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lokartoday at 12:34 AM1 replyview on HN

I don’t see how. Maybe someone here can attempt the napkin math. But the satellites have much shorter lifespans than fiber.


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hedoratoday at 12:54 AM

We have starlink. It’s better than a lot of ISPs we’ve had. I think of them as the new hughes.net. If you are worse than them, you go out of business.

They can’t remotely repeat with local ISPs now that fiber is being rolled out.

Starlink: I have spent 4-5 days debugging cables because in some ketamine fueled manic episode, elon thought he could do better than RJ-45.

Local ISP: “We’ll be happy to run fiber and new ethernet through your existing network conduits, trench to the curb, and help bodge in active poe ethernet repeaters for runs that are too long.”

Edit: As for satellite light pollution, yeah, that sucks, but it’s something like 0.001% (if that) of the problems we have because Silicon Valley tech campuses stay lit up like Christmas trees all night. (And those are probably dwarfed by porch lights, street lights, etc.).

We’re in one of the darkest spots in the region and can pretty much always walk around without lights at night. Seriously, how bright do you need unoccupied spaces in the cities to be at night?

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