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Communications The Internet

FCC Cancels $886 Million In Funding For SpaceX's Starlink (pcmag.com) 172

Posted by BeauHD from the application-denied dept.
The FCC is canceling $886 million in funding for Starlink to expand access in rural areas, citing the satellite internet system's cost and doubts over whether it can supply fast enough speeds. PC Magazine reports: The agency today announced it had rejected "long-form applications" from both SpaceX and an ISP called LTD Broadband to secure funding from the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. "The Commission determined that these applications failed to demonstrate that the providers could deliver the promised service," the FCC said in a statement. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel added: "We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements."

In December 2020, the FCC awarded $886 million to SpaceX to help its Starlink service supply high-speed broadband to 642,925 locations in 35 states. However, it came with a requirement that SpaceX provide a long-form application about how Starlink would meet its obligations before the federal funding could be fully secured. The FCC's goal with the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is to supply gigabit internet speeds to over 85% of the selected rural locations and at least 100Mbps download speeds for all 99.7% of the locations in the coming years. "Starlink's technology has real promise," Rosenworcel said. "But the question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer broadband -- which requires that users purchase a $600 dish -- with nearly $900 million in universal service funds until 2032."
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FCC Cancels $886 Million In Funding For SpaceX's Starlink More

FCC Cancels $886 Million In Funding For SpaceX's Starlink

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  • Gigabit or nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @02:44AM (#62779274)
    I assume this is for service to areas that have either very crappy or no Internet at all at the moment. So the FCC is saying if they can't have gigabit, they shouldn't have anything at all?

    • No, the minimum is 25/3. I don't see how anyone can be "outbidding" SpaceX for most of the real boonie locations. I'm going to guess the usual suspects are going to get all the money for laying fiber in small towns and farms/etc are just going to get fucked.

      • GPON is pretty amazing tech. Nothing but cost of laying the fiber is the obstacle. Distance is not anywhere near the obstacle other tech was. So farms are not automatically rejected due to low customer density. That 25mi distance allows you to place the splitter in a more centrally located location.
      • For the future, the FCC is proposing 100/20. The problem is not someone is outbidding Starlink as much as Starlink has failed to show that it is not meeting 100/20 consistently. If Starlink can demonstrate they can consistently deliver 100/20 they will probably get the funding back.

    • Re:Gigabit or nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by N1AK ( 864906 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @03:47AM (#62779362) Homepage
      Are you saying that the FCC should throw however much money is asked for at whichever proposal is least bad? Or maybe we can stop throwing around hyperbolic and have a reasonable discussion...

      The FCC is offering a billion dollars to a company that can provide a service (nearly $1,500 per location served) which that company would still be charging for (including in Starlinks case $600 for the satellite). Maybe gigabit is an excessive standard, personally I'd be inclined to think so, but maybe the funding was based on providing that level of service so we shouldn't be giving a billion dollars if they can only provide 200Mbps instead...

      Musk has consistently railed against government subsidy so I'm not going to lose too much sleep over this decision. Starlink can still provide the service by charging customers.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Gigabit isn't excessive at all. In a home or office with multiple users it's what you need to avoid having big downloads screw up everyone else's experience. It's what you need for remote work that involves handling large files.

        Fibre can scale too. Gigabit is actually quite pedestrian now. In Japan all major cities have 10 gigabit fibre, with some getting 20. 8k TV service is offered via the same cable. The fibre is old, all they did was upgrade the equipment on either end of it. Once installed the fibre wi

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @08:40AM (#62779922)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Yeah, sorry I meant to specify that the very low upload speed is a major issue with larger files.

            Not only do they take a long time, the connection gets saturated and thus very slow for other users.

          • Also to note is broadband is affected by the number of users in your household and their usage. You can kiss your bandwidth goodbye if a roommate streams 4K video reaction of his undying devotion to Nickelback and disavowing that he's doing it. But we know better, Todd!

        • In Japan all major cities have 10 gigabit fibre, with some getting 20. 8k TV service is offered via the same cable.

