We could have solved the telephone lines globally, though. The USA gave a beautiful example of how to get it done in one of their sadly few historic commendable examples set for the rest of the world. The fact that it was not done more broadly was due to people not demanding more and better from their governments that could easily have done the same; it gets cheaper and easier every year. The lack of Internet connectivity in remote areas is a problem, but more importantly, it is a symptom of a bigger problem of government neglect in infrastructure. Starlink is a big, inefficient, expensive, polluting, astronomy-interfering, high-maintenance, unilateral private international remedy to a symptom. It’s very easy to get distracted by problems that are really symptoms of other problems, especially when media is quick to point the cameras at those symptoms, and much less so at the bigger, tougher societal problems.
Solving this particular problem with physical lines to everywhere that is possible is surely dramatically less costly than launching satellites to cover the same area. Fiber lines are also functionally permanent infrastructure; they are physical appreciating assets akin to real estate. Satellites are depreciating assets with relatively short lifespans, and are active components frequently requiring both routine and emergency maintenance while fiber cabling is just a hunk of inert matter that stays the same functionally forever. With something so inefficient, wasteful, and problematic to other industries, it is insightful to weigh the pros and cons to consider if it is still worth doing. Extreme measures like these may be appropriate for military or even seafaring purposes, but rural Internet is a stretch when there are cheaper, cleaner, faster, more permanent, and overall better alternatives. Even at sea, technology like this serves much more appropriately as a stopgap until something more practical can be put in its place, but Starlink’s monopoly in this market combined with a friendly and protective domestic government to operate in ensures that better, more permanent solutions will never be pursued.
I often find it beneficial to try to take fresh perspectives on issues like these, taking a step back from the world we are in and acting as an outside observer. In this case, maybe something like this: We have had conductive wire for well over a century, and fiber optics for well over half of one, but we are launching satellites into space, a hostile environment that none but a handful of humans have ever been and can only recently even dream of going one day, repeatedly in perpetuity, to connect locations together, often even locations on the same continent. Then, the complex and costly devices we’ve deployed in vast numbers are very soon irrevocably destroyed.
In that context, if the problem could be solved by doing little more than digging a whole bunch of long shallow trenches, its a pretty hard sell to convince me it is better solved with an unending amount of the highest-tech machinery and industry the world has ever seen. We’ve dug rivers and moved mountains for thousands of years, sometimes just for the bragging rights. This is no problem! We already saw fit to build roads to all those places, and fiber is of comparable infrastructural value while much less costly and lower-maintenance than roads.
We could have solved the telephone lines globally, though. The USA gave a beautiful example of how to get it done in one of their sadly few historic commendable examples set for the rest of the world. The fact that it was not done more broadly was due to people not demanding more and better from their governments that could easily have done the same; it gets cheaper and easier every year. The lack of Internet connectivity in remote areas is a problem, but more importantly, it is a symptom of a bigger problem of government neglect in infrastructure. Starlink is a big, inefficient, expensive, polluting, astronomy-interfering, high-maintenance, unilateral private international remedy to a symptom. It’s very easy to get distracted by problems that are really symptoms of other problems, especially when media is quick to point the cameras at those symptoms, and much less so at the bigger, tougher societal problems.
Solving this particular problem with physical lines to everywhere that is possible is surely dramatically less costly than launching satellites to cover the same area. Fiber lines are also functionally permanent infrastructure; they are physical appreciating assets akin to real estate. Satellites are depreciating assets with relatively short lifespans, and are active components frequently requiring both routine and emergency maintenance while fiber cabling is just a hunk of inert matter that stays the same functionally forever. With something so inefficient, wasteful, and problematic to other industries, it is insightful to weigh the pros and cons to consider if it is still worth doing. Extreme measures like these may be appropriate for military or even seafaring purposes, but rural Internet is a stretch when there are cheaper, cleaner, faster, more permanent, and overall better alternatives. Even at sea, technology like this serves much more appropriately as a stopgap until something more practical can be put in its place, but Starlink’s monopoly in this market combined with a friendly and protective domestic government to operate in ensures that better, more permanent solutions will never be pursued.
I often find it beneficial to try to take fresh perspectives on issues like these, taking a step back from the world we are in and acting as an outside observer. In this case, maybe something like this: We have had conductive wire for well over a century, and fiber optics for well over half of one, but we are launching satellites into space, a hostile environment that none but a handful of humans have ever been and can only recently even dream of going one day, repeatedly in perpetuity, to connect locations together, often even locations on the same continent. Then, the complex and costly devices we’ve deployed in vast numbers are very soon irrevocably destroyed.
In that context, if the problem could be solved by doing little more than digging a whole bunch of long shallow trenches, its a pretty hard sell to convince me it is better solved with an unending amount of the highest-tech machinery and industry the world has ever seen. We’ve dug rivers and moved mountains for thousands of years, sometimes just for the bragging rights. This is no problem! We already saw fit to build roads to all those places, and fiber is of comparable infrastructural value while much less costly and lower-maintenance than roads.