Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies

Comments

• spudwart@spudwart.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Reminder that Starlink is the internet equivalent to the Hyperloop.

  There are untold billions that the government gave out as subsidies to increase internet speeds across the nation and bring internet to everyone across the U.S. Which mysteriously vanished.

  All the while now Elon has been promising vaporware and bullshit, as he usually does while Tech Bros, billionaires and the media gobble it up.

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  • jonne@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Eh, starlink at least works by all accounts. I guess the jury is still out if it’s sustainable as a business because the satellites are deorbiting like crazy.

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    • echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If your business plan involves firing out infinite rockets full of cell towers forever. You should probably just spend the money on copper instead.

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    • spudwart@spudwart.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They aren’t sustainable because they are de-orbiting but they’re also supposed to be low-cost and high speed.

      If the prices aren’t low-cost, and the speeds continue to decrease, it’s entire purpose is defeated.

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  • cameron_vale@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not vaporware. It actually works very well. And if you live in the sticks you thank your blessed angels for it.

    Dummy.

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  • GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Starlink, as a service for those that have it, is not Vaporware. It functions, pretty well.

    Starlink as a government subsidized, nationally impactful program is Vaporware

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  • Cowbee@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Hyperloop should be halted and replaced with high speed rail, and starlink should be nationalized. Musk keeps rinsing and repeating his grand privatized infrastructure projects where he essentially embezzles public funds.

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• troyunrau@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In this thread. A bunch of people who’ve never had to use the prior remote internet solutions that existed prior to Starlink. For a good chunk of the world, Starlink is actually game changing.

  I spent the better part of the last decade working in remote locations, including the high arctic and and rural indigenous communities. Starlink is both fast and affordable compared to the prior solutions. Hell, I even personally worked on hundred million dollar fibre optic line projects, that were hundreds of millions over budget, trying to get these communities connected. Starlink is hands down the better choice, unless you really wanted to put your data centre in Fort Good Hope for some unknown reason.

  If Elon wasn’t attached to this project, I’d bet the ratio of negative comments would be lower.

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  • cameron_vale@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    People think reality is a cartoon. Black and white. Good guys and bad guys. People are dumb that way. And they get played like a piano because of it.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s also a bunch who have never left the city, and have no comprehension of just how remote some communities are.

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  • crazyCat@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I own property in a very rural place and I don’t want it messing up our night sky view.

    Guess what, we also have great internet in this very rural place already, too, because they ran cable and put cell towers out there. That’s all it takes.

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    • troyunrau@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You are the very definition of privileged, compared to most remote users. And your comment is as close to textbook NIMBY as I’ve ever seen. Plus a healthy dose of “fuck em, I got mine”.

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s not “very rural”, in that case.

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• Daxtron2@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t like Elon but starlink has allowed me and my best friend to play battlefield 1 together, even though he’s in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. I do hope they continue reducing the reflectivity of their satellites, as I am also into astrophotography.

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• autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is the best summary I could come up with:

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  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.”

  That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal.

  SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.

  “This applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.” FCC commissioner Brendan Carr dissented, writing that “the FCC did not require — and has never required — any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”

  But his funding plan was slashed by the time it became law, with the final version offering no money for locally-run internet service.

  Christopher Cardaci, head of legal at SpaceX, writes in a letter to the FCC that “Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”

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  The original article contains 296 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 21%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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• Shadywack@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Another dumbass fucking hunk of shit radio system doesn’t deliver on its promises? Oh my god, what a gigantic fucking surprise! People are gonna have a stroke when they see that shit!

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  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Elon sure does bring out the REEEEE in people, doesn’t he?

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    • Candybar121@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      [deleted]

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• jawsua@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I live at a place where I needed Starlink so I feel entitled to comment.

  Ordered, and it took 6-7mo to allow me to start. In the meantime T-Mobile Home Internet let me start immediately. I kept both because when one had issues the other would be better (storms, updates, tower maintenance, downtime, Russian attacks, etc). But I noticed that Starlink kept getting worse. Lower speed, worse jitter/ping/bufferbloat/etc. it would routinely fail to hit 100mbps down with good sky view, mounted to a pergola. TMHI would routinely be above 250mbps, and I move to using it more often. Eventually a local ISP got a grant to roll out FttH in my area and I got rid of both.

  It’s been a bit over a year since then, maybe things got better. But I noticed Starlink overselling their nodes, being non-communicative for support issues, and missing these easily attainable FCC goals to people that often have much less options than I did. There’s no reason for them to get absolutely wiped by a cell phone tower. Hope they made enough by packing on customers, because they just lost $900m

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• dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh no! Now what will the multi billion dollar corporation do without taxpayer subsidies?

  If you need subsidies to do business, your business fucking sucks and you suck.

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