SpaceX Won "rural" FCC Funding in Surprising Places, Like Major Airports
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is "subsidiz[ing] broadband for the rich," according to the title of an analysis last week by Derek Turner, research director at advocacy group Free Press. Turner has a strong track record analyzing FCC broadband data and last year found major errors in Pai's broadband-deployment claims.
[...] SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said Starlink is targeted at rural areas and "will serve the hardest-to-serve customers that telcos otherwise have trouble" reaching. While SpaceX did get FCC funding for plenty of rural areas, it also won "the right to serve a large number of very urban areas that the FCC's broken system deemed eligible for awards," Turner wrote. For example, Turner wrote that SpaceX won broadband subsidies in locations at or adjacent to major airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New York City, Seattle, Las Vegas, Newark, Miami, Boston, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, Detroit, and Philadelphia.
[...] The RDOF[*] and other universal service programs run by the FCC are paid for by Americans through fees imposed on phone bills. According to rules set by the FCC, the entire $9.2 billion must fund deployment only in census blocks where no ISPs report offering service with at least 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speeds.
But census blocks are small, and blocks that are counted as unserved "may be surrounded on all sides by fiber," Turner told Ars via email. "That's because of an important design flaw in the FCC's mapping system: ISPs are [required] to report the blocks where they currently offer service or could without extraordinary use of resources within a 10-day period. Thus a block can show up as 'unserved' even though it isn't any more expensive than any typical block to serve; it just means an ISP didn't claim the block."
SpaceX "appears to have played by the rules. But the FCC's rules created a broken system," Turner wrote in his post on the Free Press site. "By bidding for subsidies assigned to dense urban areas, Musk's firm and others were able to get potentially hundreds of millions in subsidies meant for people and businesses in rural areas that would never see broadband deployment without the government's help."
RDOF - Rural Digital Opportunity Fund
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:19AM (1 child)
sometimes i catch it in my mouth, too.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:24AM
oh baby baby i love you so
i'd like to have you fuck me with your big stinky toe
RUB A DUB DUB FUCK YOU IN THE TUB!
I CAN SMELL YOUR CUNT
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:21AM
Well, yeah. That's what he was hired to do. Why the surprised look?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:29AM
Finally, the hero we deserve.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:34AM (14 children)
If they can get it off the ground and serve urban areas, won't rural areas also get covered at the same time? It's not like they have to dig or something.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:13AM (2 children)
I'm told teh satellites won't be very effective in dense urban areas becaues of too much demand. But is anything stopping Google from isntalling their fibre networks in those newly acquired urban areas?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @01:16PM (1 child)
"anything stopping Google from isntalling their fibre networks in those newly acquired urban areas?"
not profitable because it sucks to live in areas around major airports so people with money don't?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @06:34PM
If I'm reading it right then those areas aren't populated at all because they are too close to the runways. There are laws requiring exclusion zones around airports and some jurisdictions actually follow them. The FCC offering 'rural subsidies' for areas like that is a classic case of graft through regulatory capture, and the only reason this is in the news is because someone who isn't a major telco or cable company got a slice of the pie.
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Thursday December 17 2020, @08:38AM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 17 2020, @02:48PM
AFAIK, this isn't that kind of subsidy. It was designed to help defray the cost of building infrastructure, not provide a direct-to-consumer payment or rebate. The companies in question can spend it on underwater basketweaving as long as they can deliver the services specified under the contract.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 17 2020, @10:59AM (7 children)
It's more like satellite TV than a satellite phone - the receiver is about 50 cm across
https://hackaday.com/2020/11/25/literally-tearing-apart-a-spacex-starlink-antenna/ [hackaday.com]
Presumably in order to serve higher bandwidth or multiple simultaneous customers they more/larger dishes and some sort of WLAN. I guess coupled with a installation costs, it ends up costing few $10k for each installation.
