Re: FCC Chair Rosenworcel Proposes to Investigate Impact of Data Caps

[Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com>]

On 6/16/23 1:36 PM, Josh Luthman wrote:
> Not everyone can afford $1000 to start up Starlink and then pay $130+ 
> per month.  That may be an option for some, but certainly not the 
> majority.
>
> If 100% of a town was covered by a single company with data caps, 
> those that are crying from hitting 1.2 TB/month will not be enough for 
> a competitor to come in and build on top.  A TB/mo now is extremely 
> high - In May 2023 we had 4 customers that exceeded that (all 4 of 
> these customers mentioned are subscribed to <25 mbps plans; we offer 
> gig ftth).

I get the impression that they are still in a beta/early adopter 
situation so unaffordability might be feature not a bug to them to keep 
the system from a success disaster. At least for now. I get the 
impression that some/a lot of this is to bring the internet to the rest 
of the world as one of their goals.

I do wonder how they are numbering them though. Are the they using the 
same scheme that the mobile providers are using with ipv6? hmm.

Mike

> On Fri, Jun 16, 2023 at 4:22 PM Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa> wrote:
>
>
>
>     On 6/16/23 22:16, Michael Thomas wrote:
>
>     > Won't Starlink and other LEO configurations be that backstop sooner
>     > rather than later? I don't know if they have caps as well, but
>     even if
>     > they do they could compete with their caps.
>
>     Maybe. I really haven't paid any attention to Starlink, although
>     there
>     are credible reports of folk testing it here in South Africa's urban
>     centres.
>
>     I have not heard of any mention of Starlink having caps as part of
>     their
>     service. Having said that, for services like this, things change
>     as the
>     number of customers using them rises.
>
>     Mark.