The FCC decided it wouldn’t be the “best” use of limited funds.

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.

  • Troy@lemmy.caEnglish
    399·
    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.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeEnglish
      145·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
        124·
        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.

          • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            Wow! Been there, done that, in BOTH scenarios. Starlink came along well after my ISP days, no idea what it’s like, but it’s gotta beat hell out of 56K and old-school satellite.

          • anlumo@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            4G Internet implies that there’s a fiber connection to that tower, and that tower can’t be far away. This is more like an intentional decision by the providers.

        • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          36·
          11 months ago

          who have never left the city

          Weird seeing this as a country-fried liberal. City people seem to have no comprehension of the issues facing us. And when confronting them about it, “Fuck all you conservative rednecks! You get what you deserve!”

          And yet they have no idea why the countryside hates them and votes Trump. Self-defeating to say the least. Which is what they say of us! Rinse and repeat.

          • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.oneEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            In the rural areas near where I am, gigabit fiber in underfunded areas is being installed, but sadly a vocal minority of residents keep burning up and sawing down the new fiber internet poles.

            Of course we don’t hear about the good news from areas where it’s installed drama free, but the bad news where something goes terribly wrong is the one that sticks, and affects the general public’s impressions of a particular area or stereotype 😒

            Admittedly the pole installation method for this is quite odd though, maybe a cost saving measure as usually it’s done underground

            • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.oneEnglish
              4·
              11 months ago

              This only really happens when fuckcars posts show up on /all IMO, where some of the more extreme opinion holders are more vocal.

              Fuck cars means fuck car dependency, i.e. places designed specifically for cars: no sidewalks, no bus, no train, no safe bicycle or light motorized assistive vehicle infrastructure available - you need a car for everything, or stay trapped at home.

              It doesn’t mean fuck cars literally.

              It’s pretty well known that rural areas, by design, require cars and motorbikes to travel out of them - a train is ideal, but good luck convincing anyone to finance that kind of project. A bicycle could work well for moving around town though depending on how safe it is, saving some wear and tear from your vehicle

            • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
              52·
              11 months ago

              I mean, fuckcars aren’t representative of the average liberal by any means, so I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

            • asret@lemmy.zipEnglish
              3·
              11 months ago

              About 87% of the population in my country live in an urban environment, many of them will just have no idea how it is even just a few miles out of a city. There’s just no alternative to personal transportation, and bikes don’t cut it.

              I’m still pretty much on board with the fuck cars crowd though - it’s bizarre to me that despite so many people living in our cities that our transit seems even worse than what the US has. It’s just so much nicer being in places with fewer cars around.

            • anlumo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              14·
              11 months ago

              You have no God-given obligation to live in bumfuck nowhere. Don’t be surprised if you’re inconvenienced by your choice of location.

          • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
            24·
            11 months ago

            Hillary was a classic example of that effect actually, no attempt to empathise, understand, or try to gain the support of half the country.

            Nope, better to just insult them.

    • crazyCat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      84·
      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.

      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
        31·
        11 months ago

        Sure, but there are many places where this is the only option, and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

      • Troy@lemmy.caEnglish
        57·
        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”.

        • crazyCat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          31·
          11 months ago

          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.

          • Troy@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            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.

            • Freeman@lemmy.pubEnglish
              21·
              11 months ago

              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…

          • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
            11·
            11 months ago

            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.

        • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          11 months ago

          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

  • spudwart@spudwart.comEnglish
    4013·
    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.

    • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
      29·
      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.

      • spudwart@spudwart.comEnglish
        5·
        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.

    • cameron_vale@lemm.eeEnglish
      153·
      11 months ago

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

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      10·
      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

    • Cowbee@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      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.

  • Daxtron2@startrek.websiteEnglish
    13·
    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.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    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!

  • jawsua@lemmy.oneEnglish
    4·
    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

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    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.

  • Shadywack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    69·
    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!