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this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Why?
Night sky is getting quickly ruined by those lights.
The EU have excellent fiber coverage possibilities there no need for inefficient satellite internet.
This is fairly wrong on a lot of layers:
Fiber does not make sense for sparsely populated areas - which the EU has,despite what people think. Lappland, parts of Romania, Spain, Italy, etc. are often so sparsely populated that neither Fiber nor 5G are a good option. And maritime and aviation use is also a big point. (And funnily enough even in some fairly populated areas of Germany the availability of Starlink was the cause for the long fiber network extension. After all telco's were happy to only provide minimal DSL for decades in a neighbouring village here, after half the town switched to Starlink all of a sudden two different telco's offered to install Fiber)
Another big point is redundancy. We are facing an increasing amount of disasters, due to climate change alone. These tend to destroy fiber infrastructure - and cellular networks as well. (See: Valencia, Spain; Lower Austria, Austria; Emilia Romagna, Italy - all cases just from this year) And sadly civil defence/disaster management is relying on communication more than before, for their own functions as well as to keep the population informed. It is nearly impossible to do this without SATCOM options and especially when you want to keep the population informed (which makes your jobs much easier) you need a star link-like system atm. (And yes we tried other options like directed radio networks -complicated as you need multiple relays in exactly the right spot-, geostationary SATCOM -bandwith and latency to low-, portable 4g/5G towers-not cost effective, huge issue to get installed) For civil defence/disaster management matters sadly Starlink-like technology is currently the optimum in terms of what it offers for the cost. While we use SATCOM for two decades now, it once was so expensive that we only were able to procur two handsets per shire - a major issue. For the same price I can distribute Starlink sets to all my units.
(Hybrid)warfare/defence: There is a huge amount of Hybrid warfare going on and Fiber has one large drawback: It is a centralised infrastructure that is easily sabotaged. Starlink like technology can be made fairly redundant and resilient. While Starlink has been jammed by the Russians in Ukraine, it is not as easy as people thought. The Ukrainians showed everyone the true worth of these systems. There is a lot of use for these systems in warfare like situations,even more so for smaller nations that do not operate their own defence communication satellites.
Don't get me wrong: I am a fan of what Starlink offers. I hate how it's done (basically polluting the sky) and who does it (Elmo).There is a urgent need for a system that is not managed by a Putin-associated Fascist like Elmo. So unless someone comes up with another good technological alternative I sadly don't see any alternative to the current EU project.
Sparsely populated parts of Spain have ~90% fiber coverage and growing....
It's not that difficult. Same we got electricity and phone to those places. It's just another cable.
We can have 5g as redundancy.
For invasion prevention purposes traditional internet connection seems enough to me.
Idk, i don't like looking up at night and seeing so many satellites. Night sky used to be beautiful.
Population wise yes,area coverage wise no. How do you think the 5G towers (who you need more due to smaller cell sizes) are connected? 5G/LTE offers zero redundancy - as shown in various disaster scenario.
And how do you fix a traditional internet connection to a drone, a mobile command post (using 5G/LTE for that is a VERY bad idea as these are far easier to detect than SATCOM), etc.?
As I said: I am also not happy how this is achieved and wish we had a better option. But we have basically three choices: a) we buy Elmo's stuff and might get fucked whenever he likes. Not good,has cost lives in the Ukraine. b) we say "sorry folks,a clear night sky is more important than your live/health" to the people that will die or get injured due to that. Because let's face it,in disaster management it's a game changer at the moment(And it comes to that, that's sadly a given, even without a war like scenario) C) we build our own network. This is of course oversimplified,but in the end it pretty much comes down to these choices.
Becomes foreign agents keep cutting out fiber cables. Itβs basically for military reasons. If we ever get invaded the first thing the invaders do is try to sabotage our communication systems. Satellites are much harder to destroy. And we shouldnβt rely on outsiders to provide us with internet. Itβs for the same reason why the EU has developed its own GPS system.
I've recently gotten into astrophotography and I already can't take go more than 10 minutes without a satellite ruining an exposure... I was showing a friend the telescope I got over the weekend and when looking up I just started pointing them out to him...
"And there's a satellite, and there's a satellite, oh look that way another satellite, hey look one more, and another and another and another..." It's absurd :(
Just sign in this site as a guest and be disgusted as you see how starlink has dominated the sky... All the blue are starlink: https://tarot.saberastro.com/
Really disgusting indeed, thanks for letting us know. The difference between 2022 and 2024 (even 2023 vs 2024) is huge..
That site is so cool! And they don't require an account to view it! Thanks for the link
My guess is that the EU is preparing for war. Satellites are harder to destroy than wire.
But I too think its incredibly stupid.
Starlink has been used a lot in Ukraine. For communications between soldiers, but even more importantly to communicate with drones. Having a constellation like that in place is extremely usefull for that and having it partly paid for from private money is a big advantage.
Satellite internet can actually have better ping over very long distances, compared to fiber. The uplink to Leo in 500km only ads 4ms delay, but the laser link between satellites works at light speed which is 33% faster than the signal speed in fiber cables. I have to connect to servers in Singapore and central US daily, and while the (theoretical) download speed might be half, the response times would be twice as good.
...both are light speed. Speed of light in vacuum vs. speed of light in glass. And so is the radio link because that's also an electromagnetic wave.
Medium might make some difference, there's lots of vacuum up there, but I think not having to follow the shape of continents etc. should be the larger factor: The total distance travelled can easily be lower with satellite even if you take the travel up into LEO and down again into account. 1000km aren't that much, about exactly the distance between Madrid and Paris.
Don't forget the GHG's that are produced when they eventually burn up in the atmosphere! We get to ruin the night sky AND the environment at the same time! Two birds with one stone. Simple choice really.
It's not even a drop in a bucket compared to other sources of polution.