[NNagain] [Starlink] FCC Upholds Denial of Starlink's RDOF Application

Fri Dec 15 08:40:51 EST 2023

Hi Frantisek,

> On Dec 15, 2023, at 13:46, Frantisek Borsik via Nnagain <nnagain at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> Thus, technically speaking, one would like the advantages of satcom such 
> as starlink, to be at least 5gbit/s in 10 years time, to overcome the 
> 'tangled fiber' problem.
> 
> No, not really. Starlink was about to address the issue of digital divide -

	I beg to differ. Starlink is a commercial enterprise with the goal to make a profit by offering (usable) internet access essentially everywhere; it is not as far as I can tell an attempt at specifically reducing the digital divide (were often an important factor is not necessarily location but financial means).

> delivering internet to those 640k locations, where there is literally none today. Fiber will NEVER get there. And it will get there, it will be like 10 years down the road.

	This is IHO the wrong approach to take. The goal needs to be a universal FTTH access network (with the exception of extreme locations, no need to pull fiber up to the highest Bivouac shelter on Mt. Whitney). And f that takes a decade or two, so be it, this is infrastructure that will keep on helping for many decades once rolled-out. However given that time frame one should consider work-arounds for the interim period. I would have naively thought starlink would qualify for that from a technical perspective, but then the FCC documents actually discussion requirements and how they were or were not met/promised by starlink was mostly redacted. 

> The same is true for missing/loosing support for FWA in the grand/funding schemes:  all the arguments thrown around by fiber cheerleaders are based on bandwidth (at best) or "speed" (in most cases) or some theorethical future-proofness (I mean, we don't know what will happen in next hour, little less we know what will happen in next 10 years). 

	I am mo cheerleader (built like a ton, nobody would like to see me with pompoms), yet I consider a (reasonably) universal fiber network exactly the right political goal. Yet, I accept that reaching that goal will not be instantaneous, so we should find a way of making those currently effectively disconnected participate more in the digital society even before the fiber truck reach their homes...

> HOWEVER, the real issue at hand is either absolutely missing connectivity in many places. Literally ANY service (even 3/1 Mbps) will be a welcome improvement on the current state of thing, let alone Starlink with all its pros and cons. 

	Yes I tend to agree, at least from the far away this looks like a reasonable way to bridge the period until a better network reaches those places.

> 
> Total reliance on fiber will lead mostly to overbuilding at locations with some service, not to the overall improvements everywhere. Typical "good intentions, bad consequences" type of situations. 

	No, that would just be a case of bad regulation, if the goal is an universal FTTH network, neither planning or implementing that is "rocket science" unless people "cheat".

> Also, when we want to close the digital divide aka "get internet connectivity everywhere" - it means to do it ASAP, even thought it would not mean a "state of the art" type of the internet of some blessed hype place on the West or East coast, with so many competing ISPs. 

	Yes, that would appear so. However the FCC process has to be reasonably fair to all, and given the redactions in the official I can not realistically tell whether the FCC is unreasonably hard here (and if so why) or whether starlink was trying to under-deliver on the requirements. Given that I will likely never get the un-redacted information and am living far away from where the FCC has anything to say, I can accept that ambiguity quite easily.

> Last but not least, we should care also about the price of closing that digital divide. Do we need to have "big fat pipes" just because we as a industry were building and optimising everything within the Internet infrastructure for bandwidth, we taught our customers that "faster speed package" is the solution to all their problems and so on? It's about time to fix that absolute BS narrative we have felt for over time. 

	Yes, we need a universal FTTH network.. let's build this now for the next 100 years, instead of keeping tinkering with small updates here and there... Light in fiber has multiple desirable advantages, a higher theoretical (and practical) capacity ceiling is only one of those (although the one that makes an FTTH network conceptually more future proof). This is IMHO fact, not BS.
	Other advantages of fiber are e.g. massively higher robustness against RF-interference (compared to DSL, DOCSIS, and wireless access techniques). This has an immediate latency consequence. If we look at DSL we see essentially a 4 KHz clock that hence has a potential access latency floor on the order of of ~250µs (while e.g. GPON uses 125s chunks, but with dynamic bandwidth allocation and hence request/grant traffic it is not faster than DSL) both FTTH and DSL have signal propagation speeds on the order of 2/3 the speed of light in vacuum. 
	Most DSL users however see access latencies in the dozens of milliseconds simple because their links are configured to use deep interleaving to make bit-error-rates acceptable in the light of RF noise; compare that to fiber where access delay will be in the low single digit milliseconds for PON or even lower for AON access. 
	Also the length between active components with fiber can be in the dozens of miles without having to fall back to capacities in the Kbps range as DSL, fiber is hence far better suited for wiring up the rural underserved areas... (and let's be clear, the cost argument for deploying fiber to these places today would have applied to all other infrastructure in the past, like power, water, roads, telephony, and yet these typically have been deployed).

Regards
	Sebastian

> This was the step in the right direction and let's hope that FCC (and others) will used it wisely: https://circleid.com/posts/20231211-its-the-latency-fcc
> 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Frank
> 
> Frantisek (Frank) Borsik
> 
>  
> 
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/frantisekborsik
> 
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> frantisek.borsik at gmail.com
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 1:44 PM Gert Doering via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 01:43:25PM +0100, Alexandre Petrescu wrote:
> > So, a requirement to a competitive satcom would be like 25 Gbit/s.  I think it
> > is not impossible to make, if many intermediate layers (HAPS, drones etc)
> > are used, and larger band widths.
> 
> As was noted upthread, raw bandwith is not the only relevant criteria
> here (and nobody really *needs* 25 Gbit/s at home, though I'd *love* to
> have it).
> 
> gert
> -- 
> have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?
> 
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