this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
1137 points (98.9% liked)
Technology
66501 readers
4090 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- 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 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There are remote areas where cable won’t reach. For example, I need surveillance on a remote farm and I would love to get internet there.
Cable will reach anywhere. There is not such a place that cable "will not reach". Is there a profit incentive to serve you as a customer in a capitalist system? Maybe not. But cable will reach.
Not sure if you are in Europe, but in the US there are places where you could walk the width of Germany and see 100 houses. It does not serve to be technically correct here. Also, how would that work with boats / other vehicles and places without infrastructures?
There are exceptions, but in most cases (in Europe) hardwire should work fine. The problem is that starlink is advertised for any use case.
Their are villages in rural England who don't have fiber. It wouldn't be cost-effective delay it for the six customers that require it.
In a lot of these places the best option is 4G. In a previous job we setup a small area with 4G internet and it was both faster and cheaper than what BT was providing.
Massive farmhouse and surrounding buildings that had all been converted into separate homes, not sure exactly how many people lived there, somewhere around 15 or so. There was also a functioning farm there as well which was why we set it up, the total LAN covered an area like half a km wide. Connecting everyone up with 4G was a cheap side benefit to the main project so it only cost like £100 extra.
Well, cable will not reach a warzone which is a rather pertinent use for a satellite communication system at present.
You'd need signal boosters at regular intervals, which need power... so now you're running multiple cables.
But you can't run them too close together as the power will induce noise in the data cable.
And after a long distance even the power needs boosting.
And to protect the cables, you'd need to bury them or put them on poles. Separately.
At a certain point, cable becomes the expensive option...
Usually fiber is used between cities and in cities and copper is for the "last mile". Usually there is a switching box for the street / building complex
You still need signal reconditioning for fibre too, which needs power...
I know where you're coming from, but not everywhere is populated enough, so these alternatives exist.
You need it every 100km
The cost of a cable to a remote cabin is clearly not worth it either when you can just use a 4G antenna instead at a fraction of the cost. Ships won't even be able to reach 4G signals.
I know plent of places in my European country where cable does reach, but was made for landline phones and cannot carry any data for internet because its so far from the nearest distribution center. even wireless like microwave can't sustain more than a quality camera feed
One broken cable can result in a city/town without internet. Speaking from experience.
Also satellites have other uses like GPS
I doubt they use the same satellites for GPS
I understand, but that is the exception. Even in your case probably getting 4G / 5G to that area would be cheaper / easier long term. Also Europe has a relatively high density compared with other continents
I’m in Italy and outside cities, the Internet is still horrendous. And as I said, if you have a remote farm or garden, which are fairly common here, then you are on your own. Sim based internet is a thing, but there are monthly limits which are risky when you need surveillance and automation to be always live.
4G or 5G would still be a better cheaper alternative, I'm not sure what bandwidth a starlink / whatever other alternative but my guess is that is much lower then a classic cell tower.
Cell towers usually have multiple directional antennas, smaller coverage but much cheaper to maintain. Also can be fixed, can be upgraded to next generation. Satellites are pretty much one time use, can't be upgraded, can't be fixed, if something goes wrong the solution is to burn and send another one.