Please convince me why this view is incorrect, I am open to listen.
Why? Verizon has been delivering top of the line cellular service for multiple decades now. Starlink is quite new on the scene and given that they’ve now captured management of the agency they’re selling to, they have no incentive to actually provide high quality service. They could do a shitty job and keep the contract, so why would they bother to do well?
I think this is probably the key piece I didn’t consider. SpaceX’s previous work was done under heavy competitive pressure so they had to do good. Here it doesn’t matter what they do.
With Verizon, my doubts came from all of the reporting that’s happened on rural broadband funding. A lot of the companies, including Verizon, essentially took the money and ran without doing all of the work (from my understanding).
But also "I am going to Colombia to bring some cocaine home." and "I am going to Washington to assassinate the president." and "The right of the people to keep and bear nuclear bombs shall not be infringed." and any number of other things that don't immediately threaten the plane's integrity.
In concerns such as this, the process matters. If we don't follow it this time, then why follow next time or the time after? Then, if this rule or that law doesn't matter, then do any of them matter?
I think people would have been more comfortable if they decided to send it out to bid again - not great since it was already awarded, but at least going back through the public process.
Starlink technologically can provide better connectivity in terms of speed and reliability compared to Verizon (can doesn’t mean it will of course). So there is some credibility to the decision.
But of course populace prefer to focus on flamboyant personalities instead of “based on cost, risk, timetables” ain’t it?
It’s possible, although I have not verified, that the contract was written in such a way that Verizon was the only qualified applicant because of lobbying.
However I'd rather have the backhaul between air traffic control centers done by fiber rather than by Starlink...
Not to mention the naked corruption
Of course Verizon can fsck it up as well, but multiple leased fiber lines, possibly direct MPLS with guarantees on latency and bandwidth, or maybe even DWDM between major locations sounds more reliable to my instincts.
Most importantly I don't trust the hatchet job way this is done, not just on Starlink use, but the whole hatchet job with FAA.
With density of flights in USA, intra-ATC Comms are non trivial part of safety - passing flight information on structured messages rather than by hand between areas is... More than important.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/an...
A lot of interconnections between US ATC services were done back with the good old Bell System over then new T1/T3 digital carriers, plus analog leased lines in some cases, that provided high reliability and high quality of service links for both data and voice (which could include voice connection to remote radio transceivers).
This is, of course, being phased out even from "compatibility mode" setups where you get old style trunks that are backed by newer infrastructure. So the network infrastructure is literally dying out.
A comparable setup with modern tech would be MPLS fiber backbone with capacity reservation (thus actually getting stable latency and bandwidth guarantees), which would allow creation of virtual meshes with different QoS requirements that would provide both stable voice service (including from centralized ATC to remote radar transceivers), guaranteed performance data links (for example for radars etc), slower but still guaranteed service bulk data transfers, etc.
I might have also mentioned DWDM, which essentially lets you create a physical fiber optic path where switching is done by optical elements based on frequency of the signal (so you can pack multiple signals into one fiber then route them to different ports etc. etc.) - very useful if you want no variability in connection while still be able to reroute them fast.
Where Starlink comes in is in the intermediate step. Before Verizon finishes running their MPLS network, there's a program called RTRI that provides an off ramp for TDM, so when Lumen stops serving, they have something. It's contracted to L3Harris and runs over SDWAN while using any network as an overlay. Satellite (including GEO), Cable and 5G (anything available really)
That said, I may have been reading misinformation and it’s only provided to ATC towers.
So, could bad things still lead to good things? Of course. Do we generally accept "ends justifies the means"? I didn't think so?
As for downsides, I confess the five year life cycle of the satellites is of some concern to me. Seems more so of a problem the more of them you have to put up there?
The enabling technology is constellations in low orbit and SpaceX isn't the only one anymore.
If the contract was made fairly and in good faith, cancelling it would be bad for contract law precedence in the new administration.
I take contract law over advancement in technology in this case.
There’s also very little information on who else bid for this contract that Verizon got. How do we know it wasn’t corrupt to begin with, especially with Biden engaging in lawfare against Musk and doing bizarre things like excluding him from EV summits? The entire FAA modernization plan looks corrupt - everyone else that got contracts are random unknown companies. I bet they have ties back to some congressman.
If we think that, isn't the solution to reopen the bidding with more transparency, rather than hand it to the guy who just so happens to both be in charge of the team pushing for this and owns the company the new contract is awarded to?
Your replacing "maybe this was corrupt", with 'this is blatantly and obviously corrupt"
If Starlink is actually "very likely to be better for taxpayers" it should have no problem going through the normal bidding process competing with other vendors.