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SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant::FCC doubts ability to provide high-speed, low-latency service in all grant areas.
SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant::FCC doubts ability to provide high-speed, low-latency service in all grant areas.
I love shitting on Elon but starlink is one of the most important things that has come out of the US. It made remote work possible for thousands. It provided real internet access for so many rural areas. The FCC needs to fix this.
In rejecting SpaceX’s appeal, yesterday’s FCC order said the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau “followed Commission guidance and correctly concluded that Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low-latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support.”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged Starlink’s capacity limits several times, saying for example that it will face “a challenge [serving everyone] when we get into the several million user range.”
Isn’t it Starlink that should fix this?
Maybe we should invest in another company that will actually deserve it.
The problem is that this company doesn’t exist.
This grant was originally not going to even allow satellite providers - the idea was it was going to go to hundreds of small fiber and wireless ISPs who needed the money to build infrastructure to rural areas that is not profitable on the face of it.
A one-time grant like this isn’t going to make or break Starlink - they’re not building anything infrastructure with the money (the satellites burn up in a few years and need to be replaced - are they going to need ongoing grants?), so basically it’s just giving free money to SpaceX. Whereas if the money went to a company building fiber or wireless repeaters that money would pay itself back over and over again and the fees would just pay for maintenance
If only there was some way for the government to take the money, then just like… Directly hire qualified people to actually do it.
Maybe we could take a little money from everyone, then charge just enough to keep the system running?
I know, it’s a pretty crazy idea…I mean, it would be expensive up front, but it would be way cheaper for the service. Plus, we could stop paying ISPs to pinkie promise to build out modern infrastructure or lying about serving rural areas to get grants
(Btw, the government bought out iridium, the company that does satellite phones, when they ran out of money and were days away from decommissioning the whole constellation. And they’ve kept it going for decades… So I bet they could tap those guys for the roadmap to a lower orbit solution… Or we could just keep it wired while we improve the tech)
In Iowa, at least, the state had a pre-existing fiber network that got expanded to a shit-ton of rural communities and local (often municipal) ISPs. It’s more expensive than what you’d get in the cities, but much better bang for buck than Starlink.
The only people still struggling to get service are those who live way, way outside those communities – the kind of people for whom “neighbor” means somebody who lives a significant fraction of a mile away. And, outside of comfortably wealthy individuals, those people are a dying breed, at least in Iowa.
If Iowa of all places can pull something like that off, I figure it’s not out of reach of any state (or nation, for that matter) whose inhabitants give a nano-fuck about access to technology.
Rural Iowa has phone lines and can easily put up p2p wireless as long as it’s above the tree line . It’s also easy to trench cable through most of the state . I used to live there.
Many places in the US are much more difficult.
Verizon offered me 3mbps/1mbps dsl for $60/mo 4 years ago and it was their best and only option. I had their LTE service and it was flakey due to mountain interference and distance from tower. Two p2p wireless services exist but 1 had 20% packet loss across all of their customers and after 2 years still refused to fix it and the other was offering single-digit speeds for $100+ per month.
Verizon put up a sign 3 years ago that said “high speed internet coming soon!” The sign has since deteriorated and blew away. It’s symbolic.
The fcc needs to support LEO so that areas like mine are serviced. Starlink doesn’t compete with any other terrestrial service. It’s for the people that don’t have another option, and there are a lot.
Removed by mod
Iowa is pretty flat. It’s all farmland that’s been plowed a million times (making trenching much easier, and a lot more opportunity for things like directional drilling/conduit drivers).
Try running cable through somewhere with harder ground/rocks, trees, mountains, swamp (Mid Atlantic, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota, etc) dealing with right-of-way, over-populated poles, etc, etc.
Then there’s the connection rate. In a more populated area there would be many more final connects, which can drive the cost a lot more than running the mainline. If you run fiber across 20 miles with no connects (just point to point), there’s minimal hardware infrastructure along the way. Add in needing switching for 5 communities, now you need buildings, power, termination, switching, runs to houses, etc, etc.
It’s not really a good comparison.
Hi from me, a Starlink customer in rural Australia. It’s a premium service but greatly outperforms the alternatives.