I mean, high demand shouldn't justify surprise pricing
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
366 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
86074 readers
3028 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
The whole concept is rotten right from the start.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk maintains an extremely close relationship with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr.
Under Carr's leadership, Musk's rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans, a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications for society.
That's despite concerns over thousands or even millions of satellites cluttering our planet's already extremely busy orbit and the environmentally damaging rocket launches that send them up.
And the space-based network is already starting to experience some major strains — as some experts have long predicted.
"How can Europe compete with that?" I ask myself more and more often (also AI bubble/data centers). Hopefully in the long term.
Fine by me. All his customers are a bunch of suckers
Ukraine is a user, as is (with stolen terminals) Russia.
Investors should have learned by now that Musks endeavors are 100% ADHD cycle projects; hyper focus, obsess, launch, start to lose interest, hop on the the next, abandoning previous project, instead of building on the success.
If a V1 satellite only has 24 Gbit/s in total capacity on its links to the base station, and a V2 mini satellite only 96 Gbit/s, then it's no wonder really.
To be fair, the network being crushed by high demand is extremely unsurprising. Cellular networks have always had this problem in dense areas, where it’s no way you're reaching the advertised speed. This is mainly due to the available channels being shared by everyone in a relatively large area, connected to the same cell. Which is mitigated somewhat by setting up more cells with shorter range for a higher cell density in cities.
How could a satellite based network ever scale? Where you have what, a handful available cells to cover an entire state?
I thought the whole point of this service was to provide internet to places that traditional services couldn’t reach. Meaning they wouldn’t be over populated because those people already have good internet.
Now that I think it through, there’s no way that demographic is generating enough money to make this work.
Whoops?
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.
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?)
That would be a reasonable expectation, but I want to remember this being talked about as a revolution for internet in the US; how much better it would be compared to shitty cable providers and how you would get Gigabit speeds without having to run fibre.
Sure, it looked impressive early on, but a wireless system like this will always degrade the more customers they get.
Guy is being a little too trigger happy with this bait and switch but it should still surprise absolutely no one. Starlink with it‘s thousands of satellites, requiring hundreds of rocket launches is ridiculously expensive to operate and can‘t hope to compete with fiber price wise.
And they pay it? Outside of contract?
I remember when starlink first became available here and had better speed than you could get with terrestrial services. 5 minutes research showed network bandwidth would be a problem once they had significant adoption. Lo and behold...
Upvoted for proper spelling of "Lo and behold".
I'm sure it will get better. Just give him a few more goverment subsidies, grants, and 0 interest federal loans to be forgiven later, have the entirely military fleet of humvees replaced with CyberTrucks that he'll never produce, give him carte blanche to fill more layers of the sky with his private satellites without any oversight, regulation, forethought, or concern for the actual good or needs of humanity, and suddenly your current 3 Megs download may hit 5, even 6 megs in off peak hours! Only an extra $150/month for their premium subscription plan!
So basically:
His companies are hilariously insolvent, so he rolls them all together and does the biggest IPO of all time to raise money.
But he still needs more money.
So then he tries to do a corporate bond issuance... doesn't go super duper well.
So he still needs more money.
Welp, ok then, jack up fees, whatever, not very original, but does at least kind of work.
Any takers as to whether or not he'll still need more money?
If you guess correctly, you get a free Neuralink installed in your head that you can send OTA bluetooth firmware overrides to nearby devices with your brain!
Or well, maybe it works... maybes its the opposite of that. Whatever.
... But you can recharge them with your solar roof tiles! And then get in your Tesla Roadster! And then take a Starship ICBM flight to Hong Kong or Moscow or Buenos Aires or Rome! And then take the hyperloop to Antarctica!
Yeah, none of that is a sign of a thriving business empire if you ask me.
Not sure I want those to actually thrive though.
Over promise and under deliver, the musk way. Fucking clown ass Nazi piece of shit. I know there’s not a lot of viable alternatives, but if you’re using a Nazi service, I lack sympathy when the Nazi raises your prices.
Meanwhile the airlines rolling out "free Starlink WiFi" without so much as an asterix about who provides and controls the bits you're sending through it.
Imagine how much data musk will be able to glean getting free access to travelers internet habits and probably a lot more.
They must always know where we are, but we must never know where they are. Funny how that happened while lawmakers stood idly by.
If they're offering "free Starlink WiFi" they are telling you who is offering it. If they are offering "free inflight WiFi" they are hiding it
I was just on a flight with that, and it was ass. I got a few text messages in and out, but that was about it.
I think most of the data going to and from your phone is gonna be https, I doubt it would provide much value tbh
And that was supposed to be the backbone of the space based data center
Pipe dream was supposed to be the backbone of another pipe dream. The Elon way of doing business.
Billionaires will kill us all, while millionaires scream and yell. Thousandaires defend them both, while we all suffer in hell.
This is like those people who bought Meta glasses and then acted surprised when they got screwed. Did you really not expect something like this from Musk?
I saw my first billboard advertising Starlink in Billings, MT today. They have avoided advertising in the past.
sounds like MUSK is desperate.
Generally they haven't needed to. For most of the situations where Starlink really shines like rural connections, the alternatives are objectively a lot worse. And the other common situation is to avoid a regional monopoly which is still like 90% of the US.
Starlink basically sells itself, even with Elon at the helm.
Starlink will enshittify like all other non-PUD ISPs. This article shows that, and it's already begun to struggle with throughput and scaling it is becoming more and more of a challenge.
There is one alternative that has been shown to be better than anything else: PUD projects which treat internet access as a utility and not something to make more and more money off of. The FCC has rural grants for ISPs that serve rural areas, but instead of exclusively funding PUD projects, they keep giving money to big for-profit ISPs (like Starlink).
Starlink should be considered a band-aid and only something that you'd need when you were in a super rural area without other utilities. The solution is giving everyone with grid connections public fiber via PUDs.
I know we don't live in a utopia where that will happen overnight, and we don't have an FCC that gives a shit. But the FCC should not be giving a trillionaire taxpayer dollars for a half-baked, polluting, wasteful service that will ultimately do the same rugpull that other private ISPs have done.
What's pud?
Public utility district (although sometimes "people's utility district"). Used for utilities like water lines, sewer lines, and fiber. Typically the cost is paid by a group of neighbors, an entire neighborhood, or it can be county wide as well. Usually also subsidized by the county, state, or federal government to help reduce cost.
At my previous employer, we just used Starlink as a third backup circuit. There they'd be better suited for that and travel vs whole home internet.
Fortunately rural fiber rollouts are happening very frequently now. The big ISPs don't want to miss out on the starlink money.
good
And I read somewhere that he may be trying to buy t mobile to be able to meet that demand.
That doesn’t make much sense, how is a completely different infrastructure going to help their capacity issues? Unless the plan is to pivot from satellite to 5G or something
I doubt he wants the actual infrastructure. He probably just wants their RF spectrum license.
One shop for all connectivity infrastructure, so yes 5G too
Fuck, I hope not. My only other fiber option is ATT
Then he will buy that too. America loves monopolies!
My only hope is Time Warner Cable. I mean, Spectrum.