The great promise must deal with harsh reality. The broadband “for everyone and everywhere” promised by our institutions to give body and substance to the new social model of remote working and a fully interconnected society is struggling to take off. There are still too many areas of the country where the Internet is intermittent, connections are poor or even absent. There is no shortage of defects even in large urban centers. And the resounding announcement made a few years ago to promote, through public subsidies, even fiber optics in small centers with “market failure” (i.e. those where the investment for the operator would not be profitable) is proceeding with Italian slowness.
The vacation home, the countryside, the town where we would spend a few more days bringing our interconnected work with us: should we give up for lack of technology? Let's not give up. With a little good will, and a little more knowledge, we can explore some solutions that perhaps exist but are not seen.
There is the Internet router similar to the “fixed” one at home but instead it offers us wifi and connections with cable sockets (ethernet) by capturing and amplifying the signal of a cell phone repeater with a small antenna placed on the roof. There is the “pan” similar to that of satellite TV that connects us to an Internet provider via radio. Or the new but already bursting satellite service Starlink, the fruit of the indisputable, if controversial, genius of Elon Musk. How to explore possible solutions? How to best choose? And how much does it cost us?
“Institutional” broadband late. But let’s keep an eye on it
In the most populated neighborhoods of the big cities we are doing well. Fiber optic connections are finally proceeding at a good speed. But elsewhere Italy continues to be patchy. Unifying strategies, maximizing investment capacity and defining a path with certain times remains an illusion. An example for everyone, small but convincing: Rocca Sinibalda, in the province of Rieti, is one of those places with market failure (but with great potential for economic and social revival, like thousands of small Italian villages) theoretically blessed with extraordinary investments by the institutions for a broadband fiber optic network that was supposed to be fully active at the end of 2022. The delay is truly culpable: in the town of Rieti Open Fiber, the institutional operator, actually completed the fiber optic backbones in 2022, preparing the connections for wireless repeaters in 2023 to reach rural settlements via radio as well. Nothing to be done. The last step is missing for the offer of the operators with the new technology, which continues to be promised "soon". This is just one of many cases. Italy, prey to the “fiber illusion”, pays for thousands of similar situations.
The work is still in progress. And if we are in one of the many areas with asphyxiated Internet it is worth consulting the site of Open Fiber and then the websites of the various fixed and mobile telephone operators (starting with the main ones: Tim, Vodafone, Fastweb, WindTre) to check for the appearance of an offer for our home fiber broadband or alternatively a radio connection to cover the so-called “last mile” with the same technology.
The Cellular Alternative: Great (If It Works) and Cheap
The fiber that arrives directly inside our home, or even our business or commercial establishment, is still the best solution in terms of performance and reliability. But if this is not available, an excellent solution, both in terms of performance and cost of the service, can be that of a connection using the cellular network of mobile phones: 4G technology provides almost total coverage of the territory and also reaches sparsely populated or even inaccessible areas. And there is no shortage, even in the most remote areas, of connections with the new technology 5G, which offers performances close to those of fixed fiber optic connections.
Setting up a replacement fiber station using the cellular network can even be a good alternative to other solutions, which perhaps offer better performance but also higher costs. The first step to verify its feasibility is naturally to check the coverage of one or more mobile phone operators. If this is present we can rely on the tutorial already published on FIRSTonline and do everything on our own without having to contact a technician or a specialized operator. A SIM will be inserted into the “cellular” modem (which we can also buy on e-commerce sites for a few dozen euros), choosing the operator that offers the most efficient service in our area and perhaps the best rate, which can be really light, around 10 euros per month or even less.
The “do-it-yourself” solution illustrated in our tutorial has an “official” variant offered by telephone operators, which however is on average more expensive: the FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) system, also used to extend via radio, with equipment supplied and installed directly by the operator, fiber optic networks in rural areas or areas not easily reachable with cabling, sometimes in combination with the LMDS technology we discuss below.
