"When President Joe Biden put $42 billion behind making high-speed internet accessible across the US, he committed to doing it the old-fashioned way – with miles upon miles of fiber-optic lines," Bloomberg reports. "That frustrated
politicalwire.com
“When President Joe Biden put $42 billion behind making high-speed internet accessible across the US, he committed to doing it the old-fashioned way – with miles upon miles of fiber-optic lines,”
Bloomberg reports.
“That frustrated Elon Musk, who said his Starlink satellite-internet business could get rural areas online faster, at lower cost. Biden’s decision helped drive a wedge between the Democratic president and the world’s richest person, who later used his wealth to help return Donald Trump to the White House.”
“Now, some Republicans want to open the floodgates for Starlink to compete with fiber, potentially shifting billions to Musk.”
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Background
The Federal Communications Commission is standing by last year’s decision to deny Starlink nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies.
spacenews.com
"
The Federal Communications Commission is standing by last year’s decision to deny Starlink nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies.
The regulator issued its final denial Dec. 12, reaffirming that SpaceX’s satellite broadband service
failed to meet requirements for participating in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).
“The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to” the funds,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in
a news release.
SpaceX was provisionally awarded the subsidies in December 2020 after competing in an auction under the first phase of the RDOF process.
The company was in line for $886 million over 10 years to deliver high-speed broadband to nearly 643,000 homes and businesses in 35 states, after winning one of the largest shares of the multi-billion-dollar fund.
However, the 180 auction winners had to show how they would deploy services that meet RDOF conditions, and this is where the FCC says SpaceX fell short. Terrestrial telco LTD Broadband was also denied $1.3 billion in provisionally awarded subsidies.
RDOF requirements include providing 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds.
According to
the latest Ookla speed tests, Starlink median download performance in the United States was 64.54 Mbps in the third quarter of 2023, which the research firm said was a slight decline quarter-on-quarter but up 22% on the 53 Mbps recorded for the period in 2022.
Median upload performance has been rising, Ookla added, hitting 9.72 Mbps over the three months to the end of September. ..."
[Starlink challenged the test used and other procedures and claimed they were targeted.]
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BTW, Republicans in the House (Jim Comer) investigated the denial of the Starlink contract last fall, after Musk made (what turned out to be mostly false) claims about denial of Starlink in WNC causing people to die in Hurricane Helene and its aftermath. That investigation apparently went nowhere after some splashy headlines.
