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.

  • jawsua@lemmy.one
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    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