this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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[โ€“] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 39 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Pros of fibre:

  • cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
  • faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
  • very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
  • high stability: does not give a crap if it's cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it's just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
  • long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
  • lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.

Cons of nationwide fibre:

  • billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
  • monopoly Internet Service Providers won't be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
  • people will tell you "uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons", but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.

There's nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.

[โ€“] drmoose@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

As someone who wrote their CS thesis on networks I find starlink infuriating. Its such a terrible option that basically persists through memes and highly niche use anecdotes.

You can literally cover entire landmass of earth with fiber and cell towers for pennies on a dollar what low orbit satellites would get you.

Not to mention is objectively better technology which we would have to setup anyways if we want low latency networks and why wouldn't we want that in the future? There are countless benefits to reduced latency so it's really unavoidable. Now some want to prioritize worse technology when it's at peak cost. It's so fucking stupid.