Thursday, August 11, 2022

FCC Rejects SpaceX Bid For Rural Broadband Subsidies For Starlink

The Federal Communications Commission has rejected a bid by SpaceX to access Rural Digital Opportunity Funds, saying that SpaceX's Starlink network " are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements." SpaceX had asked for a subsidy of nearly $900M from the program. The FCC said that, although "Starlink's technology has real question", the question was whether the FCC should "publicly subsidize" SpaceX' "still developing technology for consumer broadband." The FCC also rejected funding it had awareded to another firm, LTD Broadband--worth $1.3 billion--after finding the firm was "not reasonably capable of deploying a network of the scope, scale, and size" required of the firm's winning bids.