Almost all of Starlink’s competitors are completely dependent on government money. The FCC spends billions a year cutting checks to rural ISPs to subsidize them. The FCC took Starlink’s subsidies away because the Biden admin hates Musk now. But I think Musk will still beat many of these clown companies anyway.
FCC spends billions a year cutting checks to big telecom rather than municipal or open access networks. Big telecom is gobbling most of the of the federal grant money too.
your history is a bit off. the fcc commissioner and fcc has generally loved SpaceX, and they were not appointed by Biden. what happened was SpaceX continually got worse in the fcc samknows testing, so much so that their original application for $900M was far from the service they actually offered. for that reason they paused the funding until SpaceX improved things to the point they promised. they still have not improved and have continued declining.
They didn't have to meet any performance targets until 2024 at the earliest so that was a bogus justification. They were fairly close but were cutting performance a bit to reach more customers pending the launch of more satellites.
And just because Rosenworcel was appointed by Obama instead of Biden doesn’t mean she’s not a loyal part of the Biden administration.
>if this was some kind of stunt pulled by the FCC, SpaceX can sue. but in reality, this was exactly by the book and SpaceX accepted it
Again wrong. SpaceX in fact has already appealed the decision to the full Commission. But the chairwoman can legally just sit on that petition for a very long time. And SpaceX can’t sue in court until the FCC makes a decision on that, since you have to exhaust administrative remedies before going to court.
SpaceX was lucky to get an award for RDOF at all given that when they applied there was virtually no evidence that they could serve what they promised, and the FCC even made a special stipulation for constellations that did not exist/were unproven so they could bid. SpaceX would not have even been allowed to bid, but their pressure on the FCC allowed them to. So they were given a chance, and lo and behold, they did not and are not meeting their obligations. The FCC is entirely in the right to sit on the appeal until SpaceX proves that they can provide the service they signed up for.
I'm not sure why you're calling me a leftist or what politics have anything to do with this topic. The FCC has been unusually nice to SpaceX over the years to the point where virtually all other satellite companies were suing because they were being given preferential treatment on things that the FCC never allowed before. Now that the playing field is fair (well, not quite since nobody else in the space got RDOF money), SpaceX isn't so magical.
You leftists are really something to behold. Undeterred by facts, I'm sure you will continue to spread bullshit on this website and refuse to acknowledge your errors.
the fcc is allowed to take their money back if your service is going in a downward trend. I'm not even sure what you're saying for. they showed that Starlink speeds were degrading significantly over a year. this data is also exactly what ookla and others showed. the only possible way it's going to increase before that, given the demand, is starship. that will not likely happen before 2024, so they were completely correct to take the money back.
ajit pai is the one you should be blaming for giving it to them in the first place when it was obvious to anyone with satellite knowledge that they could not offer that service to the amount of people they said in the time they claimed.
>the fcc is allowed to take their money back if your service is going in a downward trend.
That’s not quite right. They can take it if they conclude you will not meet the target. Ups and downs on the way there are totally fine under the rules.
Starlink can scale dramatically just by launching new satellites. The FCC is keen on stopping that too, refusing to approve all of Starlink’s satellite launch proposals and instead making them slow walk their growth.
In addition to hating Musk, the White House thinks fiber to the home is like rural electrification. Starlink, by providing very much good-enough universal service (though they can scale up to gigabit speeds, it’s just a matter of how many satellites they have), is threatening to undermine political support for spending money on fiber buildouts.
this is quite the conspiracy theory. I'm not sure why musk fans say that the FCC is acting egregious here when they are doing the same exact thing they have done for decades. musk fans just don't want the same standards applied to them. they're okay interfering with other systems, but they certainly don't want anybody interfering with them.
No this is not the same thing they’ve done for decades. You just make that assertion but it’s not true.
It’s not some crazy conspiracy. This is the whole point of winning elections. The people in charge of tech policy in this admin want universal fiber service. You don’t get tens of billions from Congress every year for that unless there’s public demand for it. Starlink would undermine that demand despite not being good enough to replace universal fiber service, in the eyes of the administration.
Also you’re free to look up how Starlink’s launch proposals have been slow rolled at the FCC. You can also look at the Republican Commissioner’s statements on the revocation of Starlink’s RDOF award.
keep in mind that at the time the FCC allowed them past the first round of RDOF, they did not know the price of the terminal since StarLink wasn't live. part of their complaint was that the user had to buy a $600 terminal with no subsidies.
this excludes a lot of the population outright since they don't have a payment plan for lower income users to afford it.
the FCC's letter says that they determined they could not deploy a system of the size they promised in the timeframe they promised. whether you agree with it or not, that assertion has been correct so far.
