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https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-probes-fcc-decision-to-revoke-starlink-funds/
Not sure if I have much to add, I didn't see anyone talk about this, but may have missed it.
I understand that a lot of people have it out for Musk, but this seems blatantly partisan and all culture war. Is there a not-culture war aspect to this? $885 million seems like small potatoes compared to all the other numbers that have been floated around lately. I have a hard time strong-manning the decision to not release the funds. It seems like another pebble in the bucket of reasons why Musk, for the sake of his ambitions and livelihood has to support Trump. People can get mad about it, but what else is the dude supposed to do with the power of the Dems fully against him?
I don't want bureaucrats spitefully revoking contracts because Musk tweets too much.
I also don't want my tax dollars given to StarLink. They are a large private for-profit venture and are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost. If they don't meet the criteria for this award, then don't give them this award. Similarly don't give hundreds of millions of my tax dollars to Iridium, Kuiper, Blue Ring or the other satellite companies. Make government contracts with them of course. Pay for services provided. But don't just 'award' only one of them with a money spigot regardless of their ability to deliver promised services.
I don't want tax dollars given to Starlink, or anyone else, to subsidize rural broadband. But if we're going to have such an award, I'd rather not it be given out or not according to how much the various players suck up to the party in power. Especially when the quid-pro-quo isn't just campaign funds and endorsements but censoring the opposition.
And StarLink isn't performing as previously claimed, so they don't qualify for this award. I don't want awards based on mean tweeting. I am fine with denying awards for failure to deliver as promised. I hope that is the criteria being used here.
I don't actually know the criteria for this grant, but I'm a rural user who pays for it myself and it works very well for all the use cases mentioned. (meetings, streaming, etc)
It's possible that the criteria are jiggered to be greater than actually required for those things, which would make it a pretty blatant subsidy towards fibre/adsl providers.
It was annoyingly difficult to track down the exact terms.
https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904#technology
It looks like spacex bid specifically for the 100/20 tier, and that this is indeed a hard cutoff. It's unfortunate that there's no partial credit, and the inherent stability advantage of wireline over wireless means the former is more likely to maintain advertised speeds over time.
I'd suggest that both you and @TIRM (and maybe @jkf as well) read @gattsuru's reply to this top-level a few pages down below; there may or may not be issues with his info, but it seems highly relevant.
vs
Hard to square unless there's some wild spin going on. Which I wouldn't put past the FCC.
Trying to evaluate this clearly: the FCC claims that Starlink won't meet future projected targets even though they happen to be working fine at the moment. As Starlink expands it has throughput problems in rural areas. By some (foolishly naive?) projection from current trends they will underdeliver.
But then Starlink is launching ever escalating numbers of satellites. So presumably a short term slump in download speeds isn't indicative of long term performance.
Specifically, the FCC collected Ookla data from 2021 and 2022, highlighting that "that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022", and then cited a single drop in average-monthly-speeds in one month of 2023 during appeal. The FCC analysis quoted by Rosenworcel in that section was from August 2022.
By late 2023 those numbers were already vastly improved (median 79/9.2 Mbps). It's currently October 2024; while I can't find a specific Ookla report, tomshardware cites them saying in September "Speed test analysis by Ookla shows Starlink seeing major gains in speed in the past few months. Median download speed has jumped from 65.72 Mbps to 97 Mbps."
Anecdotally from those who've use it in rural areas near me, they've consistently seen 100/20 or higher. I can't say for sure what the current Ookla numbers area, but I'm not seeing any good evidence otherwise.
These are compatible claims. It's just one of them is stupid: taking a two data points and extrapolating with a ruler is the sort of thing I'd caution a high schooler about.
Contrast other RDOF defaults: the Starry (bankrupt), GeoLinks (blocked by California regulations) or LTD Corporation (severe financial chicanery, heavily delayed regulatory compliance mandated in the contract), all have far clearer and more certain problems.
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There are theoretical limits to how much bandwidth they can squeeze out of their spectrum allocation based on the physical aperture (size) of the antenna arrays on each side. And they keep selling smaller ground terminals, although those might get fractional performance. Something like a cell phone (which I've seen them rumoring support for) can't really do anything other than hit up every satellite in the sky.
Bandwidth has to be shared between every user in, effectively, an area of some size (I haven't run the numbers), and at some point even more satellites doesn't help. Bigger antennas on both sides would, though.
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