this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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As someone who relies on Starlink to get functional Internet access? Please, please give me more options.
Eutelsat is considering expanding into North America. Send them a message you are interested. Tell your friends. We need an alternative. https://www.eutelsat.com/en/contact-us.html
I have Starlink, I stopped paying when Elon did the nazi solute. Now I’m on phone data that barely plays 360p video, but I’m happy as can be not giving a nazi money.
4g and 5g at home installs are pretty viable for most of the US.
If you choose to live that far outside of civilization, frankly, that's a you problem. Not something worth littering space and pur atmosphere when they burn up on re-entry.
Not everyone can live in urban areas. This is such a stupid take. Fuck farmers and other folks who's livelihood relies on being further out from living centers, I guess.
And most rural areas are covered just fine with 5G and 4G service. The only areas completely out of range of that tech would be like, middle of BLM land.
But on that note, yes, as you move farther from civilization, you get less civilization. That's just a fact of the economic system those farmers just LOVE.
And every mobile carrier I've seen in the US in my region (the Midwest) has ridiculously low data caps on 4G/5G internet service.
That doesn't change the fact that virtually every facet of our lives requires internet connectivity. Paying bills, coordinating and conducting business, education, etc. Look, I'm not saying they should expect fiber connectivity to their rural homes. But satellites offer another option for Internet access and acting like it's completely irrational for these folks to have it is ridiculous.
Sounds like a problem the free and open market will solve via the invisible hand, or some other bullshit those farmers keep crowing on about, while collecting their government welfare checks, and covered by that free government crop insurance...
It also doesn't change the fact that every cancer patient deserves the best possible care, but we're not building mega cancer treatment centers, to service 2 people.
Cool. Then let the individuals there pay the full cost of the entire service, minus the subsidies. Why do we give a flying fuck about what kind of service the free and open market is providing to them?
And yes, it's completely irrational to expect all the benefits of living in civilization, while choosing to live the farthest away from civilization as possible.
If they want connectivity, let them pay for it. Full cost. They don't want to pay for liburual indoctrinations skewlz in cities that are forcing kids to become trans, well I don't want to pay for their internet access, period. Which includes all of the pollution each satellite causes.
5g can cover a lot of rural areas, it's not universal, but it's a lot more available than fiber or cable.
There are certainly a lot of holes in the coverage, but a lot of people I know who live in pretty rural farm areas went from pretty unreliable microwave internet, to extremely reliable 5g internet a couple years ago.
That's not going to be the solution for everyone, but it does work to (relatively) quickly get internet to a pretty big area.