This is true...Satellite Internet has been available for decades... ViaSat, Wild Blue Yonder, Hughes Net... All Geosynchronous, very, very slow... no support for VPN with extremely high latency (more than 22,000 miles up). Not suitable for voice calls, video services (movies, video conferences, etc.) or gaming.

Starlink (and Amazon's Project Kuiper, and OneWeb) is significantly different. LEO satellites have very low (almost fiber) latency. And the bandwidth is far greater (20 Gbps for v1 satellite with 80 Gbps for v2 satellites). Now, that bandwidth is shared by everyone in that same satellite spot beam, the more spot beams (and there are multiple per satellite), the smaller each beam is (each with 20 or 80 Gbps), the fewer people using that beam's bandwidth, the more bandwidth every person has... and the more satellites, the more spot beams. That's why the number of satellites matters. Via Sat and others have one or two satellites covering the entirety of North America... they have a few spot beams per satellite. And while they do have significant bandwidth (not as much as Starlink, I believe) it's shared among LOTS of people.

FULL DISCLOSURE... I bought my parents Starlink (so much better in every way compared to the local DSL available in their small Central Oregon town) and I have Starlink deployed at a farm in Hillsboro Oregon. Again, far better than any other option I had.

5G

As a Network Engineer, I was part of a small team looking at 5G vs. alternatives for connectivity to remote substations and communication sites (and as backup access for our generation fleet).

Two problems with 5G (I mean besides the hype). First, coverage isn't increasing... right now it will have, someday, the same foot print as 4G LTE. And right now its not even close to the 4G foot print. But there are SO MANY places where you can't get 4G or where the signal is so weak the service is spotty. Second... the hype was around speeds... up to 1 Gbps (sometimes faster). Sure... using millimeter wavelengths. But using that very high frequency spectrum means REALLY short distances (like you can't even cover a medium size stadium... Verizon tried, had to use multiple base stations to cover a stadium...https://www.5gworldpro.com/blog/2019/09/21/128-verizon-s-5g-network-can-t-cover-an-entire-nfl-stadium/ ). So carriers are scrambling to deploy mid-band frequencies... That's good but its only 2 to maybe 3 times the throughput (we're talking 60 Mbps to maybe 120 Mbps in the vast majority of cases). Nice improvement, no doubt, but hardly revolutionary.

And as a fixed wireless home Internet service... well, the reviews are very spotty. Maybe good if its the only thing you can get.

Another minor issue is the 5G standards aren't complete yet. One advantage 5G is supposed to have is support for NB-IoT (Narrow Band - Internet of Things). That standard is still in development.

And while they say they're friends.. WiFi and 5G are more like frienemies. Nokia, Ericsson, and other 5G providers are trying to convince industrial equipment manufacturers to add 5G transceivers to their equipment, saying its better than Wifi... and John Deere is deploying 5G in their factories. But upcoming WiFi 7 erases most of the advantages 5G has in an industrial setting (fast setup, support for hundreds or thousands of devices, multiple NB-IoT profiles, and the like). Not sure 5G will be very competitive in the industrial setting.

And what about 6G? Right now, the white papers and research papers make it sound like its a local only network... almost a desktop area network (DAN??). Very fast terahertz speeds but at a distance of only a few feet. Connecting monitors, MFPs, Webcams, etc. The protocols I've seen under development seem to focus on things like device connectivity. Though we're pretty early in the discussions.

So this is an interesting question. I'm going to assume you mean free as in beer (as opposed to free from undue influence or political control).

I work as a Network Engineer for a local electric utility. My focus is high speed WAN networking (10 Gbps to 400 Gbps interfaces). I can tell you that this type of communication infrastructure is EXPENSIVE. We use optical switches in the “core” of our core network. Each one is about a million dollars (each pair of chassis at a location supports about 4.4 Tbps if so equipped… we’re currently running about 1.2 Tbps but will grow!). Then there’s the fiber.. That can be several hundred thousand per mile to string, pole mounted (even more if underground). Then there is all the supporting infrastructure… 2-post racks (a few hundred dollars each), power (it should be DC with lots of battery backup), the room for the equipment with AC, security, monitoring, etc. The pole mounted fiber requires a lot of equipment (horseshoes to provide slack and fiber storage, splice cases, etc.). And there is almost always a set of in-ground vaults (such as those made by Old Castle). And you need trained personnel to install, manage, operate, maintain, and optimize the network. This means very specialized tools, servers to support network management systems, trucks with lifts, splicing trailers, testing equipment, and more. And getting permits is expensive and time consuming. It can take a year to place a 4-inch conduit under a railroad track. Crossing freeways or rivers is a nightmare. We have whole departments dedicated to getting permits. The surveys (Is there enough room on the pole? Is the pole sound enough for the extra weight. Who owns the pole?) and documentation (we use ArcGIS… very complex GIS program) are on going expenses.

So someone has to pay for this. Supporting lots of customers means each customer’s cost is relatively low (I happen to have fiber Internet… I pay $65.00 per month for 1 Gbps up and down, no caps... I consider that cheap).

Having said that, I’d like to share my Internet. I believe in community based Internet Services… using my WiFi or unlicensed spectrum. I think communities should encourage and build these networks. But they will never be as resilient as a well funded private endeavor.

We should have universal Internet access. Fiber is being rolled out at a faster rate every year. I would love to see municipal owned fiber access (even though my CenturyLink fiber is cheap and in three years has NEVER had an outage… through snow, ice, wind, storms, and fire… amazing). But even community owned fiber is going to cost.

I also have high hopes for Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and OneWeb… While Starlink is expensive (I have a farm on which I have Starlink service), it will offer Gigabit speeds, hopefully at the same $110.00 per month it currently charges. Once other constellations are in place, competition kicks in. Prices go down.

But I’m not sure a reliable, fast, and widely available Internet will ever be free.

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