While Starlink faults the Bureau for relying on the most recent available data
at the time of its decision to evaluate is existing network performance, Starlink
does not explain what other data source the Bureau should have used in lieu of
using the most recently available data. When the Bureau's decision was made,
the most recent available evidence showed that "Starlink’s performance had been
declining for download speed, upload speed, and jitter test performance." In
other words, it was not only failing to meet the RDOF public interest
obligations, but also trending further away from them.Instead, use > *quote*. It’ll be unindented but readable, which is an improvement over being indented but unreadable:
> While Starlink …
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-105A3.pdf
> What good is an agreement to build out service by 2025 if the FCC can, on a whim, hold you to it in 2022 instead? In 2022, many RDOF (the award in question) recipients had deployed no service at any speed to any location at all, and they had no obligation to do so. By contrast, Starlink had half a million subscribers in June 2022 (and about two million in September 2023).
And this scathing conclusion:
> I was disappointed by this wrongheaded decision when it was first announced, but the majority today lays bare just how thoroughly and lawlessly arbitrary it was. If this is what passes for due process and the rule of law at the FCC, then this agency ought not to be trusted with the adjudicatory powers Congress has granted it and the deference that the courts have given it. -- FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington
That said, how the dissenters characterize it is nowhere near how it works. They’d like you to believe that you won a bid, and from then on, it’s “OK, talk to you at the deadline, enjoy our money!”
Instead, it seems to me that it’s a continuous process where you must present plans along the way, and progress is measured, as it should be because we’re dealing with billions in public funds.
The idea that this is exclusively targeted at Musk is also just nonsense. This article[1] states that Terrestrial telco LTD Broadband also lost their allotment of subsidies, and a cursory glance at the documents on the FCC website shows that many other companies lost theirs either due to withdrawing or having “defaulted” (i.e., not followed through on the promises/requirements).
But none of that is compatible with the victim narrative of Musk et al., of course Musk was the biggest in the subsidies; the other companies won smaller projects.
0: https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904
1: https://spacenews.com/fcc-upholds-denial-of-starlinks-900-mi...
RDOF requires speed testing of the devices deployed under RDOF, not the entire network.
If say you have a 900Mhz network and you plan to deploy 5GNR for fixed wireless, they don't get to tell you you can only achieve 1 Mbps right now.
You don't need to start deployment till you get the money. And there's deployment and testing steps.
The point was that it’s not some conspiracy against Musk, there are others that defaulted. Other than LTD and SpaceX there are 20 others that defaulted last year for varying reasons.
> RDOF requires speed testing of the devices deployed under RDOF, not the entire network.
You’re talking about seeing if the requirements are met at the end, the FCC and I are talking about looking at how feasible and likely it is that the requirements are going to be met before handing the bag with money.
> If say you have a 900Mhz network and you plan to deploy 5GNR for fixed wireless, they don't get to tell you you can only achieve 1 Mbps right now.
No they don’t. But they do get to tell you how feasible your plan is, how realistic your schedule is and how likely it is 5GNR is going to meet the requirements of your bid based on the knowledge of the technology and historical performance at prior implementations.
When you submit a LEO satellite bid with the exact same specifications as the ones you currently use, then you can’t then around and cry when they look at its current performance and performance trends.
> You don't need to start deployment till you get the money.
True, but you do need to present a plan that isn’t based on lofty promises and has a that explains why it’s likely you’ll be able to meet the requirements of your bid.
Edit: Just now realized that you’re wrong on not having to build anything, there are buildout requirements.
The build requirements, like the speed requirements are for 2025
1. It looks like the commission believes Starlink is trending away from the targets rather than toward them, and that can't help their case.
2. It's hard for me to see how there would not be at least some political considerations here. The fact that this program exists at all is a political decision. So it's part & parcel of the playing field — which is probably why most leaders work hard to not piss off their regulators.
It's like standing in front of a train and not moving because you asked the conductor to stop.
What happens when they reach 2025 and billions of dollars have gone down the drain? Why wait?
You have to show you can do most of it yourself i.e raise the money.
