028 Starlink expects to have two orders of magnitude more
| capacity than they do now. 15x as many satellites, with an
| order of magnitude more capacity per satellite.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| > Next year it's likely the Senate will have changed
| hands, so the likelihood of the program still existing is
| low.
|
| This program started under the previous administration.
| Overall these subsidies have been around forever and will
| likely continue. Here's a negative take on the status quo
| that runs through the history up to this program:
|
| https://techpolicyinstitute.org/publications/broadband/ru
| ral...
|
| Personally I think this falls into the category of "if
| it's worth doing it's worth doing poorly." I actually
| think that having 100/20 as a benchmark is good and that
| Starlink will get there. Is it close enough to be an
| improvement over Hughsnet and 56k modems? Yes. Even at 20
| up, 10 down it's more usable.
|
| Anything Elon Musk touches invites controversy these days
| so boring policy issues like this get a new life of their
| own.
|
| If this were Comcast being shown the door we'd all be
| cheering. For example: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2022/08/man-who-built-is...
| vel0city wrote:
| > That's like telling the winner of a sports tournament
|
| But Starlink _didn 't_ win the sports tournament this
| year, they didn't meet the performance obligations.
| CircleSpokes wrote:
| >Next year it's likely the Senate will have changed
| hands, so the likelihood of the program still existing is
| low.
|
| Why do you think this? The FCC was handing out tons of
| cash to rural ISPs under Trump & a Republican congress.
| Improving rural internet is popular and well supported
| among the republicans since lots of rural areas are
| pretty red.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I don't believe they had performance commitments yet. What this
| is saying is they don't meet the performance criteria now and
| they don't think they will meet it by 2028 because performance
| is decreasing with more subscribers. I think the FCC is wrong
| on this one. I would take the long bet that Starlink will
| average above 100/20 by 2028.
| gibolt wrote:
| Agreed. We aren't even on next gen satellites (far larger) or
| laser communication yet. Those should significantly improve
| speed, bandwidth, and reliability.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| IMO satellite to satellite communication is going to be
| SpaceX's equivalent of Tesla's FSD: always just around the
| corner.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They've launched the lasers. You think alignment is so
| hard they won't manage it in the next year? I'm not that
| pessimistic.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Also, this is a weird program for Starlink. Why not just
| subsidize the terminal cost and monthly plan to any low
| income area without access to fast wired internet? When
| fast wired internet makes it to that area stop offering the
| subsidy. Starlink is unique that removing the subsidy
| doesn't leave stranded capital assets. Then the FCC could
| award all the blocks to fiber providers but if they don't
| make it for another decade or so, the people will at least
| have decent internet in the meantime.
| thaeli wrote:
| The FCC used aggregate performance across the network, which
| arguably isn't accurate at depicting the performance in the
| most remote cells. Starlink is unusual here in the degree to
| which their service performs better in more remote areas; for
| most providers, it's the reverse. So they may well be meeting
| their performance commitments in the most remote areas, but
| severe congestion in areas that have other service options is
| hurting their averages.
|
| I'm not sure what the right call is here. It's very difficult
| to make an apples-to-apples comparison between vastly
| different technologies; this isn't Starlink exclusive, but
| will probably apply to the other LEO constellations whenever
| they come online in strength.
| dboreham wrote:
| I don't think I've ever seen 20Mbits up on my Starlink. It's
| usually a solid 10-15.
| xoa wrote:
| This is completely wrong though, I've seen 220 down/40 up out
| of it. They've apparently been trying to stay right around
| their commitment level while building out as quickly as
| possible, and let it slip a bit under on a third party speed
| test. But that can be relatively easily remedied by reducing
| subscriber growth vs new satellite launches. And literally just
| today we saw another significant step towards Starship
| launching with the first static fire of Raptor 2 on a full
| Super Heavy booster. That'll bring far more launches of the
| much more powerful Starlink v2.0 satellites. It's brand new
| cutting edge technology bringing service right now to people
| abandoned to dialup or ludicrously expensive lines or HEO sat
| for decades. It's already been a life changer.
