Which part is embarrassing to the FCC, exactly?
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.
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...
This isn't like cable or fiber where the technology is already mature and it's simply the business case.
The numbers show otherwise and the FCC made it clear that Starlink presented no numbers to the contrary. This isn't even a case of the FCC's numbers saying one thing and Starlink's numbers saying another.
I totally believe that some places give you consistent 100/20 speeds, but aggregate numbers don't show that and Starlink made no attempt to argue otherwise.
All, please disregard my comment and refer instead to this top comment instead:
You seem to consistently ignore that SpaceX didn’t even make that case, and I’m confused why they didn’t, or why you know their business and fit better than they do.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-f...
No one else comes even close. You can't run fiber there, can't mount towers everywhere.
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.
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".
How are you getting phone/power?
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.
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.
WISPs rely on a local enthusiastic person to make it work.
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-q3-2... [2] https://www.starlink.com/map?view=availability
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.
It can work.
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.
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.
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.