[stephen_greet]

What do you mean by "applied to the existing telecoms"? For this RDOF subsidy, no major telecoms have been given any money.

It's totally fair to criticize subsidies that have been historically given major telecom companies when they failed to deliver (and they have). But, I don't think it's fair to say "historically the US government has given subsidies to telecoms that have failed to deliver, so you should keep doing that".

[btilly]

There have been a series of "give broadband to rural areas" bills starting with the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Generally great sums of money are given, and generally only limited customers get broadband. And then a few years later there is a new bill with similar results.

Given this history, I am inclined to believe that actually not giving money to Starlink for a fairly small performance miss is motivated by something other than just applying the rules.

If in a few years it is clear that policies have changed, and telecoms no longer get the gravy train either, then I'll change my opinion. Ending this corruption would be a welcome change.

[bobthepanda]

Perhaps the reason Starlink is being held to this scrutiny is because of those previous attempts being failures and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The solution to “the old people weren’t being vetted enough” is not “the new players should also not be vetted enough.”

[ncmncm]

That was the one where AT&T took a half $B of taxed money to build out fiber, but never lit it. Because nothing said they had to.