|
| Their plans for further scaling are solid and in progress. The
| tech is obviously and objectively capable. The lobbying against
| it has been intense for completely befuddling reasons though,
| but even so this is a really disappointing decision.
| [deleted]
| mccorrinall wrote:
| > The lobbying against it has been intense for completely
| befuddling reasons though
|
| Citation needed. I don't see why anyone would lobby against
| starlink or LTD here. Neither won. They money from the fund
| is not distributed. They can reapply.
|
| What the hell are you talking about? If there is lobbying,
| it's certainly not against Starlink or LTD getting the funds
| as subsidiaries. The goals were set, starlink didn't meet
| them, they don't get subsidized. Simple as that.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > I've seen 220 down/40 up out of it.
|
| Sounds great. However, I've seen |31/|4 and |20/|10 out of
| it. Anecdata doesn't prove much.
|
| The network is improving, the tech is capable, but the real
| life performance is not up to snuff. Starlink, much like any
| company Musk seems to get himself involved with, is promising
| more than it can deliver, and that hurts when it comes to
| subsidies. They can have their billions when their network
| does what it promised to do.
| xoa wrote:
| > _Sounds great. However, I 've seen |31/|4 and |20/|10 out
| of it. Anecdata doesn't prove much._
|
| Anecdotes cannot prove population statistics, you need an
| unbiased random sample for that. But anecdotes absolute
| _can_ prove _limits_ though. Remember, this is what I was
| responding to, emphasis added:
|
| > _Starlink isn 't_ CAPABLE _of meeting its performance
| commitments_
|
| That's what I took issue with and think is important.
| Starlink is absolutely _capable_ of those speeds; I 've
| seen them. So the problem isn't the technology, the problem
| is balancing serving the most people (which is a public
| good too) with maintaining enough performance on average
| for each one, all while scaling and evolving the technology
| fast. I'm assuming SpaceX could have submitted private data
| showing the public results by ookla were off in some way
| that would have been sufficient and that the FCC didn't
| ignore that out of lobbying/politics, so I'm taking it as a
| given that they did fall behind there. But it's not like
| Starlink is "done", they're continuing to increase sat
| numbers, build more ground stations, they're prepping to
| bring online intersat optical links and have no given a
| firm date for that (it's required for their marine service
| to get away from coastal waters), they've got much better
| sats and a solid process on the rocket to launch them. If
| we didn't need someone to take on some more risk and help
| accelerate things, this entire program would be meaningless
| and there would be no need for government in this space at
| all! I guess it feels like they're being punished for
| trying to move faster when that's exactly what lots of
| Americans need. We needed something better then the crap
| we've had 10 years ago let alone now.
|
| Of course, this may be 100% the correct legal decision
| depending on the exact language, administration and so on
| of the program. I could easily see the FCC not doing well
| on that but that doesn't mean they aren't required to stick
| to it by law. But that's not what I see most people
| criticizing it on, they're talking technical and societal
| angles instead. And on _those_ grounds, I can be
| disappointed if the program didn 't have some leeway.
| "Needs to be ready by 2028" isn't good enough!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| When someone uses the word "performance commitments,"
| they usually are referring to SLAs like: "performance for
| 99% of subscribers 99% of the time."
|
| Starlink is probably below three nines of reliability on
| even having a connection, and may only be at one to two
| nines or so on the speed demands. Many people on Starlink
| get bursts of decent speed and also stretches where the
| network operates at a crawl.
|
| Thus, they can offer you good speed and still be
| incapable of meeting performance commitments.
| mangoTangoBango wrote:
| Compared to 1.5/0.5 DSL its great, it's getting 60/11 about
| 40mi away from SpaceX (Starlink) HQ. But compared to
| municipal bidirectional gigabit fiber it's...not as great.
|
| Heres ping info from starlink:
|
| --- google.com ping statistics --- 38 packets transmitted,
| 38 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip
| min/avg/max/stddev = 26.879/45.073/95.627/11.582 ms
| gibolt wrote:
| Is anyone else delivering anything even close? Aiming
| 10-100x better than competitors and missing by a small
| percentage is considered failure apparently.
