FCC Officially Rejects Ajit Pai’s Boondoggle To Supply Elon Musk With Nearly A Billion Dollars In Subsidies
from the to-bad-so-sad dept
Elon Musk hates government subsidies. That’s what he says, right? He claims that we should “just delete them all,” and that “the federal budget deficit is insane.” Of course, the world’s richest man (for now) has received many billions in government subsidies for his companies. Indeed, you could argue that his success was very much predicated on getting so much in subsidies to pump up his companies when they were in trouble otherwise.
Given his professed (but not observed) hatred of subsidies, it seemed weird that one of Ajit Pai’s final moves as FCC chair was to dole out billions in subsidies under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to places that didn’t actually need it — including nearly $900 million to Musk’s Starlink operation, a part of his SpaceX company.
Last summer, the now Pai-less FCC decided to revisit some of those announced grants, telling SpaceX it needed to reapply for the funds, because it wasn’t clear that the company’s plans for the funds actually met the qualifications. Mr. “Delete All The Subsidies” could have simply dropped the request. But he didn’t.
And last week the FCC officially rejected the the renewed application, with current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel noting that Starlink “failed to demonstrate” that it could live up to the promises it made, and given the limited resources here, the money was better spent elsewhere.
“After careful legal, technical, and policy review, we are rejecting these applications. Consumers
deserve reliable and affordable high-speed broadband,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “We
must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future
that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures
that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements.”
“Starlink’s technology has real promise,” continued Chairwoman Rosenworcel. “But the
question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer
broadband—which requires that users purchase a $600 dish—with nearly $900 million in
universal service funds until 2032.”
In the official notice, the FCC noted:
Starlink, relying upon a nascent LEO satellite technology and the ability to timely deploy future satellites to manage recognized capacity constraints while maintaining broadband speeds to both RDOF and non-RDOF customers, seeks funding to provide 100/20 Mbps low latency service to 642,925 estimated locations in 35 states. The Bureau has determined that, based on the totality of the long-form applications, the expansive service areas reflected in their winning bids, and their inadequate responses to the Bureau’s follow-up questions, LTD and Starlink are not reasonably capable of complying with the Commission’s requirements. The Commission has an obligation to protect our limited Universal Service Funds and to avoid extensive delays in providing needed service to rural areas, including by avoiding subsidizing risky proposals that promise faster speeds than they can deliver, and/or propose deployment plans that are not realistic or that are predicated on aggressive assumptions and predictions. We observe that Ookla data reported as of July 31, 2022 indicate that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, including upload speeds that are falling well below 20 Mbps. Accordingly, we deny LTD’s and Starlink’s long-form applications, and both are in default on all winning bids not already announced as defaulted.
So, congrats to Elon Musk on not getting the subsidy that your company didn’t deserve and couldn’t qualify that you surely didn’t actually want, even though you applied (and re-applied) for it.
Filed Under: elon musk, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, rdof, satellite broadband, starlink, subsidies
Companies: spacex
Comments on “FCC Officially Rejects Ajit Pai’s Boondoggle To Supply Elon Musk With Nearly A Billion Dollars In Subsidies”
He's got to be thrilled
He was told that he wasn’t going to have to deal with something he doesn’t think should exist, man Musk has been having an awesome month.
Now if only that argument of ‘if you can’t provide what the subsidies are for you don’t get them’ were applied to a few other companies in the industry…
It must be shocking, sometimes, that some outfit, especially one in the internet/telecom space, doesn’t get free cash from the government.
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That is entirely due to the fact that “free” cash is only doled out to companies with a captive market (given how it has been doled out so far historically).
wired ground based system, Why it works
When everything else fails. the stuff Buried and protected tends to last allot longer. The problem with any of this Stuff, tends to be upgrades.
Ont he ground its easy to access and safer to Fix MANUALLY. How do you knockout and erase 4000 mini sats? So you can upgrade a system.
