Technology

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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."

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...