Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Communications The Internet

Top Broadband Official Exits Commerce Department With Warning About Starlink (politico.com) 149

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: A top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door Sunday warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk's satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink ... is inferior, wrote Evan Feinman, who had directed the $42.5 billion broadband program for the past three years. "Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington," Feinman said.

Feinman's lengthy email, totaling more than 1,100 words and shared with POLITICO, is a sign of deep discomfort about the changes underway that will likely transform the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently pledged a vigorous review of BEAD, with an aim to rip out what he sees as extraneous requirements and remove any preference for particular broadband technologies like fiber. The program, created in the 2021 infrastructure law program, became a source of partisan fighting last year on the campaign trail as Republicans attacked the Biden administration for its slow pace. No internet expansion projects have begun using BEAD money, although some states were close at the beginning of this year. Feinman's critique: In his email, Feinman notes Friday was his last day leading BEAD and that he's "disappointed not to be able to see this project through."

Feinman's email warns the Trump administration could undermine BEAD and he encourages people to fight to retain its best aspects. Feinman said the administration should "NOT change it to benefit technology that delivers slower speeds at higher costs to the household paying the bill," adding that this isn't what rural America, congressional Republicans or Democrats, the states or the telecom industry wants. "Reach out to your congressional delegation and reach out to the Trump Administration and tell them to strip out the needless requirements, but not to strip away from states the flexibility to get the best connections for their people," Feinman wrote. He said he's not worried about the Trump administration nixing requirements around climate resiliency, labor and middle class affordability, saying those issues "were inserted by the prior administration for messaging/political purposes, and were never central to the mission of the program."
Feinman warns that changes to the BEAD program under the Trump administration could stall state-level broadband progress, with Louisiana, Delaware, and Nevada already stuck in review.

Meanwhile, no specific guidance or timeline for these changes has been provided, and Arielle Roth's confirmation as NTIA head is still pending in the Senate.

Top Broadband Official Exits Commerce Department With Warning About Starlink

Comments Filter:
  • "For the love of money is the root of all evil"

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Communists tried that last century, it turned out to shit for a very long time and that part of the world still dealing with the consequences.
      • Communists tried that last century, it turned out to shit for a very long time and that part of the world still dealing with the consequences.

        Pitchfork revolution beats butterfly revolution any day of the week.

        • by Tailhook ( 98486 )

          it turned out to shit

          That's a common misconception. It's has been, and continues to be, highly successful. Putin, for instance, is KGB: he and the rest of the power structure of his nation are still in power, and have been since 1917, enjoying the benefits of power the entire time. They've never had to face a real election. Never had to make a real payroll. Just luxury and power for over a century now.

          They were briefly inconvenienced during WW2 when Germany approached their city and threatened to mess everything up, but

    • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:49PM (#65241131)
      no, just tax them, and if they take revenge by raising prices on products they sell then tax them even more, they need to be humbled in order to cure them of their arrogance
      • Business always pass costs along to the consumer.

        Always.

  • Inferior to what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @07:34PM (#65241011)

    On the one hand he's exactly right. This is definitely corruption and if Musk is to run the country he must remove himself from control of all his companies. It boggles my mind that so many republicans don't have a problem with him and trump mixing their businesses with running the country. This is what business looks like when you turn a country in to an oligarchy.

    On the other hand, what other superior choice is there? In some areas there is cell-based internet available, but maybe only kind of. Generally there's no fibre or any other kind of hard line available.

    • by Baloo Uriza ( 1582831 ) <baloo@ursamundi.org> on Monday March 17, 2025 @07:39PM (#65241019) Homepage Journal

      It boggles my mind that so many republicans don't have a problem with him and trump mixing their businesses with running the country. This is what business looks like when you turn a country in to an oligarchy.

      One must be easily boggled to be surprised that Republicans delivered on the oligarchy they've been openly advocating for, promoting and fighting to overthrow the US to install, for 4+ decades.

    • Generally there's no fibre or any other kind of hard line available.

      It's almost like we should put in place a government program to address this infrastructure lapse.

    • You either build it or tell the backwoods rubes to live without it. Same thing happened with electricity.
    • On the other hand, what other superior choice is there? In some areas there is cell-based internet available, but maybe only kind of. Generally there's no fibre or any other kind of hard line available.

      We should run fiber everywhere there's poles, as it's reasonably cheap now. Then we can hang some terrestrial wireless off of it and cover practically everyone else. This will leave a need for a much smaller number of satellites to cover remote areas. It's really bananas to be serving people who could and should have decent cable internet now and are right next to an existing cable plant with satellite when there's a cheaper way to do it in the meantime. The immediate goal should be "full" fiber coverage, w

      • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        One of the problems with the current setup is that when there is physical infrastructure in the ground, it could be run by any one of a number of different companies providing different levels of service and different price points.
        In several cases the starlink offering is preferable to what the local operator has for various reasons.

