Sure, and that makes sense if the competitors have proven approaches to meeting the requirements. While I expect Starlink to be able to improve, I can see their point that the outcome is far from certain.
There’s a set of metrics to meet. Starlink is moving the wrong way against those metrics. As such, they’ll need to succeed unaided in the marketplace, instead of getting a government handout.
That would just move it from private company suck to nation-state suck. It needs to be regulated by the International Telecommunication Union (UN).