this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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Try dragging fiber to a ship. Starlink is a game changer for the shipping industry and removing it now would be a mess.
Did you miss this part? You're arguing over something I didn't claim, and didn't say.
But since you brought it up, SpaceX received nearly $1 billion in subsidies from the FCC in 2020 to support rural customers. That money is what I'm talking about. It wasn't for ships. It was to connect rural customers because it would otherwise not be profitable for large ISPs to serve them. This billion should have gone to supporting county PUDs, not a rich nazi fuck's company. It should have stayed with the public.
Unless you're saying that the billion from taxpayers should have been given to him to support ships in international waters?
As a bonus, fiber doesn't lose capacity just because it gets cloudy. Try using Starlink when a cumulonimbus cloud is overhead.
I don't know what a fcc is but if it helps us having good internet I'm all for it. I work on ships and I've used starlink on ships in storms and all kinds of bad weather including finding the antenna covered in ice and snow. It's fantastic. Our old geostationary communication system fails as soon as a passing bird looks at it.
The FCC is the Federal Communication Commission for the US. They're a US federal agency meant to do domestic policy in anything telecom and radio.
The intent of the subsidies was not for ships or international communication. It was meant for rural US properties. That's why it should have been allocated to PUDs (public utility district). It would have been more useful for the people paying the taxes to give broadband subsidies.
Shipping companies can pay their own way - they're corporations and can afford it. The subsides should not have gone to SpaceX.
I don't think you've ever used Starlink if you think clouds make it fail.
...you do realize it started in Seattle, right?
Seattle typically doesn't get hail core cumulonimbus (supercells). Plus, I'm not saying that it completely fails with just cloudy weather alone. Note that I said capacity, which is absolutely affected by moderate to heavy cloud cover or not being able to see the sky. Diminished capacity doesn't mean it fails, it means that it's slower, higher latency, and less reliable. In extreme cases involving hail storms (like I mentioned), it can and does fail - you can see this in the storm chaser streaming circles. Their streams cut out completely at times, if the satellites are between the storm and their antenna.
I am simply bringing up an edge case since the person who originally replied brought up ships when I was talking about rural fiber.
My point is still that SpaceX shouldn't have gotten FCC subsidies when a more reliable, cheaper (especially in the long run since we're talking about LEO), higher bandwidth, lower latency option exists. PUDs should have gotten all of that cash, not a different, large ISP owned by a billionaire.
An added bonus to fiber: it doesn't ruin ground based astronomy.
Yeah, fair. Where fiber can be run fiber should be run.
Just scarred from all the times where we spend x billion to expand fiber, it doesn't happen, somehow nobody gets held accountable.
I mean damn, at least Starlink is providing a service
That's because historically, major ISPs have been given the grants (including Starlink) instead of PUDs. Public fiber is entirely different, it's managed and installed like a public utility, not a service to be capitalized on. This is why I've been so focused on saying that SpaceX should never have been given $1 billion dollars. It shouldn't have been given to any non public organization.