[Deprecate9151]

That argument is a red herring. The RDOF program is concentrated in specific geographic areas. Starlink onboarding subscribers in other areas doesn't really have a bearing on this program if they can't prove they can extend that to the areas in scope and hit the service levels they bid at. It might even hurt their argument if performance degrades as they focus on areas outside the RDOF locations.

More traditional offerings have a much easier time demonstrating they can do that, even if they haven't started physically building yet. It's very easy for them to say x amount of fiber capacity at this location will meet the program specs, and this is how fast we can install it.

[btilly]

Your counterargument hides a major flaw.

It is true that more traditional offerings have an easier time demonstrating that they should be able to do that. But decades of traditional telecoms failing to hit promised targets demonstrates that they are unlikely to perform as promised.

That said, regulatory capture has let them regularly get away with the argument that you describe. Regulators motivated by politics and corruption have pretended to believe them. Non-incumbents therefore struggle to navigate their higher bar.

[Deprecate9151]

Can't disagree there.

That is why I actually like the approach in the RDOF. It has regular progress check-ins built in, instead of the seemingly no strings attached grants given historically. This stage two review was "are you likely to succeed based on progress since stage one", but there are further delivery checkpoints that come with penalties and bonuses for under and over delivering.

[bryanlarsen]

A rule of thumb is that big infrastructure projects are always significantly behind schedule and budget. Fiber rollouts are big infrastructure projects. They'll be late, almost guaranteed. Therefore demonstrating that they can hit a schedule is very difficult.

[Deprecate9151]

It is difficult, but the program (theoretically, since the program isn't at that stage yet) has checkpoints to address failure to actually deliver.

This stage was to focus on if the bid accepted based off of the short-form proposal was progressing and likely to deliver as described by reviewing additional information provided in the long-form application. That is going to be easier for tech with an established delivery history.

[doikor]

While this is true to some extent it is also true that an infrastructure project finishing on time/budget is not news so you will hear about those.