          But that's not relevent to this discussion. 10 gigabit fibre to a house in the middle of nowhere, Japan, would be more relevent.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            My point was that fibre has a good upgrade path that only requires replacing equipment that has reached EOL anyway. Once it's installed the network will be good for the foreseeable future. In Japan the cost has been spread of decades with loans. They do a lot of stuff that way, e.g. the new maglev train line won't be paid off for 50 years.

            That said, fibre is pretty widespread in Japan and you can't buy DSL products anymore. If you want internet out in the sticks they install fibre, if it's not there already

            • As a point of reference, the entire country of Japan is about the size of California. We are talking about massively larger areas with very few people living there. I just don't see fibre being laid for 50 miles for one customer. Does the Australian outback have fibre? IDK.

        • You only need like 2-5mb/s consistent to watch steaming 4k. If you want to download a 5tb file, and your source has practically unlimited bandwidth, cap your download speed. 100mb/s is literally enough bandwidth to have 30-40 tvs steaming 4k netflix.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by quall ( 1441799 )

        I only get 150mbps down and only 10 up. I pay $75/month and this is with Spectrum. I can switch to ATT for 300mb, but will cost the same and require a $250 installation fee.

        I'm not even getting 200mbps.So what do you mean "only"? Is it an all or nothing scenario then? Because these people in all of those rural areas are not going to get faster internet from current providers for only a billion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        The FCC is offering a billion dollars to a company that can provide a service (nearly $1,500 per location served) which that company would still be charging for (including in Starlinks case $600 for the satellite).

        ...and a hundred dollars a month after that.

        Musk has consistently railed against government subsidy so I'm not going to lose too much sleep over this decision.

        ROFL. Yep, he doesn't like government subsidy, and he doesn't qualify for this one. Seems fair.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      I assume this is for service to areas that have either very crappy or no Internet at all at the moment. So the FCC is saying if they can't have gigabit, they shouldn't have anything at all?

      You can have GEO satellite internet using a simple dish that costs far less. Not great, but better than dialup.

    • Re:Gigabit or nothing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ath1901 ( 1570281 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @03:58AM (#62779376)

      No, there was an auction. The FCC asked companies to bid on providing internet to rural areas given certain requirements (speed, etc). Areas were split into blocks and the lowest bid won. (At least, I think so from some quick digging).
      https://www.fcc.gov/auction/90... [fcc.gov]

      Starlink and LTD Broadband won several of the bids (the appendix A and B above) but the FCC believe they can not fulfill the requirements of the auction. Therefore their winning bids are withdrawn and I assume the next bidder wins those blocks. Lowering the requirements now, after the auction, would be unfair to everyone else. Both those who didn't bid in the auction because they couldn't meet the requirements and those who could have bid even lower if the requirements were lower. This is just a case of Starlink overpromising and being called out for it.

      Remote areas can still get as much Starlink service as they want, it just won't be sponsored by the FCC through this particular auction.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It has to be fibre. Starlink just won't scale to even small settlements of a few dozen homes. It's already over-subscribed in some areas, with users seeing single digit megabit download speeds.

      Copper cable was run to all those areas, at a time when there was no infrastructure. Now the poles and conduits are already there, the copper just needs to be replaced with fibre. It's not even as difficult as the original telephone network build out.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        That's the problem with Starlink - it would work great if you're in the middle of nowhere where contention is low. But if there are hundreds, thousands of other starlink terminals talking to the same satellite then it's going to suck. SpaceX could launch more and more satellites to bring the contention down and could relay traffic to nearby satellites and other ground stations to spread load but there comes a point where it's not viable to keep doing that.

        I think if I lived in a RV (that moved around), or

        • Re:Gigabit or nothing? (Score:5, Informative)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:20AM (#62779468) Homepage Journal

          The main limitation is always going to be the fact that the frequencies used are shared by all terminals in an area. They have to do time division multiplexing to serve them all, which results in lower speeds and more latency as the number of terminals increases.

          Musk said on Twitter that the V2 terminals will reduce congestion, but unless he plans to give everyone a free upgrade it isn't going to help in areas where it's already bad. I suppose they might do that, they could collect the used terminals and referb them for lower density areas. I'm highly sceptical though, shit Elon Musk says on Twitter isn't worth much.

