Bridging the Digital Divide One Satellite at a Time
This invention is near and dear to my heart. The first ten years of living in Upstate, we were out at Spruce Lake. And the internet? No such thing out there, except for WildBlue Satellite (which later became ViaSat) and then HughesNet.
It was slow. If there were thick clouds? It was probably out. Then, if it was raining or snowing, it was out.
Lots of companies made promises – get a petition together and we’ll see if there are enough people who want it, they stated. We did that, turned them in, and nothing ever happened.
There were rumors over the years that Verizon would run fiber up Military Highway for us, but that never happened.
One time, I was on a call with them and very stressed, and the guy said, “Do you know how much it costs us to string that wire? It’s $30,000 a mile!”
I responded, “Hell, leave that cable up here, and we’ll run it along the poles for nothing but a few kegs of beer. The loggers up here would love the challenge.”
Of course, that idea was a non-starter, and high-speed internet never reached that group.
Like Spruce Lake, there are vast stretches of upstate New York to this day, where cell towers thin out and cable lines never reach—high-speed internet was once a luxury reserved for cities.
Families in the Mohawk Valley, Herkimer County, and remote towns like Eagle Lake or Ohio often dealt with dial-up speeds, spotty DSL, or no connection at all.
Then came Starlink: a constellation of thousands of low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites built by SpaceX, delivering broadband speeds of 50–220 Mbps with low latency (20–40 ms) to nearly any spot with a clear view of the sky.
What started as Elon Musk’s vision to fund Mars colonization has become one of the most impactful satellite technologies since NASA’s early comms experiments, directly tackling the rural digital divide.
Unlike traditional geostationary satellites (22,000 miles up, high latency, fixed coverage), Starlink satellites orbit at 340–1,200 km (211-745 miles)—much closer, faster-moving, and networked together via laser links for seamless handoffs.
This architecture draws on decades of NASA research on satellite constellations, inter-satellite communication, and orbital dynamics (e.g., from projects such as Iridium precursors and modern smallsat tech demos).
SpaceX scaled it massively: as of today, over 10,000 Starlink satellites are in orbit, with plans for tens of thousands more.
The user kit—a phased-array “Dishy” antenna that auto-tracks satellites, a Wi-Fi router, and a power supply—plugs in like any modem. No professional installation needed; users point it north-ish and let it self-align.
In Herkimer County, where traditional providers like Spectrum or Frontier often stop at town lines, Starlink has become a lifeline for remote homes, farms, small businesses, and even seasonal camps along the Adirondack edges.
Local impact stories abound. A dairy farmer near Ilion can now monitor herd health cameras, order parts online in real time, and sell directly via e-commerce—tasks that were impossible with slow or unreliable connections.
Homeschooling families have switched from frustrating video calls to smooth Zoom classes during and after the pandemic. Small businesses in the valley added online ordering and digital payments, boosting revenue in areas long cut off from the digital economy.
“Before Starlink, our internet was so slow the kids couldn’t do homework online without driving to the library,” says a parent in a rural Herkimer County household. “Now they stream lessons, research projects, and we can all work from home when needed. It’s changed how we live.”
Starlink also supports emergency response and community resilience. During power outages or storms, the system runs on a generator or battery backup, keeping first responders connected.
It’s been deployed in disaster zones worldwide and has helped bridge connectivity gaps in schools and libraries through programs like Starlink for Education.
The technology isn’t perfect—trees, heavy snow buildup on the dish, or orbital congestion in busy areas can affect performance—but iterative improvements (Gen 2 dishes, better routing algorithms) have made it reliable for most users.
Pricing has dropped too: hardware around $300–$600 and monthly service $80–$120 (with regional variations and priority tiers), making it competitive in underserved markets.
Starlink’s success has spurred competitors (Amazon’s Project Kuiper, OneWeb) and pushed legacy providers to accelerate fiber and fixed-wireless rollouts in rural areas.
In places like Herkimer County, it’s accelerated the push for equitable access, turning “no service” zones into connected communities.
From NASA’s early satellite demos to SpaceX’s mega-constellation, the dream of ubiquitous space-based internet is becoming a reality—one rooftop dish at a time.
For families in the valleys and hills of upstate New York, Starlink isn’t just faster internet; it’s access to jobs, education, healthcare tele-visits, and the full digital world that was once out of reach.
As one local installer put it: “We used to tell people, ‘Sorry, no cable here.’ Now we say, ‘point the dish that way, and you’re online.’ It’s a game-changer.”
In contrast to this inexpensive satellite alternative, billions of dollars have been invested to expand high-speed internet and fiber broadband across New York, with much of the funding directed toward rural and underserved communities.
State initiatives such as the New NY Broadband Program and the newer ConnectALL Initiative together account for roughly $2 billion in public investment.
These programs were designed to extend modern broadband infrastructure into areas where private companies had historically been reluctant to build due to high costs and lower population density.
Federal funding has added significantly to those efforts. New York has been allocated about $664 million through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program (BEAD) and roughly $345 million from the federal Capital Projects Fund, both aimed at expanding high-speed connectivity.
When combined with required private-sector matching investments from telecom providers, analysts estimate that approximately $4 billion to $6 billion has been committed to broadband and fiber infrastructure across New York over the last ten years, much of it focused on connecting rural Upstate homes and businesses to reliable high-speed internet.
And does everyone have it yet? Of course not. Just think…if we gave EVERYONE in Herkimer County a FREE Starlink set of equipment – even at the high end of $600/per household, we would only spend aboout $36 million dollars on that initiative. No running wire, no massive grants that seem to just disappear, just everyone with the ability to have access to the internet.
Of course, you’d still have to pay your monthly bandwidth fees, but at least everyone would be able to have it at home. Just a thought…
For more stories like this, visit shuttertothestars.com
Next up? Precision Agricultural Tools – How Satellite and GPS tech optimize farming with data on soil and weather.
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