this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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I thought the whole point of this service was to provide internet to places that traditional services couldn’t reach. Meaning they wouldn’t be over populated because those people already have good internet.
Now that I think it through, there’s no way that demographic is generating enough money to make this work.
Whoops?
Starlink has always been a shitty cell service at best. Only now the towers have to be entirely replaced every three or so years if memory serves.
Coulda just run fiberoptic but that would be the boring solution with a lower return.
It does make sense for very rural customers. For my parents to get fiber like you suggest, someone would have to string up about 10 miles of fiber to gain like 50 customers, maybe. With another 90 miles of fiber they can get all the way to 1000 people served; idk how many households that is but the unit economics don't make sense.
Give it 50 years of replacing satellites and I am willing to bet a one time install of fiber would have been cheaper.
Fiber wouldn't be a one-time charge though. There's regular ongoing maintenance needed for a fiber network.
There's an old joke in the telecom world:
Q: If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and you could only take one thing with you, what would you take?
A: I would take a small bundle of fiber optic cable. As soon as I was on the island, I'd make a small hole in the sand and bury it. As soon as I turn my back there would be someone with a backhoe there to dig it up.
The cost of sending crew out to fix a 10 mile fiber run servicing a single household would wipe out any possible profit from that subscriber for more than 100 years. Now multiple that by how many 10 mile+ fiber runs we'd need to service all those widespread low-density rural customers.
Those satellites are all earning profit everywhere else around the world they can service. That line to a 100 person community taking decades to be profitable is money the ISPs dont want to spend because it'll take decades.