- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.zip
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.
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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.
bulkshit
I love it, because he is so full of shit, you get it in bulk.
The grant requires applicants to meet these benchmarks by 2025. Only SpaceX came close to meeting this standard and only SpaceX is being denied the grant for not yet meeting this requirement.
"RDOF rules set speeds of 25/3 Mbps as the minimum allowed for broadband service delivered by winners. However, participants were permitted to bid at four different performance tiers: 25/3 Mbps, 50/5 Mbps, 100/20 Mbps and 1 Gbps/500 Mbps"
If SpaceX had bid on a lower tier of service that they were actually capable of delivering, they would have been fine.
This grant was not designed to fund the development of new technology, it was designed to build infrastructure (fiber, 5G, WISPs, etc) and they were originally going to exclude satellites from the bidding completely. The companies who would have used the grant to build fiber or set up point-to-point wireless would have had no problem meeting the requirements since it’s all proven technology.
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
God I hate how our options are between shit and shit like every time. I just want RC cola internet, instead of pepsi and coke, is that too much to ask? I want kirkland signature internet, that’s what I want.
I would buy Kirkland signature internet in a heartbeat, all their stuff is so good.
Which other ISPs? Do you mean the BOCs & RBOCs?
Yes. Verizon, AT&T et al
They pulled wire for miles to service rural areas and are maintaining a network to service rural customers. The BOCs are why there are RUS funds
They were paid to provide broadband services to the rural areas. As millions of people living in the rural areas can attest, the majority of their promises were not fulfilled.
They’ve been paid multiple times to do it.
No. They were paid to provide services, which is what they did/do. The rural customers pay no more than urban customers but use a hell of a lot lot more infrastructure. Broadband is now a service that can be used for RUS, that’s all.
Hi, it’s me with my rural community that doesn’t have service at all.
Whereabouts
RUS
Just so we’re clear, the discussion here is not about RUS, but the Rural Broadband Initiative. ISPs were paid billions to bring broadband services to the countryside. They took the money and did nothing with it.
Rural Utility Service is the government body where the initiative exists. Hard to bring a true broadband to rural areas. For any decent customer penetration you need radio. IDK, but I think 5G qualifies if there isn’t a range problem.
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.
Almost no major company can, have you seen how much the US subsidizes oil and gas despite their profits? How much we subsidize food production? Renewable technology such as wind and solar is only becoming so vastly popular because we’re heavily subsidizing it finally.
Don’t get me wrong fuck Elon musk, but don’t kid yourself and pretend like most companies wouldn’t fail without subsidies. That includes other internet companies which we subsidize regularly
there’s no greater welfare than corporate welfare. And for some absolutely bizzare reason, people are ok with this. it’s even worse because a lot of these companies don’t just make obscene profits on the back of tax payer ‘donations’ they they go on to in some cases pay zero or close to zero tax. (gas and oil companies are the greatest offenders BTW).
SpaceX is doing just fine
SpaceX is estimated to have 8 billion in revenue this year.
How much are SpaceX expenses though? Revenue is different from Net Profit.
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.
Any tasty sauce to sample?
Subsideez nuts.
Got em
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.
It’s just not a sustainable idea. To expand service, they need to launch even more satellites. Which degrade and fall down after a year. The only reason it could exist thus far is because the US taxpayer paid for it with subsidies like this.
America has problems with getting cable companies to actually lay cable after giving them money to do that, which is a separate thing. But at least if you get cable laid, it is in the ground providing service for hundreds of years instead of 1 year.
They could do it and make money too, but they are only thinking of short term gains. In my neck of the woods spectrum kept taking the money and barely putting up any cable until our state finally told them to pound sand. Fios then said we’ll do it, and they did. They have run thousands of miles of fibre in the last few years, and guess who everyone is paying for internet service because it’s the only service available up here.
Also not only would they need more satellites, but satellites more densely in any area with multitude of customers. Which eventually hits RF interference saturation.
