Elon Musk’s SpaceX said the FCC’s rejection of the $886 million Starlink subsidy was “unreasonable” and “largely unfair”, leaving millions of Americans “on the wrong side of the digital divide”.
Business Insider reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is dissatisfied with the FCC’s decision to refuse an $886 million subsidy for the company’s Starlink satellite internet service. SpaceX seeks a $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant from the FCC.
Elon Musk poses at SpaceX (The Pool/Getty)
SpaceX said the funding will help the company expand its Starlink service to rural homes and businesses in approximately 650,000 locations in 35 U.S. states. On August 10, the FCC denied the application, stating that the company “has failed to demