this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Starlink has always been a shitty cell service at best. Only now the towers have to be entirely replaced every three or so years if memory serves.
Coulda just run fiberoptic but that would be the boring solution with a lower return.
It does make sense for very rural customers. For my parents to get fiber like you suggest, someone would have to string up about 10 miles of fiber to gain like 50 customers, maybe. With another 90 miles of fiber they can get all the way to 1000 people served; idk how many households that is but the unit economics don't make sense.
Rural, cellular dead zones (eg desert, mountain passes), air, ocean/seas/large lakes.
To cover rural reliably though you end up having to be over dense areas as well, but they cant really compete in the dense areas as they'll be cheaper options, but you can make some money there since you already cover it. The area they could best compete there would be critical backup service.
I mean if we're looking at pure economics, it's probably not even worth running power lines to your parents. Matter of fact, they probably wouldn't even have electricity if the government didn't force electrical companies to build power lines to everyone, with the electrification act of 1968.
It isnt worth it, but at least in Canada and USA we've given the ISPs billions of dollars to service them, and they keep adding a token amount of people and saying shucks all the money is gone we couldn't do what we said, and then we give them more. Rinse and repeat.
Give it 50 years of replacing satellites and I am willing to bet a one time install of fiber would have been cheaper.
Fiber wouldn't be a one-time charge though. There's regular ongoing maintenance needed for a fiber network.
There's an old joke in the telecom world:
Q: If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and you could only take one thing with you, what would you take?
A: I would take a small bundle of fiber optic cable. As soon as I was on the island, I'd make a small hole in the sand and bury it. As soon as I turn my back there would be someone with a backhoe there to dig it up.
The cost of sending crew out to fix a 10 mile fiber run servicing a single household would wipe out any possible profit from that subscriber for more than 100 years. Now multiple that by how many 10 mile+ fiber runs we'd need to service all those widespread low-density rural customers.
Those satellites are all earning profit everywhere else around the world they can service. That line to a 100 person community taking decades to be profitable is money the ISPs dont want to spend because it'll take decades.
I'd like to see someone setup cell towers across the pacific ocean. I even started dreaming up what it would take/cost - but I soon realized it would never be worth it so I'm not asking for investors. (though probably I should have... Anyone know a VC with money to burn?)
Wait so you're saying the ships, just the ships moving across the pacific are enough reason to have low earth orbit satellites in such quantity they impede things as simple as looking at the stars? The ships can get internet from higher earth orbit satellites that don't have to be constantly replaced. We haven't been choosing between internet and no internet with starlink, there has been satallite internet way before starlink and there will be way after. All it takes is a less cooperative FAA not allowing so many rocket launches for the AI nazi company and slowly holes form in the coverage as the satellites burn up.
Fiber cables cross-cross the oceans many times.
Fiber without cell towers are pointless. Ships and boats commonly have starlink internet now, because it is so much better than any alternative. Cell towers are needed for fiber to compete.
The pacific has some deep trenches, I don't think fiber runs across them.
map of fiber cables: