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I don't really see how it's embarrassing that the FCC set out a clear requirement for a low-latency, 100/20M rural service and Starlink (having failed to show

I don't really see how it's embarrassing that the FCC set out a clear requirement for a low-latency, 100/20M rural service and Starlink (having failed to show a plan to achieve that) is not accepted into the program. Which part is embarrassing to the FCC, exactly?

turquoisevar 3y ago
You’re right. The only point I’d like to point out is that the minimum requirement is 25/3Mbps with the option to bid for a higher tier that comes with more subsidies but also locks you into the higher requirement. Starlink made a bid for the higher tier that requires 100/20Mbps and now it turns out that its plans don’t sufficiently establish how they’re going to meet those requirements. While Starlink was able to achieve 100Mbps down in some areas (albeit not consistently), it is nowhere near 20Mbps up. But with everything this man is involved in, he has a loyal army of fans who will carry water for him, no matter how much the facts say otherwise. Who knows, maybe if I’ve spent $600 on a dish, I too will try to rationalize it by becoming a cheerleader. Talk about embarrassing.
chrisco255 3y ago
No one else is even close to being able to offer 100/20M rural service.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  There's some kind of disconnect here, because 85% of the service areas covered by the RDOF have winning bidders committed to providing at least 1000/500M service.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  That's the point of the subsidy: to make the equivalent of fiber runs to rural areas (and presumably local WISPs) cost-effective. The main intent of the subsidy was not to subsidize the development of new, uncertain technologies. Musk still managed to slide in and loot a few billion dollars before they realized that Starlink can't meet their definition of "broadband." No other satellite internet could either.
  - pmorici 3y ago
    "Musk still managed to slide in and loot a few billion dollars before they realized that Starlink can't meet their definition of "broadband."" That's false. SpaceX doesn't appear to have actually received any money from the FCC for this program yet, and now won't assuming this decision holds.
  - karpatic 3y ago
    It sounds as though these new mitigating standards were brought out after the grant was already awarded which is where accusations of political malfeasance come into play.
  - cavisne 3y ago
    Starlink is basically a WISP with an actually scalable business model, just the towers (and soon a lot of the backhaul) are up in space. WISPs rely on a local enthusiastic person to make it work.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    By no means does the program make the claim "to make the equivalent of fiber runs". You're just making claims up to rationalize what in all likelihood, was politically driven. Even the votes from the FCC members were along party lines. There were speed targets of 100Mbps available to 20M households. They're currently at a median of 65Mbps [1] and they already have more than 99% of the U.S. covered [2]. It's an egregious, questionable, partisan claim by the FCC that they can't reasonably be expected to hit the speed target by 2025. [1] https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2023 https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2... [2] https://www.starlink.com/map?view=availability https://www.starlink.com/map?view=availability
  - inemesitaffia 3y ago
    Where did you get this idea spacex has been paid any money? This article is a denial of said subsidy
- a2tech 3y ago
  In my parents county (very rural), the local electric coop is running fiber on all their poles. Its possible that my parents living 10 miles from the nearest town (2 4-way stops, a grocery store and a couple of gas stations) will get gigabit fiber before my friends that live in a well off suburb in a dense urban area will.
  - kyralis 3y ago
    About 5 years ago I moved from Silicon Valley to rural Vermont. I have 750 symmetric fiber on my dirt road, and have had more reliable internet here than I did in the South Bay for the decade I lived there. Where politics doesn't impede the growth of municipal and co-op internet solutions, it is absolutely possible for rural communities to end up with very capable internet access.
    - ejb999 3y ago
      same here. - I don't live far from you, in a town of less than 1000 people - and more than 40 miles from even a modest-sized city - and we now have 1GB symmetrical fiber-to-the-home for less than $100/month - and it hasn't gone out even once in over 2 years. It can work.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    In my parents not-so-rural any longer home (although it was when I was a kid), despite being located less than a mile from a 100K+ population community, they still cannot get more than 1.5 Mbps and DSL is the only wired option available to them. They have an AT&T hotspot card that they use, but it gets throttled (dramatically) after 30GB of data usage, and itself has to be positioned in very specific areas of their house in order to get 1 or 2 bars to eke out a 10Mbps connection speed. It's nice that your parents have a co-op that is actively rolling out such infrastructure. That's not the rule though, and the U.S. has massive swaths of low density population areas with substandard internet speeds.
