[NovemberWhiskey]

I don't really see how it's embarrassing that the FCC set out a clear requirement for a low-latency, 100/20M rural service and Starlink (having failed to show a plan to achieve that) is not accepted into the program.

Which part is embarrassing to the FCC, exactly?

[pmorici]

Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today. SpaceX is also capable of providing differentiated service speeds so looking at what an average user is getting today is not indicative of what could be provided if they were under some minimum speed obligation. The FCC's rational is clearly them twisting themselves into knots to try and get to the decision they want to satisfy their preferred politics.

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.

[mason55]

> Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today.

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.

[pmorici]

Today your speed tier is based on what you pay. If you pay for the priority or business tier service you absolutely get over 100Mbps consistently, a lot more. If you pay for the basic service tier then yeah you might only get 3-4x DSL speeds which is still phenomenal for the purpose being discussed here.

[altairprime]

If your basic service tier is lower than 100/20, you would be disqualified for the subsidy.

[pmorici]

That's not how it works, they just need to offer a service tier that provides a service with the required minimums by a particular date, it is obviously possible unless you are blinded by revenge politics.

[altairprime]

I see. I've misunderstood the broadband auctions, and have reviewed https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904 to determine more correctly what's going on here.

All, please disregard my comment and refer instead to this top comment instead:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38628276

[enraged_camel]

The question isnt whether it is phenomenal. The question is if Starlink is meeting the obligations outlined in the grant, and if so, why they didn’t bother to dispute the numbers FCC showed.

[NovemberWhiskey]

So if all this is true, the embarrassing part is that SpaceX couldn't make a compelling presentation of the facts that support them. I'm sorry but "OK, yes, we are missing the target performance goals and trending further away from them but awesomeness" is ... not compelling.

This isn't like cable or fiber where the technology is already mature and it's simply the business case.

[bmitc]

If the service is so awesome, why does it need a billion dollar subsidy, i.e., free money paid for by taxpayers?

[pmorici]

It doesn't. This was originally legislated as a hand out to legacy telecom companies that lobbied for it. Seeing as it exists though I would rather the money be spent with the best option instead of it being used as a political retribution fund.

[bmitc]

So the requirements set out however long ago that Starlink agreed to and now isn't meeting is political retribution? How so?

[pmorici]

Because the obligation was to meet the requirements in 2025 and FCC basically just subjectivity said 2 years before the deadline they don’t think they will.

[nomel]

I'm curious what happens if they actually do hit the targets, in 2 years.

[nicce]

Some other company could take it happily and increase the competition. Maybe even provide better results, while it might take some time.

[brandonagr2]

Heavy emphasis on maybe, do you think legacy telecoms have a history of actually delivering on rural broadband deployment promises?

[jmye]

I’m confused. Do you think that SpaceX, who demonstrably failed to make those arguments, doesn’t know what it’s capable of? Or that they’re not smart enough to explain it?

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.

[pmorici]

It seems they did repeatedly say they could do it but fcc just ignored them.

[baseballdork]

> Because if you use the service you know it is capable of that and more today.

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...

[pmorici]

Yes, but that is a function of satellite density or so the argument seems to suggest. SpaceX is launching rockets multiple times a week and has put more satellites into orbit that any entity in the history of human kind by an order of magnitude or more. Betting they won't be able to meet these speed goals is not a rational conclusion.

[rrook]

If you read through the decision, the reasoning is all there, it's absolutely rational. What's _not_ rational is preferring personal anecdotal experience over the aggregate analysis.

[pmorici]

The reasoning that is there is all subjective.

[_ea1k]

Their goals are only 100/20mbps? I'd say that part is embarrassing. Given the amount of money involved, I'd have expected them to push for higher than that.

[nixgeek]

The FCC is pushing here and wants to see 1000/500 speeds but the lobbyists are pushing back.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/cable-lobby-to-f...

[literalAardvark]

100/20 average is spectacular for those living in the US boonies. And they're the target.

No one else comes even close. You can't run fiber there, can't mount towers everywhere.

