The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has denied Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund that was intended to expand broadband service in rural areas.
The rejected award, submitted under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) program, was turned down after the FCC concluded that Starlink had not demonstrated it could deliver the service it promised. Regulators said the application failed to meet the program’s requirements and therefore could not be granted nearly $900 million in public support.
This action follows a previous FCC decision last year that similarly challenged the award; SpaceX, the company behind Starlink, has appealed that ruling. The original RDOF grant would have supported deployment of service offering 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload speeds with low latency to 642,925 locations across 35 states.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel explained that the agency has a dual responsibility: to ensure consumers nationwide have access to reliable, affordable high-speed broadband and to be prudent stewards of limited public funds aimed at expanding rural connectivity. According to Rosenworcel, the FCC conducted a thorough legal, technical, and policy review and determined the applicant did not meet the burden necessary to receive the funds.
“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,” Rosenworcel said. “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.”
Not all commissioners agreed. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr dissented, arguing that the commission has not historically required awardees to prove years in advance that they will meet future service obligations.
In response, Christopher Cardaci, SpaceX’s head of legal, defended Starlink’s proposal in a letter to the FCC. He said Starlink remains the most viable option to connect Americans in rural and remote areas “where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”
(Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash)
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