Starlink loses $886 million in rural broadband subsidies

the The FCC announced today It will not give Elon Musk’s Starlink company $886 million in support from the Universal Service Fund to expand broadband service in rural areas. The money could have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program, but the FCC wrote that Starlink was unable to “demonstrate its ability to deliver the promised service” and that subsidizing it would not be the “optimal solution” and the best use of Service Fund money. Comprehensive Limited.

This was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, leading to this gravity. SpaceX previously won the bid to deliver 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” with funding from RDOF.

“The FCC is charged with ensuring that consumers everywhere have access to reliable, affordable high-speed broadband,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “This applicant has failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for nearly a decade.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr dissentedwhere she wrote that “the FCC did not—and never has—required any other award winner to prove that they had fulfilled their service obligation years in advance.”

Christopher Cardacci, SpaceX’s chief legal officer, wrote in a letter to the FCC that “Starlink is the only immediately viable option for connecting many Americans who live and work in rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed Internet has been Low latency is unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to contact.