Republicans Are Mad The FCC Rejected Elon Musk’s Attempt To Get A Billion Dollars In Subsidies To Deliver Pricey Satellite Broadband To Some Traffic Medians
from the always-the-victim dept
You might recall that Elon Musk claims to hate taxpayer subsidies. They should all be “deleted.” Except for the subsidies given to his companies (often for doing nothing), of course.
Back in 2020, Musk’s satellite broadband venture, Starlink, gamed a Trump-era FCC subsidy program to try and grab $886 million in taxpayer dollars. It was a deal consumer groups noted was a huge waste of money, because the proposal itself — which involved bringing expensive satellite broadband to places like airport parking lots and traffic medians — clearly wasn’t the best use of taxpayer funds.
The Biden FCC noted the problems with the application and forced Starlink to re-apply. After some whining Starlink did, but was then rejected again by the FCC last year. The FCC stated that they weren’t sure Starlink could meet program speed goals consistently due to growing congestion and slowing speeds on the over-saturated network.
They also expressed concerns that the service might not be affordable to the heavily rural, lower income users most in need of help. Starlink requires a $600 up front equipment fee and costs $110 a month, and data consistently shows that affordability is a key obstacle to broadband adoption.
So this week, the FCC formally finalized its rejection of Starlink’s attempt to grab a billion dollars to deliver satellite broadband to some parking lots:
“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable. The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.”
The FCC made the right call. It makes much more sense to spend those subsidies to extend affordable, faster, and more reliable fiber access as far as possible, with 5G and fixed wireless filling in the gaps.
Starlink is nice for folks with absolutely no other options who can afford it, but we’ve noted repeatedly that it lacks the capacity to truly scale. The service only has around 1.5 million subscribers worldwide (far less than the 20 million Musk promised investors it would have by this point). It’s a rural niche option whose importance is routinely overstated in stories (like this latest story at the Nation).
For context, somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans lack access to broadband. Another 83 million (as of 2020) live under a broadband monopoly. Even with its full suite of low-Earth orbit satellites in space a few years from now, Starlink will barely make a dent in the underlying problem. And that’s before you get to the whole ruining astronomical research thing.
But, of course, Republicans like the FCC’s Brendan Carr are already throwing hissy fits because the Biden FCC refused to waste a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies on an expensive service that doesn’t scale. Carr, as is his way, took a very valid rejection of a wasteful proposal, and distorted it into a narrative where the government is somehow being particularly unfair to Elon Musk:
Even Elon’s mommy popped up to complain that the mean old government is being mean because it refused to give her son a billion dollars for no coherent reason:
It’s worth pointing out that Musk’s company certainly wasn’t alone in trying to game this particular program (the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF) with the Trump FCC and Brendan Carr’s help. The Biden FCC has had to come in and clean up the mess, suing numerous companies that tried to mislead the agency to grab taxpayer money for services they couldn’t actually deliver. All under Carr’s watch.
In fact the Trump FCC and Carr screwed up this particular subsidy program so badly, that when it came time to dole out $42 billion in infrastructure bill broadband funds, the Biden administration leapfrogged the FCC and put the NTIA in charge of managing much of it instead because they no longer trusted the agency’s reputation or competency. So Carr whining about the end result is particularly exhausting.
Again, the Biden FCC (which I criticize frequently and extensively) made the right call here technically and logistically. But Musk and his loyal Republican color guard are already busy reframing this as some kind of seedy personal government vendetta against Musk across the growing right wing propaganda echoplex.
Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, elon musk, fcc, fraud, high speed internet, rdof, rural digital opportunity fund, starlink, subsidies
Companies: spacex, starlink
Comments on “Republicans Are Mad The FCC Rejected Elon Musk’s Attempt To Get A Billion Dollars In Subsidies To Deliver Pricey Satellite Broadband To Some Traffic Medians”
omg – he got a note from his mother
isn’t that special
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Worth noting that she hadn’t said she’s proud of him…
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How do we know that’s really his mother’s account? She has a blue checkmark, so she could be anyone.
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It 100% tracks with her previous posts about her special little boy.
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Who else would start their message with “I am the mother of Elon Musk”? I mean, that’s definitely not something a schoolchild would use as the intro to a forged permission slip, right?
Please excuse my typing. I busted whichever hand it is I type with. Signed, Mrs. Musk.
Theses broadband subsidy programs are mostly wasting money on monopolistic companies. Good to learn that FCC are making some needed cuts.
Because at this point, I also should get one if a share my WiFi with some neighbors.
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I really wish these kind of things prioritized co-ops, non-profits, maybe ESOPs and municipal projects. We could use a Telecom equivalent of the REA.
I constantly see people say that it’s not cost effective to bring IP service to the rural areas.
But they seem to gloss over the fact that we’ve already brought a road and electricity service. Let alone First Class mail, Fire, police, etc.
Imagine a world
Imagine a world where the government not giving a billion dollars to a company owned by the richest person in the world is a form of harassment…and this world is also one in which “small government, free market” republicans are upset about it.
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These oligarchs are being victimized .. lol
Over and over, Carr has shown not just that he doesn’t have the basic competency for his job, but that he doesn’t even know what the agency he works for does.
i’m pretty sure at least half of his official statements are about him whining that the FCC should be doing something the FCC has no jurisdiction over.
Yet this anthropamorphic slurry-spreader was nodded through, while someone who knows what they’re doing let alone what the agency can do, was roadblocked to the point they withdrew.
Until we start fixing the problem of having ‘politically reliable, but utterly incompetent industry glovepuppets’ in regulatory positions, things are always going to be terrible.
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And as a Republican, that’s the #1 qualification for his nomination.
Re: Re: 'Now remember, don't use AT&T's official letterhead until you 'retire'.'