pardoned_turkey 3y ago
The embarrassing part is how they have been allocating subsidies to ISPs that don't provide rural connectivity improvements nearly as significant as what Starlink managed to actually pull off. A competent agency would do whatever they can to support Starlink's efforts or replicate them elsewhere. Instead, they're cutting off the one ISP that actually revolutionized rural internet access after 20 years of government-bankrolled stagnation and grift.
pmorici 3y ago
Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today. SpaceX is also capable of providing differentiated service speeds so looking at what an average user is getting today is not indicative of what could be provided if they were under some minimum speed obligation. The FCC's rational is clearly them twisting themselves into knots to try and get to the decision they want to satisfy their preferred politics. When a government agency that is supposed to be impartial and fact based is clearly making decisions like this on a political basis that undermines it in the long term due to public mistrust.
- baseballdork 3y ago
  > Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today. If you use their service, you know that it's capable of serving X amount of people at Y up and Z down with N latency? C'mon...
  - pmorici 3y ago
    Yes, but that is a function of satellite density or so the argument seems to suggest. SpaceX is launching rockets multiple times a week and has put more satellites into orbit that any entity in the history of human kind by an order of magnitude or more. Betting they won't be able to meet these speed goals is not a rational conclusion.
    - rrook 3y ago
      If you read through the decision, the reasoning is all there, it's absolutely rational. What's _not_ rational is preferring personal anecdotal experience over the aggregate analysis.
      - pmorici 3y ago
        The reasoning that is there is all subjective.
- bmitc 3y ago
_ea1k 3y ago
Their goals are only 100/20mbps? I'd say that part is embarrassing. Given the amount of money involved, I'd have expected them to push for higher than that.
- nixgeek 3y ago
  The FCC is pushing here and wants to see 1000/500 speeds but the lobbyists are pushing back. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-fcc-please-dont-look-too-closely-at-the-prices-we-charge/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-f...
- literalAardvark 3y ago
  100/20 average is spectacular for those living in the US boonies. And they're the target. No one else comes even close. You can't run fiber there, can't mount towers everywhere.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    It is certainly better than a lot of existing options, but so is Starlink. I'd have expected an option that excludes Starlink to be something fairly future-proof. And, IME, people in those remote areas are using Starlink pretty successfully now. Instead, these standards are so low that it makes me wonder how Starlink doesn't qualify. The fact that they are just out of reach of Starlink in just enough areas to disqualify them does make the whole process a bit suspect looking.
    - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
      Starlink, when originally launched, did hit the performance targets. It seems pretty clear that Starlink could've produced a plan that would've restricted user onboarding in a way that showed a commitment to continue hitting the targets. Instead, they added subscribers to the point that service deteriorated below the standards and was trending worse. I don't know whether this was a purely commercial decision to generate mass adoption prior to building out the constellation and the rest of the required infrastructure, or whether there was some kind of underperformance vs engineer plan or whatever. In either case, it's not a good look. Particularly if it was a commercial decision, then it's a case of "decisions have consequences".
Dig1t 3y ago
It's obvious to anyone who actually used the service or lives in a rural area how much good the service is doing. In many rural places there are literally no other options, or the options are so bad that it is laughable. This is one of those letter of the law vs spirit of the law things. Yes technically the speeds you currently get are not exactly at the promised level yet, but the service is a monumental success and is providing service that is definitely in line with the intent behind the subsidy. I could see this making sense if there was any real competition or someone else who was realistically going to provide the service. But the only competition for this money are companies with a poor track records and that are notoriously bad.

