There's a new home internet provider coming to a town near you.

Oh goody. Wonder how many federal grants we are wasting on this pipe dream.

Yeah let's keep funding the (edited because I can not post an appropriate name for this gjy) that was so clever as to send a car into space and miss the orbit.

Good news is when these fail, they will burn up.

 

How good can a signal be from 100+ miles away?

 

Thanks God I didn't uninstall big dish on my backyard.

 

Well Annie go get your guns.

We’re a half mile from a major interstate and can’t get poop as far as internet goes.

Bring it on.

Still remember Obama spouting about bringing broadband to ‘rural ‘ areas. Some 9+ years ago now.

 

Geostationary Orbit for communications satellites is 36,000km, roughly 22300 miles. And they tend to work great for internet, so long as your installer sets up the dish with a high enough degree of care that he can get the signal levels to below -85dbm you should have more than enough too steam movies and surf the web. Good Luck with gaming on a satellite connection, the lag time is horrendous as it'll cause you too have a ping time of around 500 to 1000ms.

Satellite Internet Is great for basic surfing, or downloading movies, but streaming live tv, or video chats, or gaming, not so much. Radio Frequency Internet, or cell based WiFi, is far better

 

It's nice, low orbit satellites that live for a limited time, disposible and in need of replacing constantly.

But it's not for me. I have a little tiny dish that I pay maybe 20 dollars a month (Actually 25 now... which was raised another 3.50 this month... no contract) and local channels for tornado purposes.

When it rains it blocks the signal.

Now... I have borrowed buick Lacrosses from the dealership when our engine was being overhauled and rebuilt and we experienced the joys of satellite radio, heads up display etc in that wonderful car. ( Engine is crappy. I think the torque is 3500 and high horse is only 5600 redline 6500. Not much to work with on that POS 250 horse engine on such a big marshmallow... //criticism....)

Anyhow. ATT Screwed up royally when they threw down a mountain of cash to buy direct tv a few years ago. Keep in mind that ATT fibered the Nation to every home. Except that groups of say 20 to 500 homes are ethernet (Copper wire... etc) from the fiber node to a neighborhood group. What they SHOULD have done is fiber each home direct. But no. Now the last mile ethernet is literally rusting quietly and other FTTH (Fiber to the Home) Providers are running fiber direct to your home computer in your den or someplace. Getting started out of Kansas City to begin and spread to other cities in a few years.

I expect fiber to reach me specifically in about 5 to 10 years. part of the problem is ATT is a monoploy where I am and other FTTH providers have to fight the regulators in our courts to get permission to run their fiber next to ATT's and run to our home.

Satellite promises to bypass all of that.

I still cannot rely on the satellite too much, my dish is a very good solar storm sensor and we just had one minor storm two days ago for about 18 hours.

One of the reasons I look forward to fiber is that I am a gamer and I would like to be able to download the massive 30 to 60 gigs of game files in a few moments. Not half the night that I do these days.

My ex pulls a very large amount of data from the net and I am thankful that I can pull a thousand tera of data from there without being billed extra for it with my account. if I had to do this wirelessly over cell, satellite or wifi I would see high fees.

Anyhow that's enough of my rambling. We have come a long way since the early days of texting by qualcomm to the big truck cab. That was awesome.

 

It's a private venture. The article doesn't say anything about federal grants. Elon Musk doesn't want federal grants or want politicians meddling in his private business and messing thing up.