• cole@lemdro.id
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    26 days ago

    I don’t think you’ve ever used Starlink if you think clouds make it fail.

    …you do realize it started in Seattle, right?

    • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      26 days ago

      Seattle typically doesn’t get hail core cumulonimbus (supercells). Plus, I’m not saying that it completely fails with just cloudy weather alone. Note that I said capacity, which is absolutely affected by moderate to heavy cloud cover or not being able to see the sky. Diminished capacity doesn’t mean it fails, it means that it’s slower, higher latency, and less reliable. In extreme cases involving hail storms (like I mentioned), it can and does fail - you can see this in the storm chaser streaming circles. Their streams cut out completely at times, if the satellites are between the storm and their antenna.

      I am simply bringing up an edge case since the person who originally replied brought up ships when I was talking about rural fiber.

      My point is still that SpaceX shouldn’t have gotten FCC subsidies when a more reliable, cheaper (especially in the long run since we’re talking about LEO), higher bandwidth, lower latency option exists. PUDs should have gotten all of that cash, not a different, large ISP owned by a billionaire.

      An added bonus to fiber: it doesn’t ruin ground based astronomy.