Comment by wyager
3 years ago
Last mile subsidies are super weird. I was looking at a property in montana in the middle of nowhere that had no electricity nearby, but had gigabit fiber. I called the ISP and it was cheaper to get phone+Gb than just Gb due to subsidy rules.
Basically everyone out there (including me) is on starlink now. Turns out the subsidies were not only inefficient, but pretty pointless.
Why would you be using Starlink if you have gigabit fiber available? Or was it still quite expensive to install even with the subsidy?
I didn't get that property sadly.
They helped a bit, for a while. Gigabit fiber is less maintenance than electrical power, and it's easier to roll-your-own electrical power than it is to get a Gb connection like how would you do that before Starlink, buy an insane amount of radio spectrum? I heard one HN user who did exactly that in Brazil, got a 20-meter tower to connect by radio to the internet some distance away, and it was a very solid high bandwidth connection. But still much harder than a generator and solar panels, or a tiny little hydropower generator on a stream (a great option in places like Southern Chile, not a joke by any means). Or wind.