My parents to this day still don't have real broadband access. The best they can get is a bad 4G signal to their rural area. Even Starlink only has speeds of 40mbs in their area. They only live about a mile from a fiber line, but AT&T won't run it over because it would only service maybe 10-15 homes, and there are no cable lines. I think this is more common than people think.
What's wrong with 40mbs? I honestly don't need more than 20. The only time I even notice faster speeds is when my podcasts download.
I'm curious what types of situations require more than 40mbps, and why the inability to do those tasks would mean that someone doesn't haver "real broadband access". I was pushed from 50 to 75 a while back and seriously hardly notice it.
That's 40mbps at peak, if you're streaming say HuluTV to 2-3 devices and also running your work environment, you're straining that data. It's also just legally speaking -not- high speed internet.
Thanks for the example. We definitely would never have 3 hulu streams simultaneously while someone else was "running a work environment". At most we'd have 2 simultaneous streams, and we've never had buffering or noticeable degradation when that happened.
I used that example because it's a real-life problem my parents have faced, you're paying for DirecTV and also Starlink? That's going to be closer to $300+/mo. If you just had high speed internet and HuluTV (or similar) you'd be paying a lot less. Many people that live in rural areas simply can't afford both.
Your parents aren't able to simultaneously stream with 40mbps?
The example was 2-3 simultaneous streams plus a "work environment" (a zoom call?). My family of 4 doesn't ever have that much usage, which is why I don't enjoy being forced to pay for 75mbps — Comcast's lowest tier. We cap out at two simultaneous streams, which is probably the same for your parents. It has literally never been an issue — even when we had 25mbps.
