- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies::The FCC reaffirmed a decision not to award Starlink a nearly $900 million subsidy for offering 100Mbps/20Mbps low-latency internet service in 35 states.
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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.
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.
If your business plan involves firing out infinite rockets full of cell towers forever. You should probably just spend the money on copper instead.
I don’t think you quite understand just how remote some people are. Besides, Starlink is also being used on vessels and aircraft, good luck getting copper out to them.
Also, fibre optic is how the cool people Internet these days.
I don’t think you understand that a lot of copper is still less than infinite rockets forever
Still doesn’t help ships
The issue with starlink is the choice to be in LEO instead of using geosats. It lowers the latency but it makes the whole project completely unsustainable.
I suspect they’ll eventually move to a slightly higher orbit, where their satellites can last a decade or so, once the technology is more mature.
A lot of glass is much better than a lot of copper.
This is the kind of dumb statement that really gives this platform a bad name. I know people who were quoted a six figure sum to get mains power to their property, fibre would have been a similar cost. And this is people who are at a fixed location, we also have those who are mobile to consider.
There are people for whom a wired connection to anything is out of the question.
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.
Not vaporware. It actually works very well. And if you live in the sticks you thank your blessed angels for it.
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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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.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.”
The original article contains 296 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 21%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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.
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.
Sure, but there are many places where this is the only option, and that’s not likely to change any time soon.
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That’s not “very rural”, in that case.
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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”.
What I’m saying is the most cost effective way to get internet to rural folks is to run cables, it works. You don’t have to put thousands of satellites up, it isn’t easier or better.
You sound like you’ve never been anywhere truly remote. For a lot of people in the world, it would be cheaper for the governmet to buy their rural property, bulldoze it, and then buy them a house in a town with internet service – than it is to run a line to their property.
For a lot of people in the world, it would be cheaper for the governmet to buy their rural property, bulldoze it, and then buy them a house in a town with internet service – than it is to run a line to their property.
of course that would be cheaper if the government is paying for it…That would also be cheaper than just buying comcast for someone even in suburbs of the US…
You’re coming off as something of an out of touch asshole, to be honest. I know people for who getting mains power out to their house would cost them more than the property was worth. And there was mains available at the boundary. THAT’S what remote means, not what you’re describing.
well when your backyard is the night sky for the entire globe you can call me a NIMBY when it comes to starlink’s glowing sattelite trains
some people think reality is a cartoon. Black and white. Good guys and bad guys. Some people are dumb that way. And they get played like a piano because of it.
There’s also a bunch who have never left the city, and have no comprehension of just how remote some communities are.
I’m 15 miles away from a major city of 150,000 people and they don’t run anything out “this far”. I can use Starlink, 4G internet, or pound sand.
I am hardly ‘remote’. Cable companies suck dick.
My last apartment was within the city but for whatever reason we didn’t have any companies run cable to the building. The neighbor complex got it but we didn’t for years. That was a city of 200,000.
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
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!
Elon sure does bring out the REEEEE in people, doesn’t he?
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I disagree actually, I find it very easy to not hate him. In fact it requires no effort whatsoever.
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Imagine getting this angry at an Internet stranger. Go outside.
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Lol.
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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.