[_ea1k]

It is certainly better than a lot of existing options, but so is Starlink. I'd have expected an option that excludes Starlink to be something fairly future-proof. And, IME, people in those remote areas are using Starlink pretty successfully now.

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.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Starlink, when originally launched, did hit the performance targets. It seems pretty clear that Starlink could've produced a plan that would've restricted user onboarding in a way that showed a commitment to continue hitting the targets. Instead, they added subscribers to the point that service deteriorated below the standards and was trending worse.

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".

[_ea1k]

I can understand that, but are they measuring Starlink's competitors by the same standard? Overloading backhaul, at least temporarily, is hardly a new problem.

[NovemberWhiskey]

They're using (AIUI) Ookla Speedtest data, rather than taking anyone's word for anything.

[monkaiju]

>can't mount towers everywhere

How are you getting phone/power?

[literalAardvark]

Barely. Those take much less bandwidth.

[chrisco255]

No one else is even close to being able to offer 100/20M rural service.

[pclmulqdq]

That's the point of the subsidy: to make the equivalent of fiber runs to rural areas (and presumably local WISPs) cost-effective. The main intent of the subsidy was not to subsidize the development of new, uncertain technologies.

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.

[chrisco255]

By no means does the program make the claim "to make the equivalent of fiber runs". You're just making claims up to rationalize what in all likelihood, was politically driven. Even the votes from the FCC members were along party lines.

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

[inemesitaffia]

Where did you get this idea spacex has been paid any money? This article is a denial of said subsidy

[pmorici]

"Musk still managed to slide in and loot a few billion dollars before they realized that Starlink can't meet their definition of "broadband.""

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.

[cavisne]

Starlink is basically a WISP with an actually scalable business model, just the towers (and soon a lot of the backhaul) are up in space.

WISPs rely on a local enthusiastic person to make it work.

[karpatic]

It sounds as though these new mitigating standards were brought out after the grant was already awarded which is where accusations of political malfeasance come into play.

[a2tech]

In my parents county (very rural), the local electric coop is running fiber on all their poles. Its possible that my parents living 10 miles from the nearest town (2 4-way stops, a grocery store and a couple of gas stations) will get gigabit fiber before my friends that live in a well off suburb in a dense urban area will.

[kyralis]

About 5 years ago I moved from Silicon Valley to rural Vermont. I have 750 symmetric fiber on my dirt road, and have had more reliable internet here than I did in the South Bay for the decade I lived there.

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.

[ejb999]

same here. - I don't live far from you, in a town of less than 1000 people - and more than 40 miles from even a modest-sized city - and we now have 1GB symmetrical fiber-to-the-home for less than $100/month - and it hasn't gone out even once in over 2 years.

It can work.

[chrisco255]

In my parents not-so-rural any longer home (although it was when I was a kid), despite being located less than a mile from a 100K+ population community, they still cannot get more than 1.5 Mbps and DSL is the only wired option available to them. They have an AT&T hotspot card that they use, but it gets throttled (dramatically) after 30GB of data usage, and itself has to be positioned in very specific areas of their house in order to get 1 or 2 bars to eke out a 10Mbps connection speed.

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.

[NovemberWhiskey]

There's some kind of disconnect here, because 85% of the service areas covered by the RDOF have winning bidders committed to providing at least 1000/500M service.

[turquoisevar]

You’re right.

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.

[pardoned_turkey]

The embarrassing part is how they have been allocating subsidies to ISPs that don't provide rural connectivity improvements nearly as significant as what Starlink managed to actually pull off. A competent agency would do whatever they can to support Starlink's efforts or replicate them elsewhere. Instead, they're cutting off the one ISP that actually revolutionized rural internet access after 20 years of government-bankrolled stagnation and grift.

[Dig1t]

It's obvious to anyone who actually used the service or lives in a rural area how much good the service is doing. In many rural places there are literally no other options, or the options are so bad that it is laughable. This is one of those letter of the law vs spirit of the law things. Yes technically the speeds you currently get are not exactly at the promised level yet, but the service is a monumental success and is providing service that is definitely in line with the intent behind the subsidy.

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.