The flipside to this is, if they're NOT spending on infra...........why is the price so damn high?

Independent analysis based on Starlink IPv6 traffic estimates there are 4.7 million US Starlink residential subscribers, and that about 2 million came on line in the last year.

I suspect my understanding of the situation is dead on correct; Starlink is filling the vast hole, whatever your "semi-rural" anecdote has you thinking. At an average of 2.53 person's per household in the US, this means Starlink is now the provider of 3.5% of all per capita broadband in the US, and likely to 5% or more inside another year.

This is unwarranted optimism, except for special permits, everyone in EU, including in Germany is getting banned. Including criticizing politicians.

I am not familiar with other points, but this seems to be spot on. You don't replace copper with aluminum for very known reasons. Recycling for most rare materials is only theoretical, as it doesn't happen in practice, and batteries in 2026 are still currently largely just landfilled instead of recycling. So if I extrapolate from these points - Michaux is spot-on while you are confusing what ought to be with what is.

We might disagree on many points, but I think we can both agree that recycling should be much further along for all aspects of common goods - batteries, electronics, consumer plastics, etc.

What in my "you had other people pay for your solar panels" response is not clear?

Dude...you just replied to an apple product.

So... Russia isn't actually gaining anything meaningful. In fact, they've twice had to revise their stupid maps because they didn't get anywhere near the territory gains they claimed to.

Every city they've claimed to capture in the last four years has been nothing more than a pile of rubble. A useless pile of rubble that you literally spent tens of thousands of cold Russian bodies to get. And you know why you think it's worth it? Because Russians are so fucking incompetent that, in fact, they are worth less than a fucking pile of rubble. So congratulations, you technically have a net gain, though it's still pretty meaningless. But every worthless rubble is important, because that's just how fucking poor and stupid you are.

You know why the loss of these datacenters is so problematic? Because the people you'd need to build more have either fled the country, or they've been traded for a pile of rubble.

I've been saying for years now that you have nothing to gain by staying in Ukraine, but you do have everything to lose. You're already losing it, but like a bad gambler, you're losing even more just to try to chase your losses. You can't regain your losses. Digging the hole deeper doesn't help you get out of it. I shouldn't even need to say that, but you're Russian, so it must be said, and even then you still won't fully understand.

Really the only reason you guys even continue is because you, as a culture, are willing to sacrifice every piece on the board to ensure your tsar lives for another ten seconds. You guys haven't changed a bit since your first tsar sucked off the golden horde.

What in my response make you think I don't understand what mitigation is? Be specific.

Your installation was subsidized and incentivized with tax dollars and above-market utility purchase rates, that in turn increased costs of electricity for everyone.

Where Comcast is available. Sure. I suspect you're missing some critical information about Comcast availability in rural areas.

We went from "Reusable rockets? That's Nuts!" to "who can stop Elon" in about 10 years.

Rocket reuse wasn't a real thing until Falcon did it in 2017, Starlink came in 2018. It was a chicken egg problem, people just don't realize how close the rocket reuse was to the first Starlink.

Getting stuff into orbit is one thing, rocket reuse is another. Lots of people are still trying to get reuse, and SpaceX is slowly retiring Falcon 9 for the Next Big Thing, reuse of two stages of rockets. Three years ago, that idea was still considered nuts. V3 Starlink can't ride on Falcon 9. They (Starship/V3 Starlink) are tandem projects.

No, it isn't. What's outrageously expensive is quasi-government monopolies that are really massive healthcare/retirement benefits companies.

Fiber itself is cheap, as are the electronics on either end of the cable. Trenching can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. Trenching gets expensive when it involves legal battles and navigating permitting thickets controlled by local utilities and governments. The actual act of laying fiber in trenches isn't very costly, and doesn't take much time.

Go look at the FCC National Broadband Map, which is really great, btw. Filter the whole country by Fiber and look at the coverage. Note how N.D. and S.D have extremely high coverage. Also note how these are highly rural areas, with properties separated by great distances. Yet you can get FTTH there. Given the excuse that's been offered for decades; that the US is big and low population density makes broadband too expensive, this shouldn't be possible.

Yet there it is. Why? Because those states are conservative, and they don't turn every feature of life into another balkanized quasi-government mess, complete with public-sector unions, bought and paid for union politicians with crazy union contracts that turn every public institution and utility into another retirement benefits operation that also happens to provide electricty/water/internet/whatever.

That's why.

Light is light.

Starlink V3 is not using radio, it's using Lasers. The coherent beam is the key to Terabit speeds. Which they already have. Multipath Terabit Low Latency World Wide Network? Nobody has that right now. Earth bound pathways are limited, especially across the huge H20 Holding tanks between land masses. Space offers nearly unlimited pathways, redundancies unimaginable using earth based fiber.

Here's an article explaining some of the problem: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Fgadget...

"What good is a phone call if you are unable to speak" - Agent Smith

Imagine having last mile right-of-way into the largest market of wealthy homes on Earth, and squandering that affordance so badly that you find yourself saying these things. Between Musk solving the rural internet problem, and aggressive fiber and wireless operators dealing with urban areas, Comcast's old and busted coax system is going the way of copper pair telephone service.

Long Term thinking isn't profitable in the short term. And it is much riskier to bet long term than short term.

The correct view a blend of aggressive short term with long term values.

Comcast could have taken the aggressive short term and built out before anyone else, AND THEN CHARGED MORE while they were still a monopoly. They still have cable in my house, and I've replaced it with faster fiber for less. They simply dropped the ball.