|
| Hughesnet was one of the best options prior to Starlink.
| garciasn wrote:
| No, but they didn't apply for this either; because, they
| knew they couldn't meet the expectations set by the FCC.
| carbocation wrote:
| I agree with all of the aspirational statements you have made
| here, but I still think this was the right choice. A
| threshold was set. The threshold was not met. Sounds like
| they can reapply, and if they provide the necessary service
| level at that time, then they can get the $.
| btilly wrote:
| I would agree if the same standard was being applied to the
| existing telecoms. But it isn't.
|
| In the last several decades, telecoms have routinely been
| paid billions for projects that didn't produce, and then
| won money in the next round as well. Indeed the fight isn't
| usually about whether to continue this, but who should win
| this round (established telecoms, municipal broadband,
| etc).
|
| It was a surprise when Starlink won in the first place. But
| it is no surprise that it is being held to a higher
| standard than, say, Charter.
| stephen_greet wrote:
| What do you mean by "applied to the existing telecoms"?
| For this RDOF subsidy, no major telecoms have been given
| any money.
|
| It's totally fair to criticize subsidies that have been
| historically given major telecom companies when they
| failed to deliver (and they have). But, I don't think
| it's fair to say "historically the US government has
| given subsidies to telecoms that have failed to deliver,
| so you should keep doing that".
| xoa wrote:
| Government has given hundreds of billions in broadband
| funding to the giant telecoms and cable for ages for
| absolute nada [EDIT, 1]. The clients I put in Starlink for
| last year had a 10 meg connection for which they were
| charged hundreds of dollars per month and were _fortunate_
| since a mile away it was 56k modem of HughesNet or nothing.
| It 's really good tech. I've been hearing promises and
| aspirations about fiber for like 17 fucking _years_. I can
| completely believe that in designing and putting into being
| a brand new network like that SpaceX has misjudged cell
| density vs satellite density and capabilities in areas and
| let the average speeds fall. But given what they 're doing
| and the (non)alternatives I'd be a lot happier if there was
| some leeway to bring that back up and see how v2 comes out.
| Funding very promising technology that is aggressively
| trying to ramp hard and has a clear 1-3 year horizon is
| precisely the sort of thing government should do after all
| their failures up until now. And there are others less well
| off within a hundred miles who were hoping to get Starlink
| if the monthly cost could be brought down by this program.
| And Starlink aren't assholes like the incumbent players
| either. No datacaps, zero billing crap with surprise
| charges or fees, no port blocking, no bullshit in general.
| Of course more speed would be better, but that should be
| worth something too vs theoretically faster connections
| that then punish or restrict.
|
| Bottom line: I don't think these $886 million now going
| elsewhere are going to benefit even a single person up here
| near the Canadian border in the next few years. Fiber is
| still not going to appear here. The border is over 3000
| miles long. In contrast Starlink can do something now (if
| you look at the Starlink map [0], there are very few filled
| cells in northern New England or northern Midwest/Pacific
| West up near Canada), and has the real promise of doing
| better. Now that will be harder, and I do not believe
| anything better is going to come of it for any of us in
| that time frame. If fiber comes in 2028 wonderful, Starlink
| could be cancelled then. That's a long time though to still
| be on 56k/HEOsat.
|
| To sibling comments talking crap like "do you work for
| SpaceX" if you wish to volunteer and come up to lay fiber
| for us right fucking now by all means.
|
| ----
|
| 0: https://www.starlink.com/map
|
| 1: I'm editing in response to tyrfing below because I
| suspect I'll hit the HN reply speed cap sometime shortly.
| This got tons of coverage in the 00s in particular but has
| fallen away over time as these things tend to. I had a
| bunch bookmarked at one point from old /. stories and the
| like and actual paper books but all the sites now seem to
| be dead. Here's a more recent one though that seems to
| cover the gist and could be a place to start for more: "The
| Book Of Broken Promises: $400 Billion Broadband Scandal"
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-
| promis_b_5...
