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The topic doesn’t really come up so I figured I’d share what I figure is a fairly unique experience — I spent a long time in Congo, specifically Kinshasa, Kisangani, and Goma.
The IMF funded a big telecom there (to improve life in the developed world?) The profits all go to Western Europe. The price for “credit” (data) is so high Congolese spend 3-5x their rent on phone data. Internet cafe speeds are worse than dial up since the whole country is splitting a single transoceanic fiber line. The only good Internet is accessible to those who have connections to use the UN satellite which are very hard to come by.
Things may have changed in the last few years but that was my experience.
For a more amusing take on cross-water Internet, Linux Tech Tips recently posted a video:
> Linus' parents are building a sweet new off-the-grid cabin miles offshore of the mainland here in British Columbia, and while they've figured out power, sewage, and water, they left one thing for me: the internet.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T98VsMe3oo
Meta: how "off-the-grid" is it if you're connected to the Internet? Is "off-the-grid" a binary thing? Or is there some sliding scale?
Who cares? Just use some Ubiquiti point to point devices and be done with it.
Oh can Ubiquiti do 20gbit now? That's what they're able to do here and their advanced alignment system helps
> Imagine pointing a light beam the width of a chopstick accurately enough to hit a 5-centimeter target (about the size of a US quarter) that's 10 kilometers away; that’s how accurate the signal needs to be to be strong and reliable.
Yes, here microwave would've been both cheaper, and by far more practical, but hey, it's free publicity for Google.
Taraa is what is left of Google's Internet from balloons project as I understand.
Beyond that, satellite optical communications is a potentially very big thing.
No rain in space makes satellite a bit more viable, they don't mention throughput but I don't see how you get around the issue of atmospheric interference.
If satellites fly high, and close enough together, there is no problem to send data in between them, as beams will not cross the atmosphere.