Who digs up fibres to sell? It's worthless material. Copper yes but nobody lays that anymore. If it even has to be metal it's usually mostly aluminium.
replyYou'd be amazed at how unintelligent about things tweakers are. They don't know it is fibre when they are taking it. It doesn't keep all of the users on the other end of those lines from losing signal.
replyWhat are you basing this view on, sounds like you have personally seen this happen?
replyOn multiple occasions I have had my fibre service go down because of this.
replyThey dig up the fibre to check that it isn't copper.
replyStarlink is popular in rural England. Trenching fibre to farmland isn't economical and poor DSL is often the only other option.
reply>Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
replyExcept there's rich parts like Germany or Austria where internet infra is poorly run due to monopolistic telco capture and regulations keeping infra upgrades costs high, and so have slower and more expensive internet than Starlink in some areas. Poorer nations of EU often have faster internet than the richer ones so poverty is not a reason.
So Starlink is definitely still relevant. I've seen several small/medium businesses here in Austria that have a starlink terminal as a backup.
Yes and just to add, the infra itself is pretty cheap. The cost comes from the labor and regulatory complexity. Budapest for instance has dirt cheap fibre just about everywhere.
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