| tyrfing wrote:
| > Government has given hundreds of billions in broadband
| funding to the giant telecoms
|
| Can you share a source for this? I'm very curious to see
| the breakdown of funding sources.
|
| > there are others less well off within a hundred miles
| who were hoping to get Starlink if the monthly cost could
| be brought down by this program
|
| Why would the company receiving free money make it
| cheaper, are there price caps that SpaceX wouldn't meet?
| You've clearly laid out that they have no competition.
|
| > Funding very promising technology that is aggressively
| trying to ramp hard and has a clear 1-3 year horizon
|
| They had 1.5 years. "1-3 year horizon" is thus clearly
| misleading, since halfway through that timeframe they are
| unable to meet requirements.
| orangepanda wrote:
| If you average AWS snowmobile out, it does about 1 Tbps. Has
| some latency though.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I am hearing that lots of people are now getting under 50/15
| out of it, and nobody I know with starlink has gotten better
| than 100 down. That is not really broadband. Those people may
| be in regions that are oversubscribed, but that is also
| partly a problem related to the price being too low. Of
| course, if they raise the price, then it might not be
| considered cheap enough for these subsidies either.
| jcims wrote:
| I've had it in central Ohio since February 2021. I would
| say i average ~120M down, ~20M up. There've been a few
| outages, but I've never seen a prolonged period of less
| than 80M down.
|
| The fastest thing I can get otherwise is a 10M down, 768K
| up DSL link. I had been working remote on that since 2008.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| I get more than that on the RV plan in an oversubscribed
| area (jumped the queue).
|
| I'd be lucky to get 5/1.5 from frontier, and their DSL
| service in the area goes down every few weeks.
|
| This seems like a case of lobbyist-induced double
| standards.
| swatcoder wrote:
| You think Starlink doesn't have lobbysists?
|
| If they failed their qualifying metrics and _did_ win the
| subsidies anyway, wouldn't mirror universe hedora be here
| complaining about _that_ double standard?
|
| To me at least, this seems less obviously suspect than
| that would have.
| thrwy_918 wrote:
| > nobody I know with starlink has gotten better than 100
| down. That is not really broadband
|
| AFAIK the minimum speed for "broadband" is 25 down.
|
| I am a highly online person living in a large city with
| many choices of ISP at many different speeds, and I still
| only have a 110mbps connection. It seems strange to me to
| suggest that speed is universally inadequate, though I can
| understand why large households may need higher bandwidth.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course that's really broadband and it's fine for what
| most households use the Internet for. Maybe once you get
| into multiple 4K streams you start to run into limits. But
| once you get past some fairly modest point, it doesn't
| change the Internet experience for most people.
| wnevets wrote:
| > This is completely wrong though
|
| are you accusing the FCC of lying or just being too
| incompetent to measure network speeds?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > They've apparently been trying to stay right around their
| commitment level while building out as quickly as possible,
| and let it slip a bit under on a third party speed test.
|
| They've actually been below their commitment for all of 2021
| and 2022 so far: they started 2021Q1 with a 16.29 average and
| 2022Q1 had dropped to 9.33 average. That's a pretty worrying
| trend and I don't think its the FCC's job to evaluate literal
| rocket science to decide whether or not they believe SpaceX
| will meet their obligations.
|
| SpaceX chose what speeds to pitch in their bid, how many
| satellites and ground stations to deploy, and how many
| customers to let onto their network. While I agree that
| Starlink has a bright future I can't help but see this as
| SpaceX clutching defeat from the jaws of victory.
|
| We've been far too lenient with ISPs in the past with
| broadband funding, and this is what keeping them to their
| word looks like.
|
| https://www.ookla.com/articles/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-
| per...
| emkoemko wrote:
| ortusdux wrote:
| I've done speed tests on 4 separate dishes within a 25mi
| radius of my house, and I consistently got around 90 down/10
| up. The fastest test to date I've seen in my area is ~130
| down / 60 up.
