You can multiplex wavelengths for wireless just like cable right? Granted you'd need to buy the licenses for those frequencies, which should be fairly cheap in rural areas.
I don't think Elon would approve this project if cable is always cheaper and easier.
Why not? He doesn't have to reach everyone, just some portion of the population that's profitable.
My argument should have been this is only (imo) going to get at most 10% of the worlds population.
That's based on the signal interference in space. Scale gets costly.
EDIT: Then I'm done replying for real. This thread has been fun but I need to stop myself at some point. Thanks for replying.
physics => Co-channel and adjacent satellite interference to be specific, the closer you put your satellites the more signal they have to handle. These things are built to scale for the worlds population and you can't just add more satellites without scaling the whole constellation. If it was built to scale for NY city then they'd need to support that population density on every single satellite. But if they build it for Wyoming and steal those customers then they need to only scale for that and allow ISPs to keep NY city residents.
While it's cheaper for cable companies to lay wire close to hubs, it's cheaper for satellites to hit people the more spread out they are. So the physics of this constellation are such that it's cheaper for them to give more rural people a baseline of internet rather than upsetting ISPs. I think that's wishful thinking by many people who hate ISPs.
I'm not saying it's cheaper for cables to hit everyone everywhere in the world, or this system wouldn't exist. As I said earlier, it's meant to supplement a weakness in our current infrastructure by blanketing the world with cheap internet that works at lower population densities.
I used this metric in another thread, but if you're on Septic Starlink is probably for you. If you're on sewer then you're already surrounded by a density of infrastructure that probably makes ground based communication cheaper. No I'm not going to bet that someone on HN doesn't have a counter example for me, but overall I think this would probably make sense.
Fiber optic cables have a much much higher usable bandwidth than the wireless spectrum. The useful radio spectrum for Starlink is somewhere between 10 and 20 GHz. Fiber optic cables have more than 4THz of usable spectrum.
And it's no affected by things like fog, rain, strong wind (at least if you don't cheap out and stick it on poles), etc.
You can multiplex wavelengths for wireless just like cable right? Granted you'd need to buy the licenses for those frequencies, which should be fairly cheap in rural areas.
I don't think Elon would approve this project if cable is always cheaper and easier.