I'm within line-of-sight of Google HQ (I can literally see their campus from my porch, less than six miles away) yet my only wired internet option is AT&T DSL. Comcast offered to add my home to their network for a paltry $22,000. I look forward to Starlink creating a universal competitor even if I'm not a customer. It'd be even better if rockets needn't be involved in creating a competitive marketplace, but that doesn't seem likely.

I don’t understand, why is it not feasible to bring faster internet connectivity to suburban America with traditional infrastructure? Why do we need an entrepreneur to launch a constellation of satellites into low earth orbit—ruining the night sky for astronomers globally?

Countries like Finland and Iceland can bring decent speed internet to rural populations where it rains as much (or even more) then in the pacific north west. So I don’t know what makes America so exceptional that they can’t bring good internet to their population.

> why is it not feasible to bring faster internet connectivity to suburban America with traditional infrastructure?

Politics and corruption. Existing entrenched ISPs are massively profitable. Competition kills profits.

It sounds like a change in policy would be more sane then entrusting private entrepreneur in fixing this very solvable problem.

Oh yeah. That's definitely all it is. Why didn't we figure that out?

What policy do you want to change?

Since the problem is lack of internet infrastructure, as the market has failed in providing decent internet to a significant portion of the population, I suggest that the government subsides (or even funds) the infrastructure projects required for bringing the portion of the population a decent internet connection that the marked has failed.

That seems like a pretty obvious policy change that a mere layperson can come up with in their couch. I’m sure a civil engineer can do better though.

I don't know how much you can say it's a market problem as such, a role is clearly played by regulatory capture combined with/leading to/reinforcing monopolies. Local american governments granting big ISPs de jure or de facto sole rights to law down cable in a town means it's very hard to break in to the market as a hypothetical newer, smaller ISP.

I don't know that monopolies and rent-seeking wouldn't show up anyway with laxer regulation, but it's something to be taken into account.

Like I indicated, I’m not a civil engineer and am in no position to be coming up with a policy my self. I can say though—and I might be wrong—that America has some policy that might be hindering traditional infrastructure being build to provide decent internet connectivity to some parts of the population. I’m sure there are civil engineers though that can provide examples of better policy that may help solve this issue.

Claiming that the market has failed in a industry that has been utterly dominated by government and that was never actually a real market is pretty rich. This started out as basically a state monopoly that was then partially privatized but local monopoly laws were held in place.

Just throwing more money at utterly gridlocked system is not the solution.

So all you need to do is change the policy determining billions of dollars of infrastructure and profits with powerful entrenched interests? Where do I sign up?

This system is not primary for suburban America, but for places that are further out. But if suburban America is so shit, then why not solve this problem as well.

Nothing stops the US except incompetence.

Sounds like a mostly-US problem that would be better solved by proper regulation of markets. But nah, that'd be crazy socialism stuff.

It is absolutely not a "mostly-US problem". We have the same problem in Australia. A lot of places only option was crappy ADSL. Then new (centre-left) government announced a project (NBN) to install fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to the majority of the population. Massive, very expensive project, that was going to take a long time. Quite predictably, the centre-right party attacked it as costing too much money. Six years later, the centre-right win election, and thus far only a small number of lucky people had got their FTTP installed. New government decides FTTP was too expensive, replaces it with crappy fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) instead, which slows to a crawl whenever the node is oversubscribed (happens a lot due to the growing popularity of video streaming). And it tells other people that any fixed line solution was too expensive for them, and forces them on to wireless or satellite. Some people even got told they were losing their ADSL and having it replaced with a less reliable wireless or satellite connection.

... poor internet bandwidth or accessibility in remote region... is a "US only problem"??

I make it a point to not sound snarky or sarcastic on HN, we have a pretty good standard of discourse here - but that just seems a ludicrous statement to make, and I'm frankly curious what consideration went into it, as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction?

I don't think technology will solve all the world's ills; I agree that regulation of markets is a useful measure to undertake in certain situations; I don't find "Socialist" a swear word; but if ever there was a problem with a technical solution, then accessibility of internet in remote solution is almost the canonical use-case. Regulation of markets will not bring the Interwebs to remote or underdeveloped parts of the world.

Now... if we want to discuss whether bringing the Intertubes to all the world is a worthy goal or not; whether it is worth the compromises and risks a massive constellation of satellites will impose; sure, that's a productive tops to examine. But if we accept for sake of argument that internet in remote or underdeveloped parts of the world is a goal, I'm curious to see how market regulation will make that happen better and faster than a giant freakin' laser... I mean, giant freakin' constellation of satellites :).

Local market regulation is what is blocking any competition. The absurd believe people have that whenever something isn't working, markets will need more regulation is so absurd.

There are literally regulation that are preventing markets from even existing. But your solution is more regulation?

It's all local state-enforced monopolies, man. The current internet situation is pretty close to socialist paradise.