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SpaceX gets FCC approval to bid in $16 billion rural-broadband auction
SpaceX is one of the 386 entities that have qualified to bid in a federal auction for rural-broadband funding.
SpaceX has so far overcome the Federal Communications Commission's doubts about whether Starlink, its low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite service, can provide latency of less than 100ms and thus qualify for the auction's low-latency tier. With the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) set to distribute up to $16 billion to ISPs, the FCC initially placed SpaceX on the "incomplete application" list, which includes ISPs that had not shown they were qualified to bid in their desired performance and latency tiers. The FCC also said that LEO providers "will face a substantial challenge" obtaining approval to bid in the low-latency tier because they must "demonstrat[e] to Commission staff that their networks can deliver real-world performance to consumers below the Commission's 100ms low-latency threshold."
[...] SpaceX's Starlink service is in a limited beta and appears to be providing latencies well under the 100ms threshold. SpaceX still isn't guaranteed to get FCC funding. After the auction, winning bidders will have to submit "long-form" applications with more detail on how they will meet deployment requirements in order to get the final approval for funding.
The $16 billion available in the auction will be distributed to ISPs over ten years, paying all winning bidders combined up to $1.6 billion a year to deploy broadband in specified areas. SpaceX satellite service could theoretically be made available anywhere and doesn't require wiring up individual homes, so this funding won't necessarily expand the areas of availability for Starlink. But satellite operators can use FCC funding as subsidies allowing them to charge lower prices in areas that lack modern broadband access.
[...] The $16 billion in funding will be directed to census blocks where no provider reports offering home-Internet speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream. The list of approved census blocks contains 5.3 million unserved homes and businesses.
See also: SpaceX, Hughes and Viasat qualify to bid for $20.4 billion in FCC rural broadband subsidies
Previously: Ajit Pai Caves to SpaceX but is Still Skeptical of Musk's Latency Claims
SpaceX Starlink Speeds Revealed as Beta Users Get Downloads of 11 to 60Mbps
SpaceX Seeks FCC Broadband Funds, Must Prove It Can Deliver Sub-100ms Latency
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 15 2020, @11:34PM (11 children)
Moar bandwidth for city punks working from home in rural towns.
Flyover country, hear the message: Musk will gentrify you, 10 years tops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 15 2020, @11:53PM
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/31/6-us-cities-and-states-that-will-pay-you-to-move-there.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @12:19AM (9 children)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 16 2020, @12:38AM (8 children)
Plenty of city punks too [pewsocialtrends.org]. They'll start with buying in the existing villages, before sprawling new suburb-style around.
A whole generation of millennials no longer constrained to living with their parents, with children to be raised in the progressive culture.
Pink and green hair dyes and "authentically ripped jeans" will make a killing for a bit, until they get adjusted to the idea those things don't really matter for their social justice causes. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @01:22AM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 16 2020, @01:35AM (6 children)
At your peril. Not that you can do anything to avoid it, but it will come less surprising.
More boring than living with your parents during a lockdown? They are already bore-hardened; the twitch.tv is choke full of them.
Although, I reckon the first invasion wave will be made of hackernews dwellers. Well-paid by the flyover country standards, with enough mental mobility and courage to give it a try; the first ones to post on hackernews "I got here and it's nice enough and cheap and my lagtime is about 150ms" will crack the dam and cause the first rush of the flood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @02:27AM (5 children)
Well, yes. Their defenses are pretty impregnable.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 16 2020, @02:38AM (4 children)
Oh, don't delude yourself. Note that "mental mobility" doesn't mean "mentally sane" or rational.
Your only chance to delay them is to make soy/almond milk unavailable and keep the road full of potholes, so they can't get it via Amazon Prime. Won't last long, Bezos will invent something to download the stuff from the cloud via a drone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @03:10AM (3 children)
Well, let's consider the SN real world example. We have several people who already dwell in flyover territory. Runaway is mocked for living in Arkansas. No one will acknowledge The Mighty Buzzard's mighty fishing boat. My views on economics are claimed to be tainted merely by living in Yellowstone. There is this massive mental block.
The only documented time someone moved in to flyover was Azuma Hasuki who immediately fled to Erie, New York upon learning the dark truth of flyover. There is no "my latency is only 150 ms".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 16 2020, @04:15AM (2 children)
Context [xkcd.com], khallow. Let me remind it to you:
The bandwidth that Musk's satellite constellation will bring, if the other ISP-es don't want a slice too.
With or without money from FFC, Starlink is going to happen - because they can do it and their satellites go around the world so their customers aren't limited to the US market.
---
The trickle that will bring the dam down has started [phys.org]. No, seriously, get recommendations too [forbes.com].
Here's the search term you can use to keep an eye for this start: zoom towns [google.com]
You can get hackernews reaction [ycombinator.com] - mainly reserved, but there are posts like
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @02:18PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 16 2020, @10:04PM
Or they'll remain city punks and burn your employer's business down. Because, like Runaway likes to think, once a leftie, always a brown shirt. (large grin)
No, listen, I agree that they will change (and 'rural punks' may be a good term to designate them), but they will change the space they are living too. They may become rural, but they'll still remain punks. For example, at least the conservative base organized around religious values is doomed to extinction: those punks will prefer to play "Doom eternal" [youtube.com] than to go to church.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0