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Comment by kresten | Hacker News Reader

I'll get excited about fast broadband when it's actually available and delivered to me and I do the speed test and it's as fast as promised.

There's so much talk about broadband and its potential and so little actually delivered.

Show me the speed test. Everything else is just vaporware.

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We already have satellite internet. It is 100x further from earth and using ooooold technology, compared to the Starlink fleet.

The scale of satellites planned for Starlink is nearly 2 orders of magnitude more than all satellites ever launched. Current count of everything humanity has sent up is less than 2000, 40,000 is planned for Starlink.

The change in viable throughput and what it means to a globally accessible, high-speed network is worth discussing.

As I say, show me a product I can buy that delivers on the promise, then it's interesting.

This is completely false. Which new technology do you think starlink satellite have that others don't? They're actually significantly less sophisticated than many older satellites. The only difference is they're planning to launch such a large number of them, but that has nothing to do with the payload technology.

There are plenty of others that will/do give good throughout globally by that time, or sooner.

Are the laser links used elsewhere yet? I remember reading about various people being interested in them, but this is the first deployment I’ve heard of.

There have been many filings in the past to use them, but only iridium came to fruition.

Quantity has a quality all of its own

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