FTFS:
> potentially hundreds of millions
Presumably that really means 10s of millions, i.e. few thousand installations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @01:11PM (6 children)
Thanks for the Hackaday link. That is one heck of an antenna! Not only is it phased array for rapid tracking, it also has tilt and pan motor drive. Waaay more sophisticated than a sat TV dish that points at one geosynchronous satellite.
Winter is here in the northern hemisphere, it will be interesting to hear reports about how this works with wind, snow and ice loads. Or, maybe you have to keep it under cover? Will it work in an attic with a couple of layers of shingles on the roof, or will it need a little https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radome [wikipedia.org] ??
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday December 17 2020, @02:24PM (5 children)
It has some self-heating. It's certified to work down to -30°C. That might be a problem for some Canadians.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacexs-starlink-targets-january-for-wider-public-beta-test [pcmag.com]
Supposedly, the dish costs $2,400 to make. So at $500 they are losing a lot on each one. For now at least.
https://archive.is/P54Dd [archive.is]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday December 17 2020, @04:13PM (4 children)
I think the plan is to make it up in volume.
Sell enough of them, the losses get big enough to wrap around into big positive numbers.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormreaver on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:40PM (2 children)
Joking aside, the obvious business plan involves acquiring the customer with an initial loss. Then charge the customer a monthly fee that is greater than the unit cost to operate the service. The initial loss will turn into a profit in some acceptable time frame. There may even be some sliding loss windows, but the aggregate will be a nice profit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:48PM (1 child)
I seem to recall cell phones working that way about twenty years ago.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @06:37PM
Any cellphone contract that includes a 'free' phone works that way, even now.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday December 17 2020, @08:07PM
And with Christmas coming up, there's also time to provide improved incentives to buy them [giantitp.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday December 17 2020, @10:03PM
To clear up any confusion:
The satellites are the thingies in the sky overhead.
Not the round dish thing on the ground.
SpaceX Starlink antenna is not a parabolic dish antenna as is used by most satellite ground receivers. (In Starlink case, it is a transceiver.)
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:48AM (1 child)
Then when the life is given to the 'beast' the world will wonder. "Who is like the Beast?" they will say
Not even the few remote tribes will be safe. Eventually, they too will be given wifi recliners where they can put their feet up, masturbate with a handful of doritos all while watching a bunch of sweaty millionaire men in tights run into each other again and again for amusement on their smart tv while being fucked in the ass by the NSA.
Every corner of the earth will face illumination. No heart beat will go unnoticed as the Beast will assume complete power over all electronics.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 17 2020, @04:17PM
Doesn't The Beast want your loyalty rather than your money subscription to a satellite service of rich men in tights?
As I recall (from memory) in Rev 16, the fifth golden bowl judgement is that the kingdom of the beast falls into darkness. (aka, "oh my god! Twitter is down!")
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 17 2020, @04:25AM (2 children)
I am not an expert, but my intuitive understanding is that fixed line infrastructure makes progressively less and less financial sense as population density decreases. I don't see how it can scale to compete against wireless (terrestrial or space based) infrastructure for rural connections. As IOT moves into rural applications fixed line services are going to be in a constant game of catch-up I don't think they can win.
Clarification: They can't win it technically or with infrastructure. Telecom has a long history of killing competition through legislative capture or subsidy programs. It's entirely possible they'll (ab)use that trick again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @06:43AM (1 child)
This is exactly correct. Wired connections, especially fiber, are far cheaper to install and maintain in dense urban environments than in rural areas and have the added benefit of not needing line-of-sight. Terrestrial wireless has both a minimum population to pay for a tower and a maximum receiver count per tower, as well as a distance cost for how far the tower is from a connection point. LEO satellites effectively eliminate the distance cost and the minimum customer base is effectively worldwide.
What I see happening is this:
Urban sticks with fiber and gets the highest bandwidth per $.
Rural areas switch to satellite, and deep rural finally gets service.
Suburban areas are a fight between fiber and satellite depending on how abusive their terrestrial providers are. Expect laws passed banning satellite links just like there are laws banning wireless in many suburban areas. Also expect much flaunting of such laws.