        • That's the problem with Starlink - it would work great if you're in the middle of nowhere where contention is low.

          Can confirm. I'm in the middle of nowhere where contention is low. It works great!

          But yeah, it's not a terrific solution for high population areas. Places like that need physical cables or low-power highly localized radio. I tend to think of Starlink as filling a niche. It's acceptable service in areas too sparse to economically deploy the good stuff. But that's what this is all about, isn't

      • The Poles are the problem.

        In PA for example, pole attachments can take up to 3 months just to get the right of way to put a new line on the pole, then if necessary the Fiber Co has to pay the companies already on the pole to move their wires that need to move up or down the pole. If it's a Broadband competitor, they're basically going to take their good old time to move their wires for a competitor, and they have a 3 months deadline to move it. So there goes half a year and all you've done is sit on your be

      • Conduit? I don't think you understand how rural underground utilities are installed.

        Try direct burial. Any upgrades basically have to start from scratch.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      All they are doing is saying StarLink and LTD Broadband cannot deliver what they are promising. They've said nothing about other providers. And there probably isn't a good case to be made for providing less than gigabit when it would only have to be upgraded later. And if they did fund lower than gigabit, the pols would whine excessively about how rural America is getting screwed by Washington.

      • And this is really supposed to be infrastructure spending with a long term outlook. Satellites that have to be replaced every 5-10 years are far from stable infrastructure and aren't even terribly specific to the areas served. When you compare the lifespan and utility of the original copper phone network, Starlink would only deserve funding by a technicality of how the plan was worded rather than by its intention.

        Even cellular is a better infrastructure investment.

    • Looks like some politically motivated nonsense to me. I'm lucky, in that my rural electrical co-op is building fiber infrastructure right now and I should have my house hooked up in the next couple of months. Starlink wouldn't get out here for another half a year. Prior to this and up to the current state, I'm on a pretty shitty third-party cell network based internet plan. In places with no cell coverage, they don't even have that option.

    • So the FCC is saying if they can't have gigabit, they shouldn't have anything at all?

      No one set the bar at gigabit other than you. They set the bar lower than that. And they didn't say that people shouldn't have anything at all, they said if you want to qualify for government funding you need to meet the criteria. SpaceX hasn't shown to do so (yet?), so boohoo.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Starlink had a variety of targets to choose from, THEY decided, as you say, 'gigabit or nothing'. They could have selected a more attainable goal, hit that target, and collected the funds. They got greedy and believed their own hype, this really isn't an FCC thing.

      • Starlink had a bunch of shit choices to choose from.

        Coverage wasn't weighted at all in the bid and the required coverage is shit. If 99+% coverage had a high weight in the bid as it should have, Starlink would have won it all. As it is, even after spending all this money, broadband is still just going to cherry picked locations it would have gone eventually any way.

    • No they are saying they are not giving taxpayer money to a company if they are not sure that company can deliver. Specifically the FCC does like the $600 upfront cost to each customer.

    • It seems sort of ridiculous. I recently was able to upgrade from 9mb to 25mb and their is little to no noticeable difference. If only one person is using the internet 9mb is more than enough to watch 4k steaming video. Even if we are talking about some crazy up and coming tech like gaming on a server rack on the internet, that only requires good ping, it does not require 1000mb/s.

      I will give Elon shit all day for his stupid and impossible public transit ideas, but not only is he the only national person try

  • Don't look too closely (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11, 2022 @04:08AM (#62779386)

    "We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements."

    But the FCC does that every single day for terrestrial internet providers. Why single out Starlink?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by quall ( 1441799 )

      I don't get it either. I have a 200mbps account and only get 150mbps. I'm assuming that when the government gave cable providers funding, it wasn't for theoretical speeds. But when it comes to Starlink it's a different story.

      Hmm I wonder what has changed in the last few months.

    • Surely that was a rhetorical question.
    • Who are you going to protect, your old friends, or the new kid on the block?

  • Is this the same FCC that (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WilCompute ( 1155437 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:00AM (#62779452) Homepage

    Is this the same FCC that has literally paid for this exact same thing 3 times already?

