this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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Does this really matter. We aren't getting it anyway.
The telcom/cable companies are just going to take the "broadband" money, build out a couple of neighborhoods, claim it is too hard, and then keep all the money.
They have already done it many times. Free taxpayer money with zero repercussions. Why would they do anything different.
I have a lot of experience with rural broadband initiatives, and generally yes, the FCC designation sets the minimums we see in terms of new service delivery to underserved communities. I specifically worked with state and municipal entities to build grant packages to fund infrastructure and these new minimums would be a great help.
We are between towns in western WA state stuck with 10Mb DSL service. There are a lot of us folks. After moving in (the PO said the internet was great, lol), we discovered that doing anything excessive like downloading AND streaming would not work. One thing at a time. We were able to bond two pair and get 20Mb which is workable, but that's where we sit. Gigabit service is all around us, but we'd have to trench a mile up the road and pay for that to even think about getting a provider to lay a line. Century Link outright laughed at me.
I was able to get T-Mo's home internet as a backup since we WFH, but it isn't stellar either.
I live in rural Washington too, in the mountains. There was a local ISP that was terrible and amazingly a very small ISP bought them out from Arizona. The first thing they did was start to run fiber to anyone who wanted it. I went from shit DSL to 1gig up and 1 gig down fiber. To top it all off, they've lowered my monthly price once and doubled my bandwidth once... Without even asking, I even emailed them to check if my bill was lower and speed was faster and they were like yep! Mind blown.
Small world, but I helped form many of the broadband action teams in Washington State, and consulted on the broadband plans for each country that was submitted for federal funding. We're getting there, slowly, but progress is being made.
My coworkers mom lives in the same general area and has been using Starlink for a while now without issue. She gets around 300Mbps.
I considered it, but it isn't good for online gaming and then there is...Musk. Had to pass.
~20ms ping times are perfectly fine for gaming. Admit it, it's just Musk.
Should that not be enough? There is also the equipment costs and personally my gaming days are waning anyway. When I visit someone with Starkink and use it, it seems very frequently laggy. Bursts seemed common.
I use scheduling/throttling to accommodate this meager link speed. I was on dial-up well into the early 2000's, so I am no stranger to suffering slow links where patience is key.
Western MT here. Starlink is consistently 100+