        If you had a wholesale system like many countries had, where the provider of the physical cabling simply rents out the cable and then someone else provides service over the top

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        It's actually ironic because where there's electricity, there's usually fiber as well. Because those power companies do need monitoring and control of their equipment, and smart meters need network connectivity as well. Usually there's an excess of fiber bandwidth so some smaller utilities offer internet access using that fiber backbone as well.

        • where there's electricity, there's usually fiber as well. Because those power companies do need monitoring and control of their equipment, and smart meters need network connectivity as well

          Smart meters in California do mesh networking [pge.com]. They do eventually have to connect to an access point, but that point is far from the farthest reaches of the power grid.

    • by g01d4 ( 888748 )

      In some areas there is cell-based internet available, but maybe only kind of.

      Back when 4G was being deployed it was predicted to blanket everywhere and put satellite constellations like Iridium either out of business or force them into niche markets. At our small observatory in the high desert 4G never got beyond "maybe only kind of". I guess the cell providers were fat, dumb and happy with where they were at and coverage expansion stalled. We've been using a local microwave provider and are thinking of sw

    • maybe you need a government that actually works to create options instead of switching from one pork project to the next?

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Just to put a point on it:

      El Bunko’s Bunks that he is hawking now from the Oval Orifice:

      1. Shitcoins
      2. Sneakers
      3. NFTs with him doing stupid shit
      4. Watches
      5. Fragrances
      6. Cabinet positions: he promises “cabinet advisory positions” to the Maggots in emails, all you need to get one is contribute to him.
      7. Bibles
      8. His "media company".....just announced they "lost" $400 million in the last year. That's $400 million of other people's money he and his cronies have made off with.
      9. The el Bunko

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Somehow we got electricity and phone service to almost everywhere. Apparently fibre is a bridge too far though.

      Ideally you want fibre owned by one company that isn't allowed to offer internet service, or owned by the state. Then you get competition to provide internet and other services (TV, phone, backhaul for cellular, timing etc.)

    • On the one hand he's exactly right. This is definitely corruption and if Musk is to run the country he must remove himself from control of all his companies. It boggles my mind that so many republicans don't have a problem with him and trump mixing their businesses with running the country. This is what business looks like when you turn a country in to an oligarchy.

      On the other hand, what other superior choice is there? In some areas there is cell-based internet available, but maybe only kind of. Generally there's no fibre or any other kind of hard line available.

      Billions of dollars have been handed to the telcos to create that rural broadband network that somehow never materializes. As much as the whole Musk/Trump situation blows, and is yet another mark on the, "Do we have a completely corrupt society?" column, Musk might actually provide service where none currently exists. Will he get more government handouts to do it? Absolutely. Will it make him even more of an egomaniacal prick? Probably. But in a rare twist of reality, it will actually result in people seein

    • People who are bothered by Trump, are usually bothered by things other than Elon doing weird things. Elon is just a side thing to the real issues.

      For people who like Trump, they assume he chose a good guy for the job of cleaning up the government. I guess we all assume things.
  • Come on now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jrnvk ( 4197967 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @07:44PM (#65241029)

    They had over 40 billion to spend, and have connected exactly zero individuals over the course of a few years. They cannot pretend to have any authority on this subject.

    • Re:Come on now (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:40PM (#65241111)

      They had over 40 billion to spend, and have connected exactly zero individuals over the course of a few years. They cannot pretend to have any authority on this subject.

      Yes for someone who doesn't know how money is spent that looks bad. But for everyone else the project is perfectly on course. The time something takes is commensurate to the scale of the investment. As a rule the bigger your project the more it will look to outsiders like nothing is being done. You can compare this project to literally any other of such scale. E.g. the Australian NBN which was a project with a similar initial budget and also connected precisely zero people in the first few years. Now it's upgraded core infrastructure in much of the country, launched several satellites, brought FTTH to some areas, got decimated by an election and proceeded to provide FTTN to much of the rest of the country.

      But for the first few years it connected not a single home.

      This is the same everywhere. It's the same for EV charger rollouts in Europe, where over the first 3 years they built under 100 chargers, and now they are connecting thousands of new chargers every month. It's the same in private industry. You can spent $8bn on an oil platform only for 3 years in to not have extracted a single drop of oil.

