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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: 5, Interesting) by shortscreen on Friday October 16 2020, @12:14AM (9 children)
Is it really cheaper to launch satellites all over the place than to run a cable/fiber? I have to wonder how rural areas ever got electricity or POTS if it's supposedly this difficult to get broadband.
According to this page about the Rural Electrification Act, Congress issued $410 million in loans to non-profit cooperatives and within two years 1.5 million farms had electricity. https://eh.net/encyclopedia/rural-electrification-administration/ [eh.net]
This page says 80% of farms by 1950 (whereas in 1936 it was only 10%) https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/05/20/celebrating-80th-anniversary-rural-electrification-administration [usda.gov]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday October 16 2020, @12:32AM (4 children)
Let's just say the broadband subsidy game has been played before, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
SpaceX has probably spent somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion on Starlink launches and is about ready to start offering service. That cost will go up by the time the full constellation goes up, but not so much if they can switch to using Starship. Hopefully that can happen by late 2021.
Starlink is also capable of reaching multiple countries with the same "build-out", and can be used by RVs, boats, planes, military vehicles/planes, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2020, @01:01AM (3 children)
"Starlink is also capable of reaching multiple countries"
and is much easier to snoop than having to tap physical cables
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 16 2020, @01:15AM (1 child)
Try encryption.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday October 16 2020, @02:35AM
And backdoors.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday October 16 2020, @02:48AM
Because? Cables tend to be pretty centralized systems too and tapping physical cables just isn't that hard for anyone who could similarly tap satellite systems.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday October 16 2020, @04:19AM (2 children)
Is it really cheaper to launch satellites all over the place than to run a cable/fiber? I have to wonder how rural areas ever got electricity or POTS if it's supposedly this difficult to get broadband.
According to this page about the Rural Electrification Act, Congress issued $410 million in loans to non-profit cooperatives and within two years 1.5 million farms had electricity. ... This page says 80% of farms by 1950 (whereas in 1936 it was only 10%)
It's very simple actually: look at those years. The REA was back in the 1930s-40s, not the 2000s-2020s. Things were very different in America back then: stuff was actually built, and quickly. Look at the Empire State Building: it was over 100 floors tall, and they completed 1 floor *per day*, in the 1930s. Good luck getting a building like that constructed in America today at that pace. Or look at subway lines in NYC: they built a bunch of them in the first half of the 20th century (some even in the late 1800s). But they haven't built any new ones in *decades* now; they're completely incapable of building any new subway lines despite much greater demand now.
Infrastructure in this country is decaying and crumbling because we as a country simply can't get anything done any more.
Check out the high-speed rail in California: they spent $1 Billion (!) on it, and didn't build anything at all! Where'd the money go? It wasn't to any kind of construction.
If you want to see any kind of infrastructure projects getting built, you have to get outside the USA to see it, because we just don't build anything anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2020, @06:16PM
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], 1 story per day was the goal but they only actually achieved 4½ stories per week. Still impressive and was apparently a record pace at the time.
However you also have to consider when comparing to modern projects that many workers were killed during construction, and as a society we tend to frown upon that sort of thing these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2020, @06:47PM
Well that's doesn't seem too surprising. A mere billion dollars does not sound like enough to build anything of the sort? Can you even build a regular rail line in the US for that price?
Even comparing to historical high speed rail projects this seems exceedingly low. For example, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen had a construction budget of ¥300 billion in 1958 (a quick search for historical exchange rates, seems worth about USD 6 billion today). It apparently went way over budget (I could not find a final cost figure in a quick search), and I suspect the cost of living in Japan was massively lower in 1958 than it is in California today...
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Friday October 16 2020, @03:02PM
Wrong question to ask. The Left question would be:
If you subsidized rural broadband, and paid two companies money to provide it. One company took the money and did nothing for rural people. SpaceX took the money after partially building and demonstrating a working solution. Which company actually improved the lives of rural people?
Does it matter if land based cables / fiber are cheaper, if nobody will build it?
The question is similar to comparing SpaceX success with "old space" companies that have "experience" at much higher prices, but can't seem to deliver what is being paid for. Help, we need cost plus!
I won't bring up Tesla vs legacy ICE car companies that merely tiptoe into the market and get their toes moist, but have no serious plans to build scalable EVs that would destroy their existing market, production, factories, worker skills. Very much like horse and buggy vs automobile. So if there were incentives to build zero emission vehicles, would it really matter, or does it matter which companies will actually build it?
Then there are the merits of Beta vs VHS we could discuss.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.