Internet without connected power is pretty common around here. Internet is obviously needed for those who work from home. And it's increasingly required for the needs of everyday life (government services moving online, bank branches closing).
So, yes, absolutely - many people without connected power need the internet.
The scenarios you’re describing don’t need fast and low latency connection. Banking and government function can easily be done using traditional satellite, 4G or even dial up modem.
As for remote work, I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there. IMHO they are putting them self into an extreme scenario which shouldn’t be accommodated for, neither by government nor private enterprise.
You may bring up rural communities that have been neglected for decades as a counterpoint here. To that, I go to ancestor post and state, that those communities deserve traditional infrastructure, paid for from our common funds, not to be forced into a magic solution from a startup looking to make money from them.
4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia away from main roads. Satellite can be an OK option for some (we have a gov-subsidised option), but is unreliable and subject to lengthy outages and low monthly data caps. There are many other reasons to need decent connectivity - schooling and healthcare among them.
> I have to question the decisions of someone that moves to an area without connection to the electricity grid and expects to do remote work from there.
That's just silly, closed-minded, and ignorant. You must just have very limited experience of the world. I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush. And many other reasons (which I know first hand from people living here) why people may be entirely unable to move from here. These are real facts on the ground, and not subject to your lack of imagination and propensity towards narrow-minded curtain-twitching judgements about whole classes of people you know zip about.
I’m gonna ignore your personal insult and answer the actual claims in your post.
> 4g has very patchy coverage in rural Australia
This goes back to the claim in the original post. Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure.
> schooling and healthcare
Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that hard to believe. Honestly if there exist rural communities where this is a concern than they deserve infrastructure, which goes back to the original post which claims:
> All these talks about Starlink -> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service.
> I can off the top of my head list hundreds of scenarios where remote work might become the only option for someone already living in the bush.
Do you mind listing some of them? It might be because of my lack of imagination, but I have a hard time seeing someone living in the bush, unable to relocate, suddenly finding a job that requires the need for high speed and low latency connection.
No insult, just a description of what you've posted (idiotically) here
> Starlink is an excuse not to rollout proper infrastructure.
That's ridiculous. Australia's infrastructure plans were laid out long before Starlink was conceived. They were then undermined by a right-wing gov. Invidividuals are then left by government inaction to do what they must. That involves (unfortunately) use of all kinds of less-than-ideal individualistic solutions like Starlink. It's not good for society, but, like private health care, it can be necessitated.
> Really? Are there honestly scenarios in the real world where
people don’t have power but need to do school and healthcare via the internet. I find that hard to believe.
I don't care what you find hard to believe because of your limited experience of life. The solution to limited experience is either to gain more, or to refrain from judgement outside of your realms of competence.
> Remember it's a bandaid solution to your governments poor planning and infrastructure rollout of a core utility / service.
Agree. Like healthcare, it should be there. But again as with healthcare, when it's not, those with the means just have to go where they must. Whether that be health care mercenaries, or Starlink.
> Do you mind listing some of them?
I won't list them. The fact that you, clearly knowing literally nothing about this part of the world, still feel like doubling-down on your ignorance (a factual description, not an insult), makes you not worth enlightening.
Anyway, you're uninteresting and incurious. I shall block you.
Even in the south east of the UK - compared to the US, an very densely populated area - there are some homes that have wired telephones, but rely on generators for power [1]
Presumably because at some point, it was cheaper to buy 30 years of diesel than to run a power cable, and yet cell coverage wasn't widespread enough to replace a wired telephone.
Of course, we can debate whether providing telephone service is us beneficent city dwellers generously subsidising our backwards rural cousins for the good of their children; or us being taken for fools and subsidising the rich's gigantic holiday homes and rental properties.
This is HN, we should be able to find the numbers. How many people live in rural Australia and have no access to grid power? Of those how many could greatly benefit from a high speed low latency internet connection?
I know Australia does keep population statistics, and surely if it is indeed not uncommon for people to do remote work from areas without connection to grid power, somebody must have done a survey, otherwise you’d just be guessing.
