FCC Commissioner demands review of Starlink rural broadband subsidies A member of the Federal Communications Commission's leadership team has come out swinging on behalf of SpaceX after the company's bid for rural broadband subsidies via its Starlink satellite business was rejected. The FCC withdrew its award of $885.5 million under Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) in August, claiming the …
Not easily as it is a phased array antenna. The complexity of tracking has been moved from the mechanical domain to the electrical.
But obviously running fibre to the middle of sodding nowhere is so much easier :) Lots of contracts, lots of infrastructure, lots of delays and lots of opportunity to skim a bit off the top here and there so far more profitable than fixing the problem.
"But obviously running fibre to the middle of sodding nowhere is so much easier :) "
Most people forget about Wireless Broadband. It's not that hard to do in the rural farmlands of middle America where the land is so flat one can see great distances. The fiber can be run to a tower and signals sent out from there.
I would guess that those "chips" all over the antenna board are phase shifters used to electronically steer the antenna beam. Conceptually, you need one of those for each active antenna element although there may well be design tricks used to cut the number required a bit. Anyway, phased array antennae have been around for half a century, and I would guess the Starlink folks picked the best suited current design for their unit. I wouldn't count on any major design breakthroughs.
Maybe someone around here is familiar with the current state of the art and can enlighten us.
I set up a Starlink terminal for client on a remote site in the UK a month or so back.
Took it out of the box, sat it on a patio using the included stand, plugged it all in, connected my computer, then sat to think about how to get it working (ie. use 4G to connect to find some instructions as there were none included in the box - I should point out the unit had previously been used elsewhere by the same client).
Before I had a chance to think too much, the thing started moving and tilting itself much to my surprise. I had only just got the 4G connected and had not downloaded any instructions, so I connected to the Starlinks wi-fi instead to see if I could find it's own web status page or something, and as I fired up the browser, it promptly loaded all my previous pages. I double checked the 4G was disconnected (it was) so did a bit of surfing and fired up a speed test page. It confirmed I had a Starlink Ip address, and indicated I had around 120mb/s down and 10mb/s up. Amazing. Less than 5 minutes from opening the box.
You get a local/CGNAT (10.x.y.z) network address rather than a proper address, so it's a bit like a 4G connection in that respect. However I plugged a Draytek router into the ethernet port of the Starlink and the Draytek happily established it's VPN connection back to main office and all devices on the remote site were then as visible from HQ as we expected.
It ran quite happily and without a glitch for 2 -3 weeks until we finally got the gigabit fibre installed.
9.5 out of 10. I never thought I could say anything like that about a Musk product.
Yes the kit works, the question is whether it's a good public investment.
Essentially give Starlink a guaranteed subsided business to supply certain rural areas with a service that works from day one, but might not be as great in 5years VS run fibre which can be expanded and improved and supply fast service for decades.
It's like for some remote rural areas it might make more sense to pay a local taxi company rather than run a bus, but it wouldn't necessarily be the best thing to give UBER a $Bn instead of building a subway.
The other point is if you do FINALLY get fibre run in to a remote area you will have far more bandwidth available than Starlink can offer. Any symmetric bandwidth as well (probably, the fibre does not care) so if you are doing video conferencing, etc, you don't have the typical legacy assumption of high download requirement versus light upload.
I hate to tell you this, but fiber won't be run to these rural areas for 2 decades or more. The population density simply isn't high enough to justify the capital expenditures needed, and frankly there just isn't enough interest in "the innarwebz" in some of these areas to ensure that even 1/10th of the population would take it.
"The population density simply isn't high enough to justify the capital expenditures needed'
That works against Starlink too. They need to deploy some 42,000 satellites (a Musk figure) to get the coverage they want with the advertised bandwidth. The looming question is if there are enough people in remote areas that can afford the service to pay for all of that. It's awesome for somebody that likes to go drive-about in the outback yet still use the internet, but as soon as they pull into their home in Melbourne (provided they're allowed to connect) the speed drops to pitiful due to everybody else using the service nearby. Is it still worth the money or would they be better off with a less expensive service with greater latency while they're are roaming about in the wilderness?
Bravo Sierra. The land based providers have already had DECADES of opportunity to run fiber, and they haven't done squat.
The more I look at this problem the more I realize this is about trust. I don't trust the land based providers to do anything. I'm not a Musk fanboi, but I do have to objectively look at promises delivered versus promises made. I have to say I trust Musk to be a better steward of public money than the legacy land based telcos.
My brother was given a quote of about $2,000 from the MUNICIPAL ISP for running about 200 feet of fiber to his house. OTOH, I got fiber installed in my house with no charges other than the regular monthly bill - even got the first for $5 as part of pre-ordering a year before the fiber was installed in my area.
I have fiber optic to my house and I live in rural Iowa. About 3 miles out from a town population 760 and the next town has about 7600 people. It's a local company so that's why we have fiber here. You can get phone Internet and cable TV from them.
Not an easy to read map but it looks like they provide fiber internet in most of a roughly 14 x 11 mile area. But there is a big hole in that of 5.6 square miles. They don't provide fiber on the lake.
"Yes the kit works, the question is whether it's a good public investment."
There are other services which aren't government subsidized already, Viasat and Hughes. Perhaps not as fast and too much latency for a gamer, but useable. It's not reasonable to think that everybody everywhere must have access to everything all of the time. If you live in the city, you get a certain suite of services and shopping at the expense of traffic, crime and being right on top of the neighbors. Live in the country and you skip out on the noise, traffic, much of the crime and neighbors are further away although so is shopping and access to some services. I'm in the middle. If I had the choice of being further out, I'd do that, but there isn't a further out that isn't off-grid which isn't a sacrifice I want to make.
