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I live less than. a mile from a mid-sized town (15k peopl), 25 miles from the heart of Silicon Valley. The only reliable internet access available is 8mbit DSL using copper and satellite (HughesNet). No cable, no fiber, dodgy cell service, and at last try Starlink was not remotely reliable. Last big rainstorm we lost service for 5 days.

I’d love to be able to ditch copper, but if AT&T is allowed to pull the plug, it means expensive, high latency satellite will be the sole option.



Similar but no DSL because we're about 6 miles from the nearest town. We're literally screwed here. The redwoods are too tall for satellite so there's just no other option.


That seems like an unsustainable place to live because of fire risk as well.


I live in Florida and found Starlink worked mostly fine in a rain storm (occasional disconnects). This is using their newer portable receiver though, which one did you use?


>will be the sole option.

I mean this sincerely: you could move.

In 2012, I left the Castro Valley part of sfEastBay and moved to a small Southern town with fiber optic 10gbps available at every electric-supplied address (I lived 8 years inside a rustic national forest with a fiber/copper jack on my ramshackle cabin's powermeter).


> In 2012, I left the Castro Valley part of sfEastBay and moved to a small Southern town

Apropos of anything else, I can't imagine the culture shift from the Castro in SF to a small southern town...


Castro Valley != The Castro. Castro Valley is just north of Hayward.


Ahh, I stand corrected!


Interestingly, I commuted into The Castro (once a week) and definitely let me own freak flag fly, proudly =D


Castro Valley and Livermore are culturally “the south” of the Bay Area. You can find trucks with Trump flags and stuff.


I mean it sounds like you don’t live in a town? I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect service providers to string an extra mile of cable just for one customer.

There’s always going to be trade offs in living location.


Then you'd be wrong. Those service providers got their monopolies by promising the state they'd serve the rural customers. That you don't understand these basics disqualifies you from this entire topic.


People are born not knowing anything. If you know something, it is your responsibility to share that knowledge. Remember that you were also born not knowing about the nature of subsidies and state granted infrastructure monopolies. There’s no need to be an ass while sharing your knowledge in the same way that whoever taught you wasn’t an ass to you.




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