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Comment by publicmenace | Hacker News Reader

>the fcc is allowed to take their money back if your service is going in a downward trend.

That’s not quite right. They can take it if they conclude you will not meet the target. Ups and downs on the way there are totally fine under the rules.

Starlink can scale dramatically just by launching new satellites. The FCC is keen on stopping that too, refusing to approve all of Starlink’s satellite launch proposals and instead making them slow walk their growth.

In addition to hating Musk, the White House thinks fiber to the home is like rural electrification. Starlink, by providing very much good-enough universal service (though they can scale up to gigabit speeds, it’s just a matter of how many satellites they have), is threatening to undermine political support for spending money on fiber buildouts.

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this is quite the conspiracy theory. I'm not sure why musk fans say that the FCC is acting egregious here when they are doing the same exact thing they have done for decades. musk fans just don't want the same standards applied to them. they're okay interfering with other systems, but they certainly don't want anybody interfering with them.

No this is not the same thing they’ve done for decades. You just make that assertion but it’s not true.

It’s not some crazy conspiracy. This is the whole point of winning elections. The people in charge of tech policy in this admin want universal fiber service. You don’t get tens of billions from Congress every year for that unless there’s public demand for it. Starlink would undermine that demand despite not being good enough to replace universal fiber service, in the eyes of the administration.

Also you’re free to look up how Starlink’s launch proposals have been slow rolled at the FCC. You can also look at the Republican Commissioner’s statements on the revocation of Starlink’s RDOF award.

keep in mind that at the time the FCC allowed them past the first round of RDOF, they did not know the price of the terminal since StarLink wasn't live. part of their complaint was that the user had to buy a $600 terminal with no subsidies.

this excludes a lot of the population outright since they don't have a payment plan for lower income users to afford it.

the FCC's letter says that they determined they could not deploy a system of the size they promised in the timeframe they promised. whether you agree with it or not, that assertion has been correct so far.

There was nothing in the rules prohibiting the terminal price.

And the letter of course says that. That doesn’t mean it’s their real motive or a correct conclusion.

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