After a %age deployment the FCC checks if you've met the deployment timeline and checks your speeds then starts paying you and keeps testing as you deploy according to the timeline.
You don't get a dime upfront.
Until there's actual evidence, I would be inclined to dismiss them.
I've seen no evidence supporting that claim, and lots of evidence to counter it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38633303
IMO not political. I remember Ajit Pai didn't want starlink
We no longer live under the rule of law, there is no equality brfore it, nor do the gears of justice turn without bias, lady justice isnt blind.
But yeah, we can all pretend and lie and make up bullshit excuses that will change on whim. Again, we have so much extensive documentation and people keep pretending it doesnt exist. Perhaps like my comment, does it exist for you?
I didn’t find the article especially clear on this point, but it sounds like Starlink says that if the decision were taken today rather than in 2022, the performance data wouldn’t look so dire, and the FCC might have more faith in their promise to launch high-performance payloads with Starship during the grant’s required timeframe, is that what you mean?
1. Tesla gets no invite to whitehouse EV summit despite being the sole reason for the current EV movement
2. Tesla model 3/Y initially barred from new EV subsidies
3. SpaceX being investigated by justice department for not hiring foreigners (literally illegal due to ITAR)
4. NASA awards blue origin more than it awarded SpaceX for lunar lander despite them having zero orbital rocket experience or even a proper roadmap to orbit
5. FAA drags heels on approving starlink tests preventing progress on the requirements they say were failed to have been met today
6. Today's news about FCC revoking subsidy for the only company that actually cares to provide highspeed internet to rural Americans, which congress has appropriated funding for several times in the past two decades, and rewarded companies have failed to deliver on
It's safe to say any kind of bullshit can be justified (with even more bullshit reasons), so it's hard to believe actions like this are made good faith. I'm not just going to trust criminals because they're robbing someone I don't like.
Why would Tesla be at a summit on union-made EVs? If you look at the actual speech Biden gave at the event, a lot of it is pretty counter to Tesla's anti-union stance: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
Anybody else but Trump would be in prison already for what he has done (urging his followers who he knew to be armed to "go to the capital and Fight Like Hell"). So it is true that equality before the law is definitely lacking in action.
Another thing that makes me agree with "there is no equality" is that when you follow the news you see things like Giuliani owes his lawyers over million dollars. So it seems you need over a million dollars to get justice. Or alternatively, you can try to avoid justice, by spending millions.
Trump says he has "over $100 million in legal fees"
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4282653-trump-s....
So again it seems you need $100 million to get justice, or alternatively to escape from it. How can justice that costs $100 million be fair and equitable to all?
Quote from the article:
>Starlink is the only company actually solving rural broadband at scale! They should arguably dissolve the program and return funds to taxpayers, but definitely not send it (to) those who aren’t getting the job done
Are these other companies meeting the targets? If not then it seems pretty arbitrary to reject just SpaceX for not doing so yet.
>In 2022, many RDOF recipients had deployed no service at any speed to any location at all, and they had no obligation to do so
Maybe this is just more spin from people who want to turn this into another political battleground. It's not entirely clear to me, but it seems like there is room for doubt.
Lol, what is the FCC on? No one else comes even close to their launch record [1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_He....
SpaceX themselves have said that the future of their satellite internet business essentially depends on being able to put up a bigger model to replace the current ones, so much bigger that they can't feasibly use their existing, well-proven rockets to launch them.
For the record: I'm not commenting on whether the government was right or wrong to cancel the subsidy for SpaceX. I'm simply explaining why SpaceX's inability (so far) to get Starship to orbit is referenced, and more specifically, why the launch reliability of Falcon 9 is specifically not relevant in a sentence that says "Starship".
I'd imagine that there are also concerns about the close ties Musk has to the Russians and how he's tried to insert himself into the Ukrainian conflict on numerous occasions.
[1] Not the largess of traditional government contractors Lockheed and Boeing, but the plethora of startups entering into this space.
Your argument is completely detached from reality, and devoid of logic.
The X beatings will continue until the tweeting improves.