Terrestrial wireless dies out due to loss of market share.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:29PM
The last line of your post is incorrect, because most of the populace lived in fairly dense areas. So does most of the wealthy populace. It's just more convenient. The really ultra rich can live isolated, and for them it has advantages, but most of them don't choose to do so.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:23AM (1 child)
It is all about the Rurals! They are so stupid and uneducated, because of no internet access. It was the same back in the '50s, when they opposed integration. And in the '60's, when they opposed integretion. And in the '70s, when they still opposed integration. And the '80s, the '90's, the '00s, and finally, Trump, where they thought they could oppose integration again, but already the South had become too stupid to have a consistent policy position, even a racist one. So, they elected a New York City shyster real estate developer, as the next best thing. Stupid, really, really, stupid.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:35PM
You've got some valid points, but you not only misunderstand them, you express them in a way that makes them difficult to understand. And stupid isn't the same as ignorant, even if that were the correct attribution.
What's going on is that people are comfortable with ideas that they're used to. The internet has enabled silos of opinion, so that lots of people aren't exposed to differing ideas, and since they are able to avoid ideas that make them uncomfortable, they do so. And those who live where a particular idea is really dominant are inevitably exposed to the local ideas. These aren't things that are being rationally decided on ANY side, but cities ensure a mix of ideas is presented, so those who live or work in cities are exposed to multiple ideas, and are therefore (on the average) less upset by them.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Thursday December 17 2020, @05:45AM (4 children)
Comcast and the rest of the crew have failed a large portion of their customers. If the government is going to hand out money, I'm glad its being split evenly.
It is hard to wire up houses in many places. This gives people the opportunity to log on with a solar panel and a dish in places where there would never realistically be cables.
Warning. Tangent:
Starlink isn't going to be the only satellite based internet provider. There will be many of them from multiple countries. There will be companies that want to have their own network for security reasons.
With all the new ways for people to log on in the world it seems that we're heading to an era where everyone on the planet will have access to the same networks. Yes governments are going to try to stop that and require their versions of the FCC to approve this, which will drive these network owners even more to have bandwidth that will always be accessible to anyone for the right price.
It also brings up the real prospect of multiple internets. We see the ones on the ground already going that way based on the borders of their countries. What's to say that once this stuff is all off-world that someone doesn't create their own network that has zero regulations.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @06:49AM (3 children)
I must strongly disagree with this statement. "A large portion" implies that there are exceptions. Comcast, Verizon, and all of the other incumbents have actively and deliberately screwed over the entire customer base.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 17 2020, @11:39AM (2 children)
The US is not the only country in the world.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday December 17 2020, @04:23PM
But, the US has the majority of the world's people.
(World pop 7.5 billion, US pop 350 million, divide, US is 4% of world population.)
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 18 2020, @06:43PM
The situation is exactly the same up here in Canada. The big providers get laws passed banning any meaningful competition and then proceed to screw the captive market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 17 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)
A busy airport has lots of folks, so by definition, not rural.
So why does the area around it qualify as rural?
Because a busy airport is noisy, so they tend to be located so that there are few folks around them.
So by definition, rural.
There are no doubt lots of things strange in the FCC's maps, but I don't see why this is one of them?
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday December 17 2020, @03:44PM
I used to live within bicycle distance of SFO, and it definitely shouldn't qualify as rural. Much of the area around the airport was industrial, and only slightly further out it was suburban, and close adjacent it was urban. (Some directions the suburban disappeared, with apartment houses next to hotels next to the airport.) Oakland Airport was much more rural, but that was because of a regional park and the bay. In other directions dense commercial was right next to the airport parking lots and then low density urban for the fairly wealthy. OTOH, the last time I saw San Jose airport it *was* basically open space around it. (I'm not sure that's still true, as it's been decades, and it was being rezoned at the time, but the presence of the garbage dump and the sewage processing plant tended to discourage people living nearby.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.