The Federal Communications Commission today announced that it is rejecting the long-form applications of LTD Broadband and Starlink to receive support through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program. The Commission determined that these applications failed to demonstrate that the providers could deliver the promised service. Funding these vast proposed networks would not be the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars to bring broadband to unserved areas across the United States, the Commission concluded.
After careful legal, technical, and policy review, we are rejecting these applications. Consumers deserve reliable and affordable high-speed broadband,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements.”
“Starlink’s technology has real promise,” continued Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “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 $900 million in universal service funds until 2032.”
Starlink had won the bid for subsidies of US$ 885,509,638.40 in the auction of 2020-12-07, and with this decision has lost that contract.
On Tuesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell revealed at a satellite industry forum that the company has been selling the satellite dish to subscribers at a sizable loss. It initially cost the company $3,000 to produce each satellite dish, according to CNBC.
The company has since reduced the manufacturing cost to $1,500, and then down to $1,300 through a new version of the satellite dish, which just rolled out. (A December report from Insider previously pegged the cost at $2,400 per dish.)
The manufacturing costs are expected to fall even further to “the few hundred dollar range within the next year or two,” Shotwell reportedly said. That’s good news for users on a budget.
“I don’t think we’re going to do tiered pricing to consumers," she added. “We’re going to try to keep it as simple as possible and transparent as possible, so right now there are no plans to tier for consumers.”
For example, review application points out this stupidity by the FCC:
The Bureau did not confront this evidence. Rather, it relied on recent nationwide speed test data from Ookla that was collected between Q4 2021 and Q2 2022 to cast doubt on Starlink’s ability to deliver 100/20 Mbps speeds starting in 2025. Bureau Decision at 7. The Bureau’s endorsement of Ookla’s data over SpaceX’s detailed submissions is unexplained, unjustified, and fails on its own terms
Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and used it to voice his own political and ideological views without a filter, President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight to go after him. During a press conference at the White House, President Biden stood at a podium adorned with the official seal of the President of the United States, and expressed his view that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at.” When pressed by a reporter to explain how the government would look into Elon Musk, President Biden remarked: “There’s a lot of ways.” There certainly are. The Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all initiated investigations into Elon Musk or his businesses.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission adds itself to the growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses. I am not the first to notice a pattern here. Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote that “the volume of government investigations into his businesses makes us wonder if the Biden Administration is targeting him for regulatory harassment.” After all, the editorial board added, Elon Musk has become “Progressive Enemy No. 1.” Today’s decision certainly fits the Biden Administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment. Indeed, the Commission’s decision today to revoke a 2020 award of $885 million to Elon Musk’s Starlink—an award that Starlink secured after agreeing to provide high-speed Internet service to over 640,000 rural homes and businesses across 35 states—is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy.
First, the FCC revokes Starlink’s $885 million award by making up an entirely new standard of review that no entity could ever pass and then applying that novel standard to only one entity: Starlink. In particular, FCC law provides that a winning bidder like Starlink must demonstrate that it is “reasonably capable” of fulfilling its end of the bargain that it struck with the FCC back in 2020. In this case, that means Starlink needed to show that it was more likely than not that Starlink could provide high-speed Internet service (specifically, low-latency, 100/20 Mbps service) to at least 40% of those roughly 640,000 rural premises by December 31, 2025. Starlink did exactly that in a voluminous series of submissions that it filed with the FCC throughout 2021 and 2022. Indeed, the record leaves no doubt that Starlink is reasonably capable of providing qualifying high-speed Internet service to the required number of locations by the end of 2025. The Commission’s decision does not even grapple with that evidence—it simply ignores it.
Simington’s dissent says that SpaceX has explicitly said that Starship is not necessary to launch the Gen2 satellites to provide the contracted service.
To justify its motivated reasoning, the majority points to delays in the development of SpaceX’s Starship launch platform—the largest, most powerful rocket ever built—as evidence that SpaceX would be unable to launch enough Starlink satellites to meet its 2025 commitments. The trouble with this argument is that SpaceX never indicated that it was relying on the Starship platform to meet its RDOF obligations, and in fact it repeatedly stated that it was not. Undeterred by the facts, the Commission now resorts to twisting SpaceX’s words. For example, SpaceX said in a letter to the Commission that it had “reached a point in the development of its Starship launch vehicle and Gen2 satellites [such] that it can concentrate solely on Configuration 1 and no longer pursue Configuration 2” (emphasis added). Configuration 1 involves launching with Starship, and Configuration 2 involves launching with Falcon 9. Nothing in this sentence suggests that SpaceX needed Starship to launch Gen2 satellites, but that’s exactly the interpretation that the majority now relies on.
Here is a report on Starlink performance at sea. Latency decreases with distance to a land-based point of preference (PoP) where Starlink traffic connects to the Internet backbbone. This will probably flatten out as more satellite-to-satellite laser links are employed. This is the official Starlink coverage map.
No apparent judicial appeal yet. IIRC, the general Federal deadline for judicial appeal of agency action is 60 days. But there are many special provisions that reduce it to 30 days. I expected the appeal would have been filed within 30 days and actually much earlier to convey a sense of urgency.
