Re:Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps
by iagovar on Friday August 14, 2020 @04:55PM
(#24163156)
GPON done properly is much cheaper to operate than DSL or COAX, it's just longer cables, less equipment, less real state, less electricity consumption.
Digging cables is what's expensive. You can use telephone poles for fiber too, but it exposes it to more outages. You can secure the lines with steel cables but that ads cost, and if you are deploying to poles then you were looking for going cheap.
Our DSL and cable options were limited, Comcast said they offered cable, but when they got to the line near the house, the signal was so poor they were unable to make it work without 50k in labor.
Then ATT came with DSL, the connection has routine outages for hours at a time. There is a technician servicing the DSLAM pretty much every week, there is literally no way ATT makes money where I used to live. Everyone owns 20+ acres, there's basically 10 homes in 1 square mile. And then the Hurricanes... Every 4 years all of the lines get blown down and it takes ATT 1-2 months to get it back online... There is way too many advantages for satellite in rural areas.
If I had to guess, there was over 200 outages (anything over 10 minutes IMO is an outage) in the 6 years I lived there.