SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant

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Starlink's grant was intended to subsidize deployment to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The August 2022 ruling that rejected the grant called Starlink a "nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology" with "recognized capacity constraints." The FCC questioned Starlink's ability to consistently provide low-latency service with the required download speeds of 100Mbps and upload speeds of 20Mbps.

That’s Phony Stark for ya, everytime: Overpromise and Underdeliver. And then get angry when called on his bulkshit.

Funny how the FCC decided starlink is incapable of doing this, but was happy enough to pay all the other ISPs who are still incapable of doing it after decades of payments

Aww. Poor SpaceX. To quote the man himself:

Go fuck yourself.

pull yourself up by your bootstraps. no handouts.

Musk cannot make a profitable company without government subsidies. Hilarious.

Maybe if they had just used the last subsidies payouts to expand coverage and reliability instead of lobbying local governments to kill off fiber coops, then they could have kept the tap open.

I still think Starlink can be a great service for rural areas, but it seems they need to improve their capabilities first. Which in a way makes a chicken-egg scenario. If they expand servers to handle all those people, they should be eligible for a grant, but they don’t wanna do it until they get the grant.

Subsideez nuts.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

SpaceX is furious at the Federal Communications Commission after the agency refused to reinstate an $886 million broadband grant that was tentatively awarded to Starlink during the previous administration.

But the satellite provider still needed FCC approval of a long-form application to receive the money, which is meant to subsidize deployment in areas with little or no high-speed broadband access.

The Starlink and LTD rejections were the two biggest changes to a $9.2 billion round of grants that, in the Rosenworcel FCC's words, fueled "complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas."

The August 2022 ruling that rejected the grant called Starlink a "nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology" with "recognized capacity constraints."

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."

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On one hand, ew Elon Musk.

On the other hand Starlink has given us the first decent internet we've ever had so...

Ok, but we already have all those satellites up there now. Please fucking tell me those are not going to become space trash, because I will fully blame the government on that one.

You know, on one hand, I do want to like. I have been looking into some cool space stuff more recently, and it seems like spaceX and starlink have been doing pretty well, relative to musk's other business ventures, like X (no relation to spaceX, of course, which is great branding), and maybe tesla, which I kind of hate on the basis that they suck. But on the other hand, I wonder about how much of that is due to musk's involvement, or if it's just a factor of right place right time. I don't think venture capital capture and attention capture from the balding manlet CEO of tesla, channeled towards reusable rockets, I don't think any of that hurt, it was probably an advantage to those organizations, even if only like, by a small amount. But then, I dunno how much his mismanagement of these projects, and of most of his business ventures, have ended up hamstringing them in the long run, with unreasonable demands of his employees, and over-promising, and higher turnover rates than would probably be necessary. You know, I'm posting this from starlink internet, because I live in a rural place. Would that have happened without his idiocy? I'm inclined to say probably, but I'm also inclined to thank that guy that invented fertilizer, maybe even if he also invented mustard gas or whatever that story was. Which isn't really to say that musk invented anything, or what have you.

Basically what I'm saying, is that I think it is probably a good thing, if you have gotten to a point where you can look at someone who's "fucked up" history, and you can spin that into a good thing, even not by their intention, or even if it's removed a causal step or two, it's a good thing if you can spin their shit into gold. Probably. I dunno, it's reassuring to me somehow, among the sea of situations that are the exact opposite where some guy's cool idea gets taken by a soulless venture capital firm and drained like a vampire for investor hype before it's discarded as useless vaporware. Mistakes into miracles.

I don't particularly like Elon, but I think a lot of people are forgetting what Starlink has done for rural areas, and areas that don't have highspeed internet. I live in the Southern US, and the only other options at my address are AT&T DSL or other satellite companies. We don't have 5G towers in the area so I can't go that route, most satellite companies have extremely low data caps, Hughesnet has a cap of 200Gbs for $150, with horrible connection, and AT&T DSL makes a 200MB download take 30-45 minutes at the fastest. My town has a population of 10k, and we're still dealing with those being the only choices. If you go 30 minutes over to the next town they have Satellite, and that's it. ISPs don't care to fix the problem unless there's another company taking customers from them with better service. Starlink has opened up a lot of the internet, and the possibility to work from home for a lot of people.

While it’s always entertaining to read nonsense from haters as much as drama between haters and fanbois …..

Can’t y’all step back and look at the actual situation? US Government is spending our tax money to improve internet access for rural areas (good), but given the monopolistic behavior of telecoms, it will be going to one or more large companies (bad). The goal is improved access to the internet. The choice is between a turd and a shit sandwich.

Don’t anthropomorphize a corp: Starlink is one of the corps who can serve this goal. On their merit, do you really think they’re any worse than other candidates? Do you really prefer all that money disappearing into the mass of established internet providers, just like previous hundreds of billions, with nothing to show for it? Personally I see these companies with established technology but long history of not delivering, whereas Starlink has new technology not yet proven at scale, but really seems a lot more promising to serve the goal. Yes, I want grandpa Jones in North Haverville to have internet access and I really don’t care who runs the corp that provides it

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.