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| I'm not sure we can really say if their tech is "obviously
| and objectively capable" at scale. We don't really know
| enough about the PHY layer modulation or even the mac layer
| modulation they're using. My guess has always been that they
| use some flavor of OFDM, but this is a detail thats
| unrevealed currently. These are incredibly important details
| for the oversubscription calculus in the access network
| itself.
|
| RDOF aims to hold providers to a much higher standard for
| rural broadband, and part of that commitment is whether you
| can deliver speeds across the whole network at scale, not
| just relying on theoretical top line speeds. The evidence so
| far per Ookla demonstrates they don't meet muster currently,
| and since the tech is so new and (mostly) unvetted, it makes
| sense for the FCC to play it safe here on behalf of the
| consumer.
| xoa wrote:
| > _it makes sense for the FCC to play it safe here on
| behalf of the consumer._
|
| Maybe it "makes sense" to those who aren't actually one of
| those consumers. But if "playing it safe" means "you get to
| stay on 56k/4-1-ADSL/viasat/hughes for another 5 years and
| maybe you get fiber then or maybe another administration
| comes along and crushes this whole thing who knows! <3"
| then no that's not great right? The more positive angle is
| that this doesn't actually slow SpaceX down at all, they
| aren't a public company so this doesn't mean their stock
| plunges immediately and shareholders demand a course change
| or anything like that, they're obviously committed to
| improvements and obviously have a fair amount of private
| capital to tap. So it won't necessarily slow them down much
| if any, at least hopefully. But it does mean all the
| growing capacity and improvements will go exclusively to
| the better off who can afford the $110/mo privately in the
| immediate future and that's too bad. It's more too bad as
| well because even with someday tens of thousands of
| Starlink v2.0 and intersat optical mesh and greatly
| increased cell density, there will still be tight density
| limits relatively speaking. So less well off people may
| find themselves effectively shut out of Starlink due to
| having to have waited until others move/pass away/get
| fiber. It might not amount to much but I'd really like to
| see my tax dollars helping to get them something asap on a
| more even ground I guess.
|
| I'd be happy to be proven wrong though and for everyone to
| get fiber instead!
|
| > _and since the tech is so new and (mostly) unvetted_
|
| Shouldn't government should have more, not less, appetite
| for risk of this nature? If it's risk free, the market
| would already be doing it. Particularly after decades of
| throwing billions down the crapper for "safe" and "proven"
| tech by "reliable, established" companies which then used
| it to do mergers or stock buybacks or lobbying against
| municipal broadband and getting laws against it enacted in
| much of the country and perhaps a few token deployments.
|
| I completely understand and applaud the pendulum swinging
| back against the decades of established monopolies trying
| to water down definitions of "broadband" to meaningless so
| they could market and suck subsidies with no capex
| required. But all pendulums can swing back too far in the
| opposite direction too, and now that rapid deployment
| transitional tech is possible (Starlink and WISPs) it'd be
| nice to see timelines factored in as well. There is value
| to society in someone getting 50-150 via Starlink or fixed
| wireless until 2028 even if fiber then makes it in and
| obsoletes it. And there's parts of the US I doubt see it
| even then honestly.
|
| Also to your sibling:
|
| > _They 're using a finite set of frequencies and the laws
| of physics still apply_
|
| This is nice of you to write but would you care to crunch
| us the numbers on Shannon limit for the Ku-, Ka-, and E-
| bands (ignoring V-band since nothing for that exists for
| Starlink yet)? Do you actually have reason to think they're
| maxing out potential bandwidth right now in 12-18 GHz or
| 26.5-40 GHz right now vs that being a tech limitation that
| will be improved with better phased arrays and bigger sats
| like v2.0? Because it's kind of a significant amount of
| spectrum.
