Re:SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 ...
by pedrocr on Thursday August 27, 2020 @12:24PM
(#24295259)
This argument shows up in all these discussions and is way way overused. The EU only has ~2-3x the population density of the USA. It's not even a single order of magnitude and people have already given examples of how very remote places in Europe have very reasonable infrastructure. If you already have telephone and/or electricity poles to somewhere running fiber is definitely an easy problem to tackle for what is supposed to be the world's most advanced economy. Capture by telco special interests is a much more likely explanation.
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Re:SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 ...
by thehappypm on Thursday August 27, 2020 @02:27PM
(#24296876)
3x population density is a lot, no? That means for every person that can access, say, a fiber line in the US, 3 people could access it in Europe. That would seriously change the economics.
Further, the US's population density is very varied. About a third of the country (the non-coastal West) is very, very sparsely populated, punctuated by only a few semi-large cities like Denver and Phoenix. If you live on the coasts or the Great Lakes, density is a lot like Europe and the services are similar. In between, it's really, really sparsely populated.