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Re:Sixteen U.S. states still ban community-owned broadband n... by jtbayly on Thursday November 07, 2024 @12:51PM (#42079024)
But wires aren’t the only terrestrial option.

I can’t fathom how many satellites it would take to support all the internet users as a monopoly.

Re:Sixteen U.S. states still ban community-owned broadband n... by toast0 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @01:10PM (#42079203)
Fair enough; I didn't read your comment very closely, I guess. Terrestrial radio seems a lot less expensive in areas with population. When you get out beyond rural and more into wilderness, satellite is likely cost competitive, because having a LEO constellation cover the wilderness comes at no additional cost, and having radio coverage in the wilderness involves setting up base stations with low usage --- you can do some things with longer range / larger cells, but it depends on terrain and maybe protocol limits? GSM had a concept of 'timing advance' that effectively limited the maximum cell size, but I don't know if that's a limitation if you're not using TDMA.