      There's one thing here that someone is not an authority on, and it's you, on the topic of how projects are executed. Are you the kind of person who complains that you got 9 women pregnant and a month later you still have no baby?

      • > Yes for someone who doesn't know how money is spent that looks bad. But for everyone else the project is perfectly on course.

        I worked in both state and local level government for many years, applying for various federal grants - mostly fiber - over that time. I have actual real-world knowledge of how this money is spent.

        And I can tell you that none of our federal grants took anywhere near that long to approve, under either political party in power, ever.

        Even the NEVI EV funds, as wasteful as that progr

  • by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @07:59PM (#65241051)
    “The technology offered by Starlink ... is inferior, wrote Evan Feinman, who had directed the $42.5 billion broadband program for the past three years.”

    Biden-Harris Admin's $42 Billion Internet Buildout Rife With Delays, Frustrating Rural Voters [freebeacon.com]
    • by quall ( 1441799 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:57PM (#65241157)

      I wish I can mod you up. But people don't like it when you don't swing against the right side of politics.

      And this topic seems like a pow wow for a bunch of butthurt Musk haters.

      • The irony being that everyone used to bitch every time telcos and cable companies got free money to do nothing.

        • Isn't it amazing? SMH. I worked for the Bell System (yes I'm old) for more than 10 years. By time AT&T split into Lucent, NCR, and AT&T it was clear all of them were headed for the trash can. The local telcos were never interested in anything OTHER THAN wireless, they simply maintained the physical plant because they had to do so as that part of the business was a regulated monopoly. A quick Google search tells me that Verizon was making 20% of their revenue from wireless in 2000 and it is now 78
  • Good riddance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:12PM (#65241071) Journal

    If you can't connect even ONE household with $42 billion (!), you are the problem, not the solution.

  • Undully enrich? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:23PM (#65241083)
    The alternative is 100x the price (and still was not delivered). How is having a clearly superior method of offering rural broadband is "unduly enrich"? Partisan bureaucrats like this is why we need to cut more top Commerce Department staffers.
  • LOL. You know you're in clown world when shit like that can be said with a straight face.

  • If you dig a trench and install fiber that infrastructure can last for 100+ years.

    If you give an LEO Internet provider some cash, those satellites might last 5-10 years.

    I don't have an issue with rural folks subscribing to Starlink. I don't see why the government should want to subsidize their service.

    The primary objective of having Starlink absorb fiber cash is to make sure that the fiber does not get built and those unimproved homes are stuck with Starlink forever.

    • A satellite that lasts 5-10 years beats trenched fiber that gets paid for, but never gets installed.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by poity ( 465672 )

      If this were a program meant to build out a robust network, then yes that would be the way. But this program is meant to get broadband to rural areas so they can take advantage of the economic benefits. That means ASAP. This yet another example of an investment losing focus and allowing the best to become the enemy of the good.

  • "President Biden and Vice President Harris are investing $90 billion to close the digital divide, and NTIA is administering nearly $50 billion across multiple grant programs in support of this goal. Below are highlights of NTIAâ(TM)s achievements under the Biden-Harris Administration.

    Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program ($42.45 billion)"

    https://broadbandusa.ntia.doc.... [doc.gov]

    P.J O'Rourke quotes:

    "Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to

  • How many billions? (Score:4, Informative)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @08:59PM (#65241161)

    How many billions of taxpayer dollars have been pumped into ISPs over the last 20 years, with nothing to show for it, only to have the ISPs receiving the money always crying that they are in the poor house? Screw the whole lot of them. Maybe if they had actually gotten broadband to rural areas like they promised I might be a bit concerned with this new development. Nope, don't care, give the money to someone else. The legacy ISPs have proven they are useless.

  • If the only alternatives you have are legacy Satellite internet companies then Starlink is better.

  • Once the requisite minimum satellite constellation is launched, it will provide uniform service. No holding back service from certain communities (who have no options) and diverting funds to serve competitive markets. Or more politically connected markets. And (as far as I can tell) that service is provided at a uniform price.

    • Whilst on a cross country trip last year I used Starlink from Wyoming to New York, to Pennsylvania, down to southern Virginia then back across that portion of the country. I had service everywhere. Obviously I didn't cover every piece of the nation but I was in rich, poor, etc. places and always had service. I cannot speak for Starlink coverage OUTSIDE the US but that's not what we are discussing.
  • by mamba-mamba ( 445365 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @10:57PM (#65241325)

    Of course this is a terrible look for Musk and Starlink. The optics are abysmal.

    But Starlink should get the subsidy.

    The usual suspects, some of the most hated companies in America, have been harvesting "rural broadband" subsidies for years and gerrymandering things around to make it look like they were delivering when in reality they weren't.

