Annoyance Builds At Elon Musk Getting A Billion In Subsidies For Starlink Broadband

[boutons_deux]

a $600 first month price tag ($100 monthly bill and $500 hardware charge)

it's not some magic bullet for curing the "digital divide."

And without the capacity to service more densely populated areas,

the service is only going to reach several million rural Americans.

"SpaceX’s broadband-from-orbit “is a completely unproven technology,” said Jim Matheson, chief executive officer of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which has members that vied for the funding.

“Why use that money for a science experiment?"

56% of SpaceX's RDOF locations in a "low capacity" use case

(average data usage of 15.3 Mbit/s per location) and

57% of locations in a "high capacity" use case (average data usage of 20.8 Mbit/s per customer)

"will experience service degradation during peak times and

not meet the RDOF public interest requirements."

There's a lot of middle and last-mile fiber-based broadband solutions that will have a lot more capacity, being pushed by companies for which a few million bucks is a life or death equation.

Instead we're throwing a billion at a billionaire for a service that's not really all that affordable, and,

once fully loaded to capacity is very likely to come with all manner of throttling, deprioritization, and other restrictions in the post net neutrality era.https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210204/14210346186/annoyance-builds-elon-musk-getting-billion-subsidies-starlink-broadband.shtml

[DMC]

Outrage..

[Winehole23]

obviously, the mega-billionaire emerald mine heir needs more taxpayer money to develop the life-changing monopolies of the future.

[Winehole23]

(Mars colonization, looking at you.)