Number two I’d say, the number one qualification is knowing who they’re actually there to serve, and that it’s not the public.
Ruining astrological research?
Pretty sure you mean ruining astronomical research, although maybe not. If those satellites have the ability to push planets to different positions in their orbits, they may not be as low power as you think.
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Oh, I don’t know about that.
I mean, my astrologer told me that Landsat-4 was in the House of Communications that morning, meaning that it would be a good day to get property surveying done…
Epithet of the week
Can we have a new category? I nominate “anthropamorphic slurry-spreader”
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}}}:-)>
(happy klingon)
Hypocrite much?
Brandan Carr
“We hate wasteful spending.” “Well, except when the Biden administration blocks it. Then it’s, Spend baby, spend!!”
The endless persecution that hard-working billionaires suffer in this country is disgusting and un-American. Our Founding Fathers, being wealthy themselves, knew that the wealthy knew best and built our Nation around that guiding principle. For us to think we know better than the Founders is a level of hubris not seen since the Biden pressed the “HARASS A CONSERVATIVE” button on his desk (yes, the same button that used to make a Diet Coke pop out of a vacuum tube installed in the Resolution Desk, but times change and not always for the better).
I think we need to create a “Senator Whack-a-Mole” game.
Corporate welfare queen.
The FCC is doing it wrong.
I am not for giving Musk a single taxpayer cent, what the FCC is doing wrong is using high road language in their rejection. Musk and his republiklan toads are bitching as if they mocked him anyway so the FCC should totally mock and be a scornful towards hipocrites like Musk. Biden should do a few attack ads poking fun at the grown tool and his asshat mother for pouting because their shameless scam failed miserably. Nothing but open mockery and scorn should be the default attitude towards malfeasance like that.
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Along with both main political parties for not providing the utility themselves.
$1,000 for a poor family? Eww, no. $100 million for a major company? Sign the check!
Because if there’s one form of government welfare republicans do support it’s corporate welfare.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk is the Howard Hughes of our day. He is doing things with HIS money that benefits so iety as a whole. The first production all-ele tric car, global Internet access, reusable rockets and commercialized spaceflight. Now people bitch because he won’t give it away. Telephones used to be a luxury, now they’re given away by the government, Cars are now a necessity. Before long, subsidized space flight for lower-income families will be offered. THIS IS A CAPITOLIST COUNTRY AND THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY. WORK FOR IT. The U.S. military is a socialized spring board for young people, but nobody wants to be told what to do. Stop living in your momma’s basement and work for your own future, 8 stead of criticizing those who made their own success.
~ Army Veteran ~
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Absolutely wrong. Electric cars, in mass production, date back to the late 1800s. They have been produced in limited (but production line) runs ever since. Multiple manufacturers, including US companies, produced them in the 70s and 80s for the EU and Asian markets.
China, Hong Kong, Japan, and the Philippines, have all had standard purchase electric vehicles since the mid 90s, though mostly motorcycles and scooters
A member of my extended family bought an EV-1 (EV1) from GM. And went to court over their attempt to reclaim it.
Musk is just the latest in a long line.
Star predates them by a decade and a half. They branded and partnered with local satellite companies for dish installation but a single company provided the satellites for access.
Along with a dozen other companies. All at the same time. They weren’t even the first tourist flight.
Electric was once a luxury. So was running water. Moving on.
Highly unlikely. We’re a hundred years from any form of commercial space use. And without a need to get people to space, for work or food or anything else, nobody is going to be giving out discounted tickets. You don’t even get subsidies on your (not so mandatory) car.
I’m a vet as well. Doesn’t add any weight to your fiction. You’re simply wrong across the board here.
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
Location location
Places with generally poor reception? Have you ever tried to do anything in a cell stop lot ant an airport? Without paying for over priced wifi that is. (You complain about home internet prices but never the gouging at transport locales).
Which is the same comment I’ll make every time someone says something stupid or ignorant about the idea.
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That’s the government’s fault. Neither party has acted to roll out fibre to the population like they did with phones and electric and water.
Fact checking the claim. Competition doesn’t change pricing. I have a total of 4 standard company options and a half dozen boutique and commercial level choices. The cost here is the same as the east and west coast under monopoly.
🥱 launching a telescope costs less than building a large scale one that only works half the day.
The only complaint here is the man. One the author doesn’t like.
Until the government digs into the ground the internet will never be fixed up in this country.
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Right, so you don’t understand astronomy, or the fact that large telescopes are sometimes necessary, or the fact that grounded telescopes tend to last longer and be less costly to maintain than space telescopes, or the many logistical and other issues with only having space telescopes, or the fact that satellite internet also interferes with launched telescopes.
nothing good to expect from fake people that lied to get elected
i am not the greatest fan of elon musk, but the constitution and the laws are not to be played or triffled with. the journalists and the fbi have LIED and covered the contents of Biden’s son while the election was going on and clearly because those at the FBI ordering this and the journalists that did it are massively democrats. and liars. and now the truth is known, none of them want to talk about it… hypocrits, and liars.
i do not trust Biden nor its government because of this. they lied to he would get elected. eveyrone knows his son has an hand into extremely murky and highly likely illegal things they did in east-europe… democrats know it. again : liars, and hypocrits.
they don’t care about the constitution or laws. they have lied to get elected by covering several scandals, so every step they know make is suspicious.
democrats are like that harvard’s director that just got fired (well, she left before she got fired…) : fake people, with fake diplomas made through copy-paste, that get jobs because they’re on the “right side” (id est, their democrat side) and somtimes, theyre plain stupid, incompetnet and fake, but their skin color gets them the job.
republicans are not better, don’t fool me for being one of them. i hate both those sides.