Radio signal has only so much bandwidth in certain amount of frequency band. Infact being high up and far away makes it worse. Since more receivers hit the beam of the satellite transmission. One would have to acquire more radio bands, but we’ll unused global satellite transmission bands don’t grow in trees.
Tighter transmitters and better filtering receivers can help, but usually at great expense and in the end eventually one hits a limit of “can’t cheat laws of physics”
After 5 years.
SpaceX sells services. Just because they’re selling services to the government doesn’t make it a subsidy.
Starlink is a service sold to you, not the American government. You seem confused. You don’t get it for free paid for by taxes.
You have to buy it, and the American government subsidies it to encourage private sector spending on low to no profit endeavours like Internet to remote regions
SpaceX has paid for starlink through selling flights on their rockets, not through “subsidies like this”
You seem confused if you’re flip flopping between starlink being paid for by consumers and subsidies.
No, they didn’t. They got almost a billion a year in subsidies, which is what this whole thread is about.
Starlink is paid for by consumers and heavily subsidized by governments. It’s not that hard to follow.
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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.”
The original article contains 508 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
On one hand, ew Elon Musk.
On the other hand Starlink has given us the first decent internet we’ve ever had so…
However this isn’t about your anecdotal experience. This is about what level of service they can guarantee as minimum and overall to meet the conditions of the subsidy.
I would also note this isn’t reinstatement matter. FCC refused to give them the subsidy in the first place with this decision. What SpaceX are trying to spin as reneg on previous decision is them making the short list of companies to be considered. Well, getting short listed is not same as being selected fully.
They passed the criterion for the short list check, but the final authorization and selection included more wide and more through checking on the promises of companies to meet criterion and SpaceX failed the more through final round of scrutiny before being awarded the subsidy.
Government having awarded bad money previously isn’t fixed by following up bad awards with more bad awards. SpaceX exactly failed since previously money was handed out too losely and FCC has tightened the scrutiny on subsidy awards to not follow up bad money with more bad money.
Nobody is prevented from buying Starlink, this just means Starlink isn’t getting subsidized with tax payer money.
The more people that use starlink the slower and less usable it becomes, additionally phony stark can turn it off whenever he sees fit.
Good luck with that
In theory they’re gonna keep upgrading the network, they’ve been constantly launching new and better satellites since launch. Also yeah in theory they can turn it off but that’s such an odd hypothetical that who cares. In theory our old ISP could also do that.
The fastest we could get before was 10mpbs and it went out multiple times a day, sometimes for hours. I really doubt it’ll get that bad.
And if Starlink does die we just go back to our old garbage or hopefully someone else will have a functional LEO constellation by then.
“In theory”?
He did turn it off in an effort to influence the Ukraine/Russia conflict.
The original source of that claim retracted his statement…
But yeah, like I said he could shut it off at any time, but I don’t see how that’s why different that the idiot who owns our local ISP and could also shut it off at any time.
cable companies literally took a billion dollar grant to expand infrastructure and didnt do much of anything. This is literally doing something. F elon but the engineers who worked hard to make this a reality deserve better
It looked so promising but I feel like once I fell in love with the service they will start enshitification. Like Gmail, maps, pixel phones, YouTube, g-drive. Etc…
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.
They’re not high enough to become space debris
Any altitude of orbit can become space debris. They just won’t stay space debris for nearly as long as geosynchronous or high orbit.
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.
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
They failed to meet the agreed requirements but you’re arguing they should still be allowed to provide sub standard service?
I’m arguing that the bs from its ceo is irrelevant, that all the contestants to waste our money are big corps, and I’m less optimistic about legacy ISPs who will likely get most of the money, given proven history of no results
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?
this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade
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)
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The fuck are you talking about…
Okay?
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.
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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.
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Well, the world’s richest douchebag Democrat has provided no internet for them, so…