A cell system is only as strong as the wind and weather Against it. Ask the power lines out there and see how long it takes to repair them.
Re: How do you knockout and erase 4000 mini sats
If they have fuel, you order them to burn retrograde and they deorbit.
If they don’t have fuel, they’re already doomed to deorbit and burn up in a few months.
Alternate headline: FCC caves to the pressure of incumbents and corruption
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Elon’s not going to let you suck his actual dick, dude.
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Re: Re:
Will Biden and Dems suck yours…maybe they will.
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Leftists don’t like Biden either. Try again.
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s true, Biden is a middling centrist needledick and I’d prefer to see him retire from public service after his one term as POTUS is done.
Putting the cart in front of the horse.
Setup:
Last summer, the now Pai-less FCC decided to revisit some of those announced grants, telling SpaceX it needed to reapply for the funds, because it wasn’t clear that the company’s plans for the funds actually met the qualifications. Mr. “Delete All The Subsidies” could have simply dropped the request. But he didn’t.
And last week the FCC officially rejected the the renewed application, with current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel noting that Starlink “failed to demonstrate” that it could live up to the promises it made, and given the limited resources here, the money was better spent elsewhere.
Result:
Elon Musk hates government subsidies. That’s what he says, right? He claims that we should “just delete them all,” and that “the federal budget deficit is insane.”
Need I say more?
Pi… A. Shit. Pi. Good riddance.
I’ve come across a book by one Roger Douglas, a minister in the New Zealand’s Fourth Labour government, the lot that went toe-to-toe with the Reagan Administration over nuclear armed and powered ships and the Neither Confirm Nor Deny policy of the time. The book is titled “Toward Prosperity” and contains an interesting interchange between two NZ politicos, Bill Birch and Bob Jones on the night of the Budget, pg 87:
“Birch tucked his chin into his chest and replied that he was indeed very worried that all the assistance had been taken away from the productive sectors. “For God’s sake, Bill,” Jones said, “if they’re productive then they don’t need it.”
I think the principle’s the same. Crutches are for those who need them. Why a billionaire would need subsidies that would be better off spent on those with actual needs, like food, clothing, shelter, is a question billionaires don’t like asking.
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They already know the answer: They want all the money and they’ll do anything to get it, even if it means people who could use the money will die.
Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral.
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Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral.
Depends on the billionaire. You’re right about the vast majority of cases, though.
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No, it really doesn’t. No one person’s labor is worth enough to make a billion dollars in a single lifetime. You can only become a billionaire by exploiting the working class into the ground—figuratively and often literally.
Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral because a billionaire can’t escape the fact that they’re exploiting thousands—maybe even millions!—of working class people by paying them far less than a living wage in exchange for their labor and overcharging those same people for the same products they produce with that labor. Even the most philanthropic billionaires still got where they are by fucking over the poor. No billionaire is exempt from this; any who claim they are can kiss my poor pale-white ass.
Re: Re: Re:2
No one person’s labor is worth enough to make a billion dollars in a single lifetime.
I guess you’ve never heard of inherited wealth.
Re: Re: Re:3
And where do you suppose that inheritance originally came from?
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Hell, if the family is old (and rich) enough, you can probably trace some generational wealth back to the days when the United States legally allowed certain people to enslave other people.
Re: Re: Re:5
And so, of course, a billionaire who inherited their wealth is automatically bad even if they dedicate a portion of their riches to education programs for minorities. Q-/
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I don’t care how philanthropic they are—billionaires don’t become billionaires without exploiting the poor in some way. If billionaires want to be seen as something other than blights on this world, they would do everything they could to stop being billionaires—which basically means they’d stop investing money into anything that might make themselves richer, give away at least 90% of their wealth, and go fuck off somewhere private to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
Being a billionaire is unethical and immoral. I haven’t seen a single argument that disproves my statement. Feel free to try, but know that you’ll be doing the rhetorical equivalent of trying to climb Mt. Everest with nothing on you but your underwear and your wits. Good luck.