    • By the standards denied, the established competition should have been blackballed long ago.

    • I figured that most of these FCC broadband subsidies are going to go to the same Telcos and Cable companies (Frontier, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) who failed to deliver broadband to rural areas during the last major rollout.

      I can't see why we should expect better results this time.

  • My son lives in a rural area in Ga. He gets 2 mbps thru Windstream. That is his ONLY choice. Windstream promises upgrade sometime in the future.... Anything that Starlink can provide is better than his current situation. Rural areas need Starlink as faster speeds that ground connections won't happen for the next 5-20 years.

    • Serious question, why should the federal government fund this at all?

      There is obviously no market to run cable to 3 customers in the middle of nowhere. But satellites cover vast areas. It's not like they have to pick towns as much as they are picking regions/states/etc. Seems like an issue the states should handle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      My son lives in a rural area in Ga. He gets 2 mbps thru Windstream. That is his ONLY choice.

      So tell him to go buy a StarLink terminal. The fact that the FCC isn't funding it doesn't mean he can't buy it himself. https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/s... [pcmag.com]

  • Democrat Revenge cancels amazing technology (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Thursday August 11, 2022 @05:57AM (#62779514)
    Elon Musk has been one of the few who isn't terrified to speak up against Democrats, and now this is their revenge. Anyone who is actually familiar with the technology (aka not a bureaucrat or a politician) knows how great it is, so it's pretty obvious what these "doubts" represent. Democrats really don't care about people in rural areas anyway, because those aren't usually Democrat voters. In many rural areas the only other option is antiquated, over-priced, conventional satellite internet (Hughes, etc) using a tiny number of geo-syncronous satellites (very far away) giving 1000ms+ ping times, slow speeds, and microscopic data caps. In terms of latency, Starlink is even better than wired internet in many areas, speeds are great, and there are no data caps. That sets a pretty high standard. http://gotnorice.com/Starlink1... [gotnorice.com] http://gotnorice.com/StarlinkP... [gotnorice.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      Elon Musk has been one of the few who isn't terrified to speak up against Democrats, a

      He only started opening his mouth as soon as the tax credits ended. He doesn't care who is in office.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Elon Musk has been one of the few who isn't terrified to speak up against Democrats, and now this is their revenge.

      Their revenge is enforcing the terms of a contract set up under the previous administration and not bending over to every corporation with a sob story and a lobbyist?

      Fuck me I hope the democrats take "revenge" against *everyone*.

      Anyone who is actually familiar with the technology (aka not a bureaucrat or a politician) knows how great it is

      Awesome. And if someone offered you $1bn to build something "great", you'd have a point. But they don't. The grant isn't for "great", it's for specific performance.

      If a contractor built you a "great" house but forgot to install plumbing, would you accept the excuse that the house is

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )
        The problem is, the OP is:

        1. Heavily invested in Elon Musk as his god.
        2. Knows the Republicans operate by revenge and cancelling anything the democrats did, so he assumes that the Democrats are the same despite any evidence to the contrary

        • keep up the good work.

          It would seem that all that can be done about such people is to point out their delusions to others who are still capable of reasoning.

  • https://www.satellitetoday.com... [satellitetoday.com]

    Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr issued his own statement after the announcement — saying he did not know about the FCC’s decision until the press release, disagreeing with the decision.

    “We should be making it easier for unserved communities to get service, not rejecting a proven satellite technology that is delivering robust, high-speed service today,” Carr wrote. “To be clear, this is a decision that tells families in states across the cou

  • An old-technology (geostationary satellites) company poo--pooed this to the right bureaucrat (along with a briefcase full of cash) and voila, there goes the subsidy. Meanwhile, the aforementioned old-tech company isn't doing diddly or squat to achieve the same goal. They just wanted to be able to milk their over-priced products for a few more years (I'm also looking at YOU Iridium/Garmin inReach).

  • Given today's political environment, I would not be the least bit surprised if the real reason was that they don't like Musk.

  • After daddy Musk publicly rejected and insulted the democrats, they are punishing him in every way they can.

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