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by pmorici 922 days ago
If the terms of the deal were that they didn't need to hit the performance benchmarks until 2025 and they have demonstrated that the technology was capable of those speeds it makes little sense to do this now except as a thinly vailed political punishment.
1 comments
Deprecate9151 922 days ago
That was not the terms, there were buildout requirements attached that started when the bid was accepted. https://www.usac.org/high-cost/funds/rural-digital-opportuni...

Looks like Starlink was supposed to be 40% built with their participation starting in 2020, that are consistent with their winning bid (in this case 100/20). It seems they clearly failed by that metric.

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pmorici 922 days ago
Seeing as they offer service basically everywhere in the US right now and the only quibble is that the average speed is only 75 Mbps instead of 100 Mbps I'd say they are well ahead of 40%.
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Deprecate9151 922 days ago
That isn't a quibble, the 100/20 requirement was a key requirement they set themselves.

Regardless though, I was wrong about the buildout reasoning. The FCC just doesn't believe, based off the information provided by Starlink, they had a strong enough likelihood of success with the plan provided to stay in the running.

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inemesitaffia 922 days ago
Starlink hasn't gotten any money, so they aren't subject to build requirements
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Deprecate9151 922 days ago
Yeah I messed that up. After reading more the denial was focused on the fact that Starlink didn't refute they were not consistently delivering speeds and latency that matched the tier they bid on, and their plan to bridge that gap wasn't convincing to the reviewers or the Commission.
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inemesitaffia 922 days ago
The argument is if they had paid on time would they have been able to deliver to the particular customers by 2025? i.e not everyone. Just RDOF subsided users in the awarded areas

The Dems say no. Evidence is current state of network and absence of starship.

SpaceX says yes. V2 is already launching on Falcon. We don't need starship to meet our obligations but it will make it faster.

Republicans say both of you are talking nonsense. Until 2025 you can't find out. And there's a process for getting there. You only test devices that are under the RDOF plan, not everyone. And since SpaceX hasn't been awarded, you can't do any testing that's relevant.

Imagine SpaceX got awarded say Diomede and you're bringing up speeds in LA and Seattle or the Midwest.

SpaceX will sue and lose due to Chevron deference

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