this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
202 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
59771 readers
3679 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Northern Canada wouldn’t benefit from a US rural internet subsidy.
I’m not familiar with the areas in Alaska you’re referring too but are they completely isolated outside of satellite internet? If they have electric from the grid or cellular telephone service then there are other options using existing infrastructure.
A study from 2019 found national estimates ranged from 180,000 households to 750,000 that are not connected to the electrical grid. That’s out of 131.2 million households in the US. That means adding internet to power line runs as the entire grid infrastructure is updated and buried, which it should be, would mean .006 % of households wouldn’t benefit.
I don’t know what the best solution is but I question the practicality of 100s of millions in subsidies to any private company, not just Starlink.
In my opinion it’s time for internet to become a utility and tie it into the existing infrastructure.