Via radio or satellite Starlink, which is growing rapidly
No landline and weak cellular network? A solution could come from the LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution Service) radio services offered by the large TLC operators or by the companies that in recent years have acquired, through expensive public auctions, the frequencies dedicated to these systems, which should not be confused with cellular networks even if they have some similarities, so much so that they are often offered with a mix of the two technologies. An example? The service offered by Aeolus.
But it is precisely in cases like this that the satellite system Starlink It can represent a solution, a little more expensive than the "fixed cellular" connection we talked about, but already offered today practically throughout our territory, including impervious areas, at accessible costs.
It is no coincidence that Elon Musk, the patron of Starlink (and not only), is attempting one of his corporate-institutional marketing operations with the Italian Government, proposing Starlink even as a substitute for fiber optic cabling in areas not yet reached or difficult to reach by the Internet. In exchange, of course, for economic and regulatory incentives to expand a system that in any case is already fully operational in Italy and that would simply need to be strengthened, both in satellite equipment and in ground control stations, in the event that the demand for connections were to multiply.
The debate on the opportunity for our institutions and operators to give up, in favor of Starlink, a part of the plan for "fixed" broadband is inevitable, which now and in the future represents the most rational and reliable solution to provide connectivity to families, businesses and public administration. But that's how it is.
Starlink as a complementary system, or perhaps as a “last resort” if other connectivity solutions are lacking, still represents a great opportunity. It is already a global system, rapidly and powerfully expanding, made up of thousands of small satellites (we have already exceeded 5.000 and we expect to reach over 12.000) that orbit around us in low orbit (LEO) in continuous harmony with specific ground stations and continuously pass communication to each other with the antennas of customers on earth, in a sort of roaming like that of cell phone stations but in reverse: in this case we are fixed and the stations move in the sky.
What to do if we want to install Starlink
We have examined all the other possible solutions and decide to purchase the Starlink subscription and equipment? First of all we need to check the actual coverage of our area. After the latest satellite launches and the strengthening of ground stations, Italy is practically all covered, but the first thing to do is to enter our address on the Starlink website and have confirmation. Second step: we need to identify if we have a suitable place to install the antenna. On the roof or on a terrace, or even on an open area in the garden, we need to have a large part of the celestial vault "visible" without anything in the way (including trees or plants).
The simple direction towards a specific area of the sky is not enough (as for satellite TV that points fixedly towards a geostationary satellite), but it is necessary to allow the small Starlink antenna to move automatically "searching" for the most suitable small satellite. The antenna device, a rectangle with the longest side that in the domestic version does not exceed 50 centimeters, will connect with a cable that we will have to be able to channel between the passages between the roof and the house to connect it to an Internet router similar to that of the fixed lines placed inside the house.
Once these conditions have been verified, we can proceed with the purchase of the kit. It currently costs 349 euros one-off in the residential version and 649 euros for companies. We can also install it ourselves by following some simple instructions. It can be purchased online directly from Starlink together with the subscription formula and some accessories that we can choose directly for the first installation or even add later.
In this regard, it is highly advisable to immediately equip yourself with some optional features that could prove indispensable and that we can also buy on Amazon. First of all, two: a fixed support for the antenna, which should be immediately replaced with the supplied tripod, and an adapter to equip the router with a “fixed” network socket. A socket (Ethernet, in technical language) that will be used for all those connections normally used in traditional routers: from repeaters or “mesh” systems capable of bringing the Wi-Fi signal to all areas of our home to the direct connection of the smart TV or remote control systems, such as alarms and air conditioning.
Contractual formulas? Our advice for a home user is to avoid the minimum offer costing 29 euros per month, which provides a drastic reduction in speed in the event of network congestion and a low priority in the exchange of bits during navigation. Better is the slightly more expensive offer, 40 euros per month, which provides unlimited data in any condition with a speed that realistically stands at around 100 megabits per second, not as fast as the best fiber optics but still much better than the average of Italian fixed ADSL connections. And so the problem of the possible penalization of our digital nomadism is solved.
