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Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by AtlasBarfed on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:02PM (#24427443)
5G home internet should make this a thing of the past, shouldn't it?
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by vasilia on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:26PM (#24427598)
Yes and no. If you are living near base station in a big city it will work. But in the countryside where no good connection from ISP equipment to the base station the bottleneck will be this link. Furthermore, 5G uses a higher frequency than LTE, it could be not cost-effective to cover remote regions with small number of users. Starlink could solve problems with cables, but adds problems with RTT. Maybe one day all FAANG companies will open data centres on Earth orbit.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by singron on Thursday September 10, 2020 @12:08AM (#24428802)
> Maybe one day all FAANG companies will open data centres on Earth orbit.

I know you are joking, but the weight, power, and heat dissipation all make this impractical. They tried similar ideas with cargo containers and underwater enclosures, which were a lot more practical than outer space, but they didn't stick with it.

Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by vasilia on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:10AM (#24430736)
I think the main problem is spare parts. A long time ago I was working in the data centre. I don't remember any day when there was no problems with hardware.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by kortilla on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @09:50PM (#24428111)
Starlink has comparable RTT to many physical paths if you’re not living right next to a data center. They are only 500km altitude.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by vasilia on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:07AM (#24430720)
As I know 1200km.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by ericd on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:58PM (#24427796)
What problems with RTT does Starlink add?
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by vasilia on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:06AM (#24430713)
The signal goes through the ionosphere to the satellite than to another satellite which has a link to the Earth. Starlink uses LEO, so there is 2400 km link(1200 km from/to the ground). 1 ms is time for the signal to travel for 300 km in a vacuum. So theoretically the lowest RTT could be about 8 ms. Right now RTT to my ISP is 2 ms.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by ericd on Thursday September 10, 2020 @04:20PM (#24436187)
I think your altitude figure is off by ~2x. "The satellites successfully reached their operational altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers)" according to this: https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by vasilia on Saturday September 12, 2020 @01:31PM (#24453988)
I found this https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/i9w09n/list_of_co... It's pretty good for far remote regions like Alaska. Fibre channel will be much more costly with comparable RTT.
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by ericd on Saturday September 12, 2020 @06:18PM (#24456363)
Neat, thanks!
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by the_pwner224 on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @10:38PM (#24428399)
Verizon has started rolling out 5G home internet. It's apparently pretty fast - not fiber fast, but still pretty fast, and with truly unlimited data for $70 month. Really exposes just how absolute bullshit their mobile plans at roughly $10/gb are. I've heard good things about it, and looking at their 5G map it's been installed in areas very close to my home in Chicago, but the stations need line of sight for internet and I'm about half a block out of the service area.

The 5G coverage maps are pretty revealing on just how limited the coverage is: https://www.verizon.com/5g/coverage-map/?city=chicago

Click on a neighborhood and look at the dark red areas running on top of the streets. I have no idea how they're going to get 5g base stations covering all of the smaller residential streets; right now only the bigger streets & downtown are well covered. And even then the internet requires an antenna unit in a window with LoS to the base station, which is OK, but not sure how 5g is going to be practical for phones indoors.

Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by flas9sd on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @08:35PM (#24427657)
to my knowledge, 5G and other cellular bands are regulated in most countries. You're dependant on an external decision if your area gets served.

If some radio bands with wide range technologies get unregulated for public usage and access to equipment is possible - then communities can decide on their own.

Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by jaredmauch on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @09:52PM (#24428118)
Wireless is a great solution when there is spectrum available. If you have access to low band frequencies as the cellular companies do you can blast through trees, walls, etc.

Even with that they need fiber to their towers to provide the speeds necessary

Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by flas9sd on Thursday September 10, 2020 @03:41PM (#24435783)
had upgrading the bandwidth of the already present RF link or doing a microwave ptp link on your own any part in your prior research?
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by jaredmauch on Thursday September 10, 2020 @06:01PM (#24436999)
Yes, there's no suitable spectrum available to towers due to topography, etc..

I might have to build towers at both ends to run in a licensed range, eg: 11Ghz, and even there there's not good access. So I might still have to pay 20-60k to get access on top of the 5-10k for radios and registration of the licensed link. That easily builds 1-1.5 miles of fiber, and since I was just over 2 miles away from it, it became easier to just do that and have something reliable.

Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by flas9sd on Friday September 11, 2020 @11:20AM (#24443766)
thank you for explaining the rationale behind your decision and taking the time for the AMA
Re:Getting Fiber to My Town [video] by jaredmauch on Friday September 11, 2020 @02:40PM (#24445974)
No problem, you're asking to see photos of my baby, I can talk about my baby all day :-)