The reason individual speeds were trending down is because the number of users is increasing. Now that the service no longer has wait-lists and is fully available to everyone, one would imagine speeds increasing as more infrastructure is brought online.

I think #1 is what really strikes me here.

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?

There's fines and no evidence SpaceX was getting billions. The award amount is public and paid monthly

Sorry, I thought the award stated was annual, reading it more closely I see that it's not.

The amount everyones quoting is the full fat amount over the life of the contract.

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.

Service tiers, QOS, QCI