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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather the federal government just roll out fiber and not put Starlink and Elon in a position of power. That fiber will always be in the ground and available. Elon has shown himself to be unworthy of any position where trust and good judgement is required. If it costs more, that is a premium worth paying. Fool me once.

https://www.internetforall.gov/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

https://spacenews.com/senate-armed-services-committee-to-pro...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/30/elon-musk...

https://www.cnas.org/press/in-the-news/elon-musks-control-of...

https://babel.ua/en/news/98461-elon-musk-partially-transferr...

(disclosure: starlink customer)

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> Elon has shown himself to be unworthy of any position where trust and good judgement is required.

That's an insane statement given the unprecedented success of SpaceX.

The success of SpaceX is placing Musk in a position to decide where America's allies have access to the internet and choosing what region of the world can be cut off just through meeting politicians he likes.

Surely there is no risk the US will be cut off.

That doesn’t negate the fact that he wields power against others when it meets his needs. He’s effective, I don’t dispute that, but still needs a metaphorical cage built around him to protect others.

He "wields power against others"? What are you talking about?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38127745

For someone who is such a fan, do you not know who your hero is?

That's a bunch of cherry-picked gossip. You could make another list with a lot of people saying positive things about him.

I don't follow

> just roll out fiber

I worked provisioning internet for the Telco that serves basically all of Northern Canada. 33% of Canada's landmass and only 0.3% of its population.

We're not talking about cities or even towns here, we're talking about very rural customers. Have you been to rural Alaska, or Montana or Wyoming?

I have, and you drive for hours with no cell service, let alone wires in the ground.

You are seriously underestimating the expense to run fibre to each of these customers. Some of our communities it was well over $1mil per customer.

Indeed, satellite or long haul fixed wireless will be the only option for some locations. I have been to rural Montana and Wyoming, but not Alaska.

Customers will have to pay for their own StarLink where the FCC won’t. Perhaps we should not be subsidizing folks where it costs $1M to deliver terrestrial connectivity to you. Cheaper to pay them to move.

> Cheaper to pay them to move

They are not going to move. Period. I know this sounds snarky, but in all honesty if you had been to Alaska you would understand.

> Perhaps we should not be subsidizing folks where it costs $1M to deliver terrestrial connectivity to you

Or serve them with fast, reliable internet that is not terrestrial, and does not cost anything remotely close to $1M.

I've seen subsidy numbers of $200k. I'm pretty sure a million is possible.

Doesnt sound snarky at all. "paying them to move" sure does though.

>just roll out fiber

As if this were a trivial task

This is in comparison to launching satellites into space. I think most people would agree it's probably more along the lines of "trivial" when compared to that.

Neither are trivial, the two just scale very differently.

I do see the benefit in resilience of building out fiber even to moderately unprofitable (from a unit economics point of view) regions, just like we also build roads to communities that will never "pay the investment back" in taxes. But there are cases where it just can't be justified.

But it's also not a simple either-or: There are other technologies than fiber and satellite; there can be more than one high-throughput LEO provider; we can have a few GEO satellites for redundancy (although with significantly worse latency) etc.

Outside of truly rural areas the question with fiber is how long is the payback period, not "will it be profitable". Especially if deployment is integrated with routine highway re-pavement projects (roads need torn up and redone roughly every 30 years, after all), the majority of the cost becomes the fiber bundles themselves - perfect for even a smaller county or city government to handle with a modest bond issue.

> the question with fiber is how long is the payback period, not "will it be profitable".

The "payback period" might well be infinite (with non-zero interest rates), in which case we're talking about a subsidy, not an investment. (Which might still be a good idea! It won't "pay for itself", though.)

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