turquoisevar 3y ago

You’re right. The only point I’d like to point out is that the minimum requirement is 25/3Mbps with the option to bid for a higher tier that comes with more subsidies but also locks you into the higher requirement. Starlink made a bid for the higher tier that requires 100/20Mbps and now it turns out that its plans don’t sufficiently establish how they’re going to meet those requirements. While Starlink was able to achieve 100Mbps down in some areas (albeit not consistently), it is nowhere near 20Mbps up. But with everything this man is involved in, he has a loyal army of fans who will carry water for him, no matter how much the facts say otherwise. Who knows, maybe if I’ve spent $600 on a dish, I too will try to rationalize it by becoming a cheerleader. Talk about embarrassing.

chrisco255 3y ago

No one else is even close to being able to offer 100/20M rural service.

NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
There's some kind of disconnect here, because 85% of the service areas covered by the RDOF have winning bidders committed to providing at least 1000/500M service.
pclmulqdq 3y ago
That's the point of the subsidy: to make the equivalent of fiber runs to rural areas (and presumably local WISPs) cost-effective. The main intent of the subsidy was not to subsidize the development of new, uncertain technologies. Musk still managed to slide in and loot a few billion dollars before they realized that Starlink can't meet their definition of "broadband." No other satellite internet could either.
- pmorici 3y ago
  "Musk still managed to slide in and loot a few billion dollars before they realized that Starlink can't meet their definition of "broadband."" That's false. SpaceX doesn't appear to have actually received any money from the FCC for this program yet, and now won't assuming this decision holds.
- karpatic 3y ago
  It sounds as though these new mitigating standards were brought out after the grant was already awarded which is where accusations of political malfeasance come into play.
- cavisne 3y ago
  Starlink is basically a WISP with an actually scalable business model, just the towers (and soon a lot of the backhaul) are up in space. WISPs rely on a local enthusiastic person to make it work.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  By no means does the program make the claim "to make the equivalent of fiber runs". You're just making claims up to rationalize what in all likelihood, was politically driven. Even the votes from the FCC members were along party lines. There were speed targets of 100Mbps available to 20M households. They're currently at a median of 65Mbps [1] and they already have more than 99% of the U.S. covered [2]. It's an egregious, questionable, partisan claim by the FCC that they can't reasonably be expected to hit the speed target by 2025. [1] https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2023 https://www.ookla.com/articles/us-satellite-performance-q3-2... [2] https://www.starlink.com/map?view=availability https://www.starlink.com/map?view=availability
- inemesitaffia 3y ago
  Where did you get this idea spacex has been paid any money? This article is a denial of said subsidy
a2tech 3y ago
In my parents county (very rural), the local electric coop is running fiber on all their poles. Its possible that my parents living 10 miles from the nearest town (2 4-way stops, a grocery store and a couple of gas stations) will get gigabit fiber before my friends that live in a well off suburb in a dense urban area will.
- kyralis 3y ago
  About 5 years ago I moved from Silicon Valley to rural Vermont. I have 750 symmetric fiber on my dirt road, and have had more reliable internet here than I did in the South Bay for the decade I lived there. Where politics doesn't impede the growth of municipal and co-op internet solutions, it is absolutely possible for rural communities to end up with very capable internet access.
  - ejb999 3y ago
    same here. - I don't live far from you, in a town of less than 1000 people - and more than 40 miles from even a modest-sized city - and we now have 1GB symmetrical fiber-to-the-home for less than $100/month - and it hasn't gone out even once in over 2 years. It can work.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  In my parents not-so-rural any longer home (although it was when I was a kid), despite being located less than a mile from a 100K+ population community, they still cannot get more than 1.5 Mbps and DSL is the only wired option available to them. They have an AT&T hotspot card that they use, but it gets throttled (dramatically) after 30GB of data usage, and itself has to be positioned in very specific areas of their house in order to get 1 or 2 bars to eke out a 10Mbps connection speed. It's nice that your parents have a co-op that is actively rolling out such infrastructure. That's not the rule though, and the U.S. has massive swaths of low density population areas with substandard internet speeds.

pardoned_turkey 3y ago

The embarrassing part is how they have been allocating subsidies to ISPs that don't provide rural connectivity improvements nearly as significant as what Starlink managed to actually pull off. A competent agency would do whatever they can to support Starlink's efforts or replicate them elsewhere. Instead, they're cutting off the one ISP that actually revolutionized rural internet access after 20 years of government-bankrolled stagnation and grift.

pmorici 3y ago

Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today. SpaceX is also capable of providing differentiated service speeds so looking at what an average user is getting today is not indicative of what could be provided if they were under some minimum speed obligation. The FCC's rational is clearly them twisting themselves into knots to try and get to the decision they want to satisfy their preferred politics. When a government agency that is supposed to be impartial and fact based is clearly making decisions like this on a political basis that undermines it in the long term due to public mistrust.

baseballdork 3y ago
> Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today. If you use their service, you know that it's capable of serving X amount of people at Y up and Z down with N latency? C'mon...
- pmorici 3y ago
  Yes, but that is a function of satellite density or so the argument seems to suggest. SpaceX is launching rockets multiple times a week and has put more satellites into orbit that any entity in the history of human kind by an order of magnitude or more. Betting they won't be able to meet these speed goals is not a rational conclusion.
  - rrook 3y ago
    If you read through the decision, the reasoning is all there, it's absolutely rational. What's _not_ rational is preferring personal anecdotal experience over the aggregate analysis.
    - pmorici 3y ago
      The reasoning that is there is all subjective.
bmitc 3y ago

_ea1k 3y ago

Their goals are only 100/20mbps? I'd say that part is embarrassing. Given the amount of money involved, I'd have expected them to push for higher than that.

nixgeek 3y ago
The FCC is pushing here and wants to see 1000/500 speeds but the lobbyists are pushing back. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-fcc-please-dont-look-too-closely-at-the-prices-we-charge/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-f...
literalAardvark 3y ago
100/20 average is spectacular for those living in the US boonies. And they're the target. No one else comes even close. You can't run fiber there, can't mount towers everywhere.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  It is certainly better than a lot of existing options, but so is Starlink. I'd have expected an option that excludes Starlink to be something fairly future-proof. And, IME, people in those remote areas are using Starlink pretty successfully now. Instead, these standards are so low that it makes me wonder how Starlink doesn't qualify. The fact that they are just out of reach of Starlink in just enough areas to disqualify them does make the whole process a bit suspect looking.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    Starlink, when originally launched, did hit the performance targets. It seems pretty clear that Starlink could've produced a plan that would've restricted user onboarding in a way that showed a commitment to continue hitting the targets. Instead, they added subscribers to the point that service deteriorated below the standards and was trending worse. I don't know whether this was a purely commercial decision to generate mass adoption prior to building out the constellation and the rest of the required infrastructure, or whether there was some kind of underperformance vs engineer plan or whatever. In either case, it's not a good look. Particularly if it was a commercial decision, then it's a case of "decisions have consequences".

Dig1t 3y ago

It's obvious to anyone who actually used the service or lives in a rural area how much good the service is doing. In many rural places there are literally no other options, or the options are so bad that it is laughable. This is one of those letter of the law vs spirit of the law things. Yes technically the speeds you currently get are not exactly at the promised level yet, but the service is a monumental success and is providing service that is definitely in line with the intent behind the subsidy. I could see this making sense if there was any real competition or someone else who was realistically going to provide the service. But the only competition for this money are companies with a poor track records and that are notoriously bad.