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| I very much agree with the thematic sentiment you shared
| that leaving certain rural folks in the dust because they
| can't hit an arbitrary 100mbps down (but maybe could get
| 20mbps instead) is a flaw in this whole program. But note
| that other more capable providers can bid on those census
| blocks now that Starlink is in default.
|
| _> Do you actually have reason to think they 're maxing
| out potential bandwidth right now in 12-18 GHz or 26.5-40
| GHz right now vs that being a tech limitation that will
| be improved with better phased arrays and bigger sats
| like v2.0?_
|
| I do think its a tech limitation, yes. The capacity
| limitations in many new RF solutions are unrelated to the
| theoretical max of any of those bands (re: Shannon
| limit). As to whether the that can be improved, that
| depends on where the bottle necks are. I brought up the
| mac layer note for that reason, I don't know that they're
| enveloping ethernet frames over that link, but if they
| are - what is the strategy there? TDMA? CDMA? There's
| just not a ton of public information out there to make a
| deductively valid argument that the FCC should expect it
| to improve.
|
| (EDIT: Realized that I didn't convey my point well. It is
| a tech limitation imposed by the physical limitations of
| the medium itself. No matter how much spectrum you have,
| you still need a modulation scheme to allow for
| multiplexing over that spectrum. There are limitations
| there where the implementation details really do matter.)
| zamadatix wrote:
| The cells are 22km and the traffic path strictly
| client<->satellite<->ground station at the moment. There
| isn't really any reasonable scaling concern until you start
| talking about serving densely populated areas but that's
| not Starlink's market nor what the RDOF targets/measures
| anyways and the inability to service a user in a city as
| well as a rural user shouldn't be reasoning to not provide
| funding to service those rural users.
|
| That said I don't have a problem with the funding being
| held until the conditions are demonstrably met instead of
| as funding to meet them. The latter has failed too many
| times with providers just pocketing money to then stop
| executing once they have it.
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| Well we have to square what you're positing with the
| evidence right now that in the aggregate as their network
| size increases, the speeds are getting substantially
| worse over time on average. Lots of explanations for
| that, but its still the current outcome.
|
| And there are definitely reasonable scaling concerns
| here. They're using a finite set of frequencies and the
| laws of physics still apply. Any concurrent transmissions
| are going to be impacted by both their phy layer
| modulation strategy, in addition to the mac layer. But we
| know so little about those layers currently that its hard
| to comment without being entirely speculative.
| wmf wrote:
| That information is out there but it's scattered and hard
| to find. The real bottleneck right now seems to be that the
| number of beams per satellite is higher than the number of
| cells per satellite.
| spmurrayzzz wrote:
| I haven't seen anything official nor convincing about the
| aspects I commented on.
|
| I've seen the write up on the individual who was able to
| spin up an SDR to receive beacons from their satellites,
| but that doesn't really tell you anything about how the
| signal is modulated.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| 100Mb is higher performance than most people need. That's five
| 4K video streams. While it's nice to push the definition of
| broadband forward from ISDN speeds, it should realistically
| consider the bandwidth a household can consume and that people
| choosing to live in a rural environment don't need to have the
| best possible service.
| pavon wrote:
| I agree that is overkill today, but if we are spending a
| bunch of money building out new infrastructure it makes sense
| to future proof it. The ISPs have ten years to complete their
| rollout, and I'd like to see it provide adequate service for
| at least a decade after that. Will 100Mb be overkill 20 years
| from now? Think about trying to use the internet of today on
| connection speeds that were common 20 years ago.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| The problem is in the real world, you can't perfectly
| optimize prioritization. In theory, you can run 5 4k streams
| on 100Mb. However, in practice, real time data can get messed
| up.
|
| Before switching to 1Gbps fiber, I had 100Mbps and I
| frequently noticed that Zoom would lag when 2 people were
| streaming at the same time. There were enough situations
| where 3 clients simultaneously needed more data that
| introduced latency.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 100Mbps fiber, or 100Mbps non-fiber? Because that sounds
| like an upload limitation caused by a limit much smaller
| than 100 or even 20.
| emkoemko wrote:
| 25mbit 4K ewwww this is why we don't yet have same bitrate of
| 4K blurays something like 128Mbps
| jetrink wrote:
| The bidding process had ISPs to declare what speeds they
| could deliver down to a minimum of 25/3 Mbps. SpaceX didn't
| need to bid at such a high performance tier if they didn't
| want to.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's not that but total bandwidth capacity is limited by
| constellation size, waiting for laser links between
| satellites, etc.
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