The scope to which I was responding was the assertion that 50kbp/s is not enough to transfer more than a handful of bytes.
You are correct that images, encryption, and blockchains are outside the scope of what a constrained connection can sustain, but that's a bit like saying "We can't power an industrial economy on consumer-owned 100 watt solar panels" which while true, misses the point.
Yes, if you're using court etiquette protocols to transmit data, you're going to incur very large amounts of overhead.
If you're using insecure low-sophistication protocols in sparsely populated areas (e.g. flyover America), then the possibilities are much more expansive. Yes, the latter by definition isn't commercially nor urbanely (viz. pertaining to densely populated cities) viable, but for certain demographics that's a feature, not a bug.
It's not 50kbps per device, I would agree that could be manageable. It's 50kbps for the each channel (of which there are a limited number) that's serving a 5-20km radius.
You are correct that images, encryption, and blockchains are outside the scope of what a constrained connection can sustain, but that's a bit like saying "We can't power an industrial economy on consumer-owned 100 watt solar panels" which while true, misses the point.
Yes, if you're using court etiquette protocols to transmit data, you're going to incur very large amounts of overhead.
If you're using insecure low-sophistication protocols in sparsely populated areas (e.g. flyover America), then the possibilities are much more expansive. Yes, the latter by definition isn't commercially nor urbanely (viz. pertaining to densely populated cities) viable, but for certain demographics that's a feature, not a bug.