[weswilson]

Anecdotally, my dad lives in a rural area with no cable/DSL broadband available.

Cellular broadband only got him 10-15 Mbps. He was excited when Starlink was available. I think he was pretty early on the preorder list. Once he finally got access to Starlink (Feb 2022) the speeds were close to the advertised ~100 Mbps.

Now the price has increased and on average he's back to getting like 15-20 Mbps down.

Luckily, the EMC that services the area received some rural broadband grant money to roll out FTTH and that build out has been pretty quick. They have already run fiber down his road and said that service should be available in a couple of months. The EMC is offering 2 Gbps down / 1-2 Gbps up (!!!) for $100/mo.

So this money is actually being spent effectively when it goes to the right place. Starlink made a bunch of promises that they couldn't fulfill and the money is being redirected, as it should be.

[isk517]

I feel like in 90% of Starlinks use cases it is only the best option because they are the most motivated to succeed. Running traditional wired service is the more practical and permanent solution but the telecoms have made far to much money by taking money then not delivering.

[LegitShady]

>Running traditional wired service is the more practical and permanent solution

It's permanent but it depends on what the word practical means. Often the cost of setting up infrastructure for such low density population means the infrastructure will never pay for itself, or that the same money spent elsewhere would service many more customers, so its not necessarily practical.

[grecy]

> Running traditional wired service is the more practical and permanent solution

Not when you're 50+ miles from the nearest anything.

Don't think of people that live kind of near a town and still get LTE. Think of people that drive for hours and still don't get LTE.

[reddog]

"and said that service should be available in a couple of months"

Thats telcom speak for "the check is in the mail".