SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant::FCC doubts ability to provide high-speed, low-latency service in all grant areas.

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    SpaceX is furious at the Federal Communications Commission after the agency refused to reinstate an $886 million broadband grant that was tentatively awarded to Starlink during the previous administration.

    But the satellite provider still needed FCC approval of a long-form application to receive the money, which is meant to subsidize deployment in areas with little or no high-speed broadband access.

    The Starlink and LTD rejections were the two biggest changes to a $9.2 billion round of grants that, in the Rosenworcel FCC’s words, fueled “complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas.”

    The August 2022 ruling that rejected the grant called Starlink a “nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology” with “recognized capacity constraints.”

    In rejecting SpaceX’s appeal, yesterday’s FCC order said the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau “followed Commission guidance and correctly concluded that Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low-latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support.”

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged Starlink’s capacity limits several times, saying for example that it will face “a challenge [serving everyone] when we get into the several million user range.”


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