My wired line ISP (Centurylink) has been bending me over a barrel for 20 years as the only game in town. I have paid them a mandatory "Infrastructure Improvement Fee" the entire time. Never gotten above 7mb/s. They never spent a dime of that money on making their service better.
Starlink was nothing when announced in January 2015. Seven years later I am rocking decent bandwidth out in the sticks. If Starlink could build that entire infrastructure in that time, the wired line ISPs could have done something to compete, but they didn't.
All this whining from legacy wired line providers is just their death throes. They failed to re-invest in their market and Starlink has stolen their lunch and dinner. Decades of craptastic customer service have pent up anger from their customers. They are delighted to have an option and cannot wait to say Foxtrot Oscar to the phone companies.
I don't like the government taxing & spending my money. But.... If government money must be issued, it should go to the company that has gotten the job done. Not the companies which have done nothing for years.
Sure, the government could also migrate to Celsius and metric system. Right after passing policing reforms to get rid of the institutionalized racism.
Subsidies do work and at least are something that the obstructionist fascists can't block so do cut them some slack.
I presume they don't drive on any government provided highways then?
You don't need to be a communist to agree that some things are better provided by the government. Highways is one such thing, and I would argue that communications cables are a bit like highways.
"I would argue that communications cables are a bit like highways."
I see roads as a congealed form of liquid rock and about the maximum level of technology that the US government is competent to handle. Let face it, it's a country run by a load of lawyers.
I see utilities as better being handled by private interests but with some serious oversight and regulations. If the electric company has money to sponsor a sports stadium, they should have the money to be building out their infrastructure instead. Executives should have serious limits on compensation and there might even be a good case for the utilities to not be publicly traded. If the focus was shifted to the long term and not how the numbers are shaping up for the quarter, it might be better for all of the customers they serve. The internet is far past its novelty phase and solidly into the realm of a utility.
Good.
I know someone with Starlink, and it's great. But, the point of the USF is to encourage development of broadband services in underserved areas (originally, it was to make sure people had access to landline phone service, but times have moved on.) Starlink already has service deployed, therefore it's true that the USF funds would be better spent on encouraging someone else to further increase the service availability in these areas. Secondly, as a practical matter if you're really willing to spend over $100 a month for internet, most of these underserved areas already have 4G mobile broadband and a few other satellite internet providers... Starlink is better, but part of the point of USF is to help keep service affordable. It'd be better to have actual more affordable internet service than have high priced internet service with the feds paying for your internet bill.
I take umbrage with the comment about "really willing to spend over $100 for internet [you can use 4G mobile broadband]".
When I purchased our (rural) home 8 years ago I checked with both Comcast and Verizon. Based on my address they both assured me that they provided broadband service there. Closed on the house, only to discover that did in fact NOT provide service here - just in the census area our address falls under.
Ended up getting DSL-service from Verizon - $60 a month for 3Mpbs. The cost is now up to $105 a month and the speed is down to around 1Mbps.
Mobile service is very spotty, even with a booster. In addition, virtually all mobile plans (including 5G) available in our area have a data cap of 50-100GB, after which the user is throttled to "3G speeds" - which generally means less than 512 kbps.
So, $110 a month instead of $105 for 150 times the speed is not bad at all. As for the $600 customer portion of the dish, that's quite a bit less than the $72,000 Comcast wants from me for running a cable to my house.
My situation is not unique, and in fact not as bad as it is in many other (mostly rural) areas.
Oh yes I have the joys of CenturyLink. $80 a month for 40/5 DSL (really 32/4.5 or so due to line length.) Under the telecom act, the "regional bell operating companies" (CenturyLink here used to be Qwest, who used to be US West)... under the telecom act, everybody but Qwest chose option a "You can compete nationwide, but you must give up the monopoly in your operating area." Qwest chose option B "you cannot expand outside your service area, but you maintain your monopoly." Then a few years later they got a huge fine for illegally trying to offer service outside their area (and got the contracts for service forceably cancelled) -- it made me glad to see that (for once) the feds didn't let some company get away with shenanigans like that. Locally, the cable company (Mediacom) and DSL company (Centurylink) act as a duopoly, they really don't compete on speeds or services. Luckily, within the last year both ImOn and Metronet have begun rolling out here -- here's hoping they all get into a big ol' price war so I can get service at a decent price.
Just to point out... USF gone wrong, they give moeny to some jackass like AT&T, who say "hey thanks for the money" and that's that. This has happened before. USF gone well, they get an application from usually a local internet provider (sometimes it's a wireless ISP -- not billing like a cell phone company, billing like an internet provider that just happens to not run a wire to your house), sometimes fiber... that wants to expand into these areas, they get the funds to do so, and the people in the underserved area get good service at a good price. I say don't give it to Starlink, just make sure to not give it to the likes of AT&T or CenturyLink either.
Then a few years later they got a huge fine for illegally trying to offer service outside their area (and got the contracts for service forceably cancelled) -- it made me glad to see that (for once) the feds didn't let some company get away with shenanigans like that.
They should have had their local monopoly cancelled, would have hurt a lot more.
"They should have had their local monopoly cancelled, would have hurt a lot more."
Yes, but. The secondary and tertiary fallout might have been a huge problem for the customers. This is why I'd like to see some prison sentences being handed out to C-Level executives that do naughty things. The company can be left to operate so a region isn't suddenly without phone, power or internet, but a CEO winds up in an orange jumpsuit spending their days doing analysis for the SEC or GAO reviewing tedious accounting documents.
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