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Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

(arstechnica.com)
1135 points carride | 4 comments | 10 Aug 22 13:23 UTC | HN request time: 1.066s | source
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qwe----3 ◴[10 Aug 22 13:35 UTC] No.32411651[source]▶
> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served

This doesn't seem very efficient to me.

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rvnx ◴[10 Aug 22 13:36 UTC] No.32411670[source]▶
To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes
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deelowe ◴[10 Aug 22 13:50 UTC] No.32411904[source]▶
I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?
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rvnx ◴[10 Aug 22 13:58 UTC] No.32412026[source]▶
You are a private person and you choose to live deep in the country-side / on a desert / on an island / remote location / deep in the forest.

Who should pay for your road, your electricity, your water, your internet connection when you are the one mostly benefiting from it ?

Taxes have to be used primarily with the goal to maximize public interest, not the interests of single private persons.

Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family.

Could there have been alternatives that maximize coverage ? For example, by supporting deployment of 5G antennas as public infrastructure (thus, benefiting the whole area).

This family doesn't necessarily need a single fiber cable to reach their house.

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gvb ◴[10 Aug 22 14:13 UTC] No.32412308[source]▶
> Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family.

Oh the irony... Starlink is also tapping (federal) government subsidies to provide internet service to rural areas. Tapping government subsidies is a very important part of Starlink's plan to become profitable.

Ref: "SpaceX's Starlink wins nearly $900 million in FCC subsidies to bring internet to rural areas" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-...

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1. jeremyjh ◴[10 Aug 22 15:26 UTC] No.32413557[source]▶
The difference is that those investments will be usable by anyone who wants the service and can setup the antenna. Where-as a half mile fiber run to your house in the boonies can only ever be useful to you.
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2. welterde ◴[10 Aug 22 15:51 UTC] No.32414047[source]▶
The subsidy is for the company though and not this specific fiber run, which was a sort of worst-case. The company is quite limited in geographical scope, so they got a fairly small subsidy, while Starlink is much larger in scope and thus got a larger one.

Also that fiber run will remain useful for far longer than the Starlink satellites. It's pretty much a one-time cost with negligible operating cost, whereas Starlink will have to continuously keep launching satellites to keep it running.

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3. jeremyjh ◴[10 Aug 22 17:34 UTC] No.32415686[source]▶
One way or another, tax payers spent $30K on a fiber run to one house. Yes, they spent less on some other ones too. The indirection just increases cost insensitivity.
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4. welterde ◴[10 Aug 22 18:32 UTC] No.32416490{3}[source]▶
It's all about averages though. Some people will be cheap to connect, while others will be expensive to connect. And the subsidies are most likely written in a way, such that the ISPs can't only go for the low-hanging fruit.

Same with Starlink on a bigger scale. Some ground station will have more people near them than others (absent satellite to satellite comms). Some orbits will be used by more people than others..