That's what the subsidies are for. Plus, fiber does not necessarily need to be upgraded after installation (especially rural, where there's less customers in general). It's not copper or coax, it doesn't have the same limits, and can usually handle huge amounts of data (the limit primarily being the transceivers at both ends). The costs of upgrading would also likely be lower than the initial install, something that couldn't be said about providers like Starlink. Fiber is about the most efficient, cost effective (especially in the long term), and future proof way to provide internet. Starlink is overall much more expensive to maintain.

But yes, without the local, state, and/or federal governments supporting it, people in rural areas won't have a choice.

That will work out as well as the death tunnel (formerly hyperlink)

It is true.

Multimode (what I think you're trying to reference) isn't used in distance applications at all, it’s only for short in-building links. Anything that your ISP would provide you would be single-mode. Carrier/Backbone is virtually 100% SMF as well. SMF (OS1 and OS2) don't really have a bandwidth cap. It's all transceivers not the fiber.

But the point is that fiber that ALREADY in the ground, you can upgrade simply by changing the transceivers. It doesn't matter the length, SMF/MMF, or anything else... you just get a transceiver rated for the length of run (power of the led/laser, and the optics). The length is irrelevant otherwise as the presumption is that the install in the ground has been shown to work in the past already.

Old standard ITU-G.652 single-mode has been made to push multi-petabit transfers in lab environments. The only change was the transceivers. And to be clear, ITU-G.652 was standardized in 1984. Nobody rips out the fiber from the ground (caveat is that the cable itself hasn't degraded). You just upgrade the optics/transceivers.

“It's not the fiber that’s limiting—ITU-T G.652 defines physical specs (dispersion, attenuation), not throughput. Field trials over 96.5 km of real-world G.652 fiber showed 56.5 Tb/s using advanced DWDM and modulation

source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.01873

Your statement didn't specify an application!

The context of the discussion does...

SpaceX doesn't provide in rack or in-building connectivity.

SpaceX is an ISP. You wouldn't have an ISP running multimode.

there's no fundamental physics limitation that makes this true. in fact, light in a vacuum travels faster than in glass fiber, so the theoretical latency of LEO internet is actually faster compared to fiber over a certain distance

Starlink is definitely faster than all but the most expensive GEO services (and those require specialized hardware)

ISP's absolutely run multimode. That's how you get fiber into a building or between buildings. Different types of fiber all play a role in a network deployment.

Broad statements are misleading. OM4 multimode won't push 10gb at 500meters no matter how good your hardware is.

A society grows great when old men plant fiber whose speed they know they shall never download from.

Of course. In a month or two he can tell trump Dem statez are stupid and he should force them to do that.

lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.

As fiber is rolled out more, i see less and less why it would be cost prohibitive?

All you need to do to connect a remote place is lay a cable. More expensive if you need dig a trench and put the cable in there. But if it can be done for electricity it can be done for fiber.

Yeah, because all the gamers love to play online with a 3 second latency.

Broad statements are misleading.

Ignoring the context of the discussion is even more misleading. In the context of this conversation, ISPs providing consumer connections and obtaining grant money, my statement is 100% accurate.

That’s how you get fiber into a building or between buildings.

You just said multimode can’t do significant speeds at distance, yet claim that buildings separated by distance would be connected with it? That logic doesn’t hold.

Intrabuilding or intrarack Yes, you’ll find multimode fiber occasionally. But even these rare cases are increasingly replaced by single-mode as costs drop and bandwidth needs rise.

Everything else (ISP deployments, backbones, FTTH) Single-mode fiber dominates. I haven’t seen a single ISP deploy multimode for consumer-facing services over a typical network radius (~hundreds of meters to kilometers). The only minor exception is MMF from the building network room to an apartment unit, which is irrelevant for this discussion and would be EXCEEDINGLY rare as most buildings would just copper line to the unit. But even in that case... the 20+km from the head end to the building counts for much more than the 20meters to the unit itself.

For all practical ISP purposes, single-mode fiber is what’s in the ground/on the pole, and upgrades are handled via transceivers, not ripping out the cable.

OM4 multimode won’t push 10gb at 500meters no matter how good your hardware is.

But just because you said it...

Access Denied

(www.corning.com)

and OM4 is suitable for distances up to 550 m

OM4 Multimode Fiber FAQ: High-Speed Connectivity Guide

Explore the OM4 multimode fiber FAQ for insights on data rates, compatibility, and advantages.

FS.com (www.fs.com)

OM4: Supports 10 Gbps up to 550 meters.

OM1, OM2, OM3 AND OM4 Fiber | Timbercon

Find the fiber optics tool for OM1, OM2, OM3 and OM4 fiber here. | Timbercon

Timbercon (www.timbercon.com)

OM4 Not specified 500 m* 150 m 150 m
*The IEEE has yet to officially give a distance for 10GBASE-S on OM4 fiber. The distances are decided by the IEEE in 802.3, not The TIA or ISO/IEC cabling standards. Some glass vendors say 500 m, but most are now quoting “up to 550m.”

You absolutely can run OM4 at 10gbps at or over 500m depending on your optics/laser.

But Multimode was never the point of discussion as the whole thread is based around broadband services (virtually none of it serviced by multimode, if any at all) and grant money for rural area coverage. Any fiber upgrade in this scenario will 100% be SMF with no qualifiers. In my past 30 years of IT career all buried and pole mounted fiber is SMF that I've ever seen for an ISP. I can tell you for certainty that ever fiber I've buried in the past 10 years for several companies has been SMF. I'm not even sure that I've touched MMF in the past 5 years even in intra-rack setups, I think I might have gotten some with a government auction win about 8 years ago I wanna say? With costs of SMF at near parity for the cable itself and getting closer every year in the modules... it's a dying form factor and was never really in use for ISP services to begin with.

Of course they don't mean in every case. Yeah, if you have to go halfway around the world from two addresses that are very far away from hubs, Starlink might be better. 99.99999% of the time this isn't happening though and fiber will be better. There are situations for some people where it's worth it. Fiber is better for the average case though, and it's where money should be invested.

I live near DE-CIX and have fiber. So a decent chunk of web services I use is available with a latency of under 5ms. And everything else hosted in a European datacenter with under 20ms.

So almost all of my internet traffic has a lower latency than starlink has under ideal conditions

Is it because latency does not scale in that way?

Yes, your understanding is fundamentally flawed. Starlink adds a fixed latency on top, if you ping to a server was 2ms with fiber and 52ms with starlink, then your ping to a server that would be 100ms with fiber would be 150ms with starlink

Just think how much control he can have if he owns the medium which people access the internet.

And he'd only do good things with that power /s

None of the issues you mentioned are 4G issues in itself. Do you realize the sarellite is much further away than 4g tower? It sounds like bad ISP. I have none of said issues. Even gaming is great, getting around 20-30ping on local country servers.

While trump looks down and says "don't take it out of your mouth again"