    I happen to live in a low density, hilly rural area and we will NEVER have fiber. The cost could never be justified unless every property paid 10s of thousands of dollars upfront to install it and maybe 1000 a month to keep it.

    Starlink has been a lifesaver. Before that we had internet from a local WISP using a three hop Ubiquiti setup that went from the WISP tower to a redwood tree, to another redwood tree, then to our house. Before that, we had a T1 line for 500 dollars per month. Excellent SLA on the T1, but it is still only 1.5 MBits up and down. 1.5 Mbits min and 1.5 Mbits max. Come hell or high water.

    Starlink is delivering actual rural broadband. The other companies were cherry-picking a few customers in each "section" to make it look like they were delivering.

  • by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @11:39PM (#65241377)
    My recollection was that Starlink got screwed out of some more-or-less promised $$$ available for rural internet programs largely because terrestrial vendors lobbied against them (while doing fuck-all to wire up Podunk in the meantime). Let me refresh my memory ...

    Oh yeah: Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies [theverge.com]

    The FCC announced today that it won’t award Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”

    Maybe the FCC had a point in 2018 (most think they didn't, but now Starlink is the only game in town and it's a pretty good game.

    My robot commentator (Gemma 3, running locally) had this to say:

    Oh, that. Right, the whole rural broadband funding mess. It's honestly a pretty infuriating story, even for government stuff. You're spot on - Starlink absolutely got shafted, and it was largely because of good ol' fashioned lobbying.

    Basically, the FCC had this huge pot of money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – billions, earmarked for expanding broadband access to underserved areas. Starlink applied for a significant chunk of it, and their proposal was pretty compelling, right? Satellite internet can reach places where laying fiber is prohibitively expensive or just plain impossible.

    But then the terrestrial providers – the cable companies, the smaller fiber operators – they went into overdrive. They argued that Starlink's technology wasn't "future-proof" enough, that it wouldn't deliver the speeds needed in the long run, and a whole load of other technical nitpicking. A lot of it felt deliberately misleading, honestly. Like, they were holding up these theoretical future speeds as a reason to block a solution that could actually help people now.

    And, crucially, they painted Starlink as a threat to their existing businesses. Which, let's be real, it is. If people in rural areas can get reliable internet from space, they’re less likely to be stuck with the only local provider, even if that provider's service is terrible.

    The FCC ultimately reversed course on a lot of the initial Starlink funding awards, reducing it dramatically. They cited concerns about things like latency and affordability, but everyone pretty much knew it was because of the lobbying pressure.

    It’s frustrating because a lot of these terrestrial companies were simultaneously claiming they were going to expand into these areasbut then didn’t. Or made very slow progress. Meanwhile, people are still stuck with dial-up or expensive, unreliable wireless options.

    Honestly, it reeks of protecting established monopolies. It's the classic story of innovation being stifled by incumbents.

  • If he had just said it's inferior, I might have taken a closer look. But tacking on a complaint about "it will make Musk richer" makes me suspicious right away.

  • Broadband companies were thrown billions in federal cash, and... did bugger all other than to all intents etc keep the cash.
    • by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @03:00AM (#65241661)

      did bugger all other than to all intents etc keep the cash.

      They didn't keep the cash. They laundered it. They laundered it to politically connected interests. Sure, they took their cut, but the bulk of it passed through to the real targets: politically connected consultancies, pop-up non-profits, state government payoffs that laundered it on further, etc. The $42.5 billion BEADP bucks were a small fraction of the $1200 billion 2021 Infrastructure Bill, much of which was also laundered through respective sock puppets, who also took their cuts, and also did little to nothing.

      That's what we do in clown world United States. We have elections, the Powers That Be back some figurehead, and when they get someone into office a big bill gets passed to pay off the best of the the backers. It's a racket. One of many.

  • Seems we created a fund for rural Internet. Nobody has stepped up to tap that fund and provide service. Musk comes along with Starlink and suddenly the rules must change because "Musk". I love the sense of fairness exhibited by too many of you guys.

    {^_-}

  • I wonder which company he'll be going to....

  • Funny how the article fails to mention the fact that program had not connected anyone despite spending millions already.
  • They've been trying for so many years to connect the remote areas to the internet with decent speed but this never happened. Quite frankly I don't care which company gets subsidized, just get it done. If Starlink can provide satellite connection to these areas, I don't see what the issue is. Yeah I know Musk is Trump's ally, but that doesn't mean he's stealing from anyone. Taking the subsidy means he has to do work and provide internet to those people. Tens of billions of dollars have been allocated to conn

backups: always in season, never out of style.

Working...