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I don’t care how philanthropic they are—billionaires don’t become billionaires without exploiting the poor in some way.
Then if you’re white, you need to make reparations to my community for your ancestors profiting from the enslavement of my own. If ancestral guilt should be a thing for billionaires, then it should be a thing for everyone. We’ve all got someone far up the family tree who did something bad.
Re: Re: Re:8
Sure, you could argue that. But who do you think should be punished more under the terms of ancestral guilt – the white billionaire, or the white Gen Z college student who can’t afford rent? Who do you think exploited your community more?
Re: Re: Re:9
Because people never lose money to have poor descendants, you mean? The concept of ancenstral guilt is as equal as rights should be.
Re: Re: Re:10
And how do you demand those poor descendants pay you back? I’m assuming that’s the bone you’re trying to pick. At that point what are you going to do, go for the pound of flesh a la Merchant of Venice?
Again, how do you demand poor descendants pay up?
Re: Re: Re:11
If one can’t pay in cash, pay in kind.
Read up on Native American suffering. Befriend a Native American and make the relationship stick.
That’s the fucking least one should do.
Not a fan of reparations, anyway. If one is sincere, one has to prove that sincereity through action.
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Based on your reactions so far, could’ve fooled me.
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And that automatically makes the person who inherited bad how?
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Inheritors of generational wealth aren’t necessarily bad because they inherit wealth. If those inheritors keep exploiting the poor and the working class to remain wealthy, however, they’re a hell of a lot less morally righteous than the people who don’t do that shit.
Re: Re: Re:5
It doesn’t make them bad. But what merits them receiving any sort of respect simply because they got rich when someone died?
Re: Re: Re:6
So should white Australians automatically be given a hard time because many are descended from criminals, even if those who’ve never done a bad thing in their lives? Most people judge others on their actions, but you want to judge them based on their ancestry. That’s the same basis as racism, in case you weren’t aware.
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No, I don’t.
I’m saying that if you got rich because a rich relative of yours passed away, that by itself doesn’t mean you deserve my respect.
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It isn’t Elon Musk who would receive the funds but Starlink for one. The pundits certainly haven’t helped with their synecdoches that conflate the person with the managed entity. It furthermore conflates purchases in exchange for goods and services with give aways. Why pay billionaires? Because you want them do something for you and you won’t get so much as the finger from a request without doing so.
That he is kind of a douche doesn’t change basic facts here. Like that they have the nerve to complain about a war-zone dispatchible fast solution might have unacceptable delays while the ground based telecoms have flat out pocketed subsidies for decades without buikdout.
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The failures of ISPs and telecoms shouldn’t give Starlink a free pass on its failures.
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That idea of using the productive for support is good generally but ignorant of economies of scale. It isn’t always the case but there are times when you can get even more bang for your buck via subsidies. Typically when it is an investment in world class equipment that just a successful industry isn’t enough money. There isn’t one answer to the question just like there isn’t one for “Should I buy this?”.
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I find Nick Hanauer’s article, “The pitchforks are coming… for us plutocrats”, an entertaining and informative read. The truth is that while many vested interests claim that the rich need to be rich because of all the business they encourage, that’s realistically not the case:
“We rich people have been falsely persuaded by our schooling and the affirmation of society, and have convinced ourselves, that we are the main job creators. It’s simply not true. There can never be enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. I earn about 1,000 times the median American annually, but I don’t buy thousands of times more stuff. My family purchased three cars over the past few years, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. I bought two pairs of the fancy wool pants I am wearing as I write, what my partner Mike calls my “manager pants.” I guess I could have bought 1,000 pairs. But why would I? Instead, I sock my extra money away in savings, where it doesn’t do the country much good.”
The only other reason why rich people need to be appeased is because they threaten to take their money elsewhere. But realistically, would that be any different from the current status quo, where local jobs are outsourced overseas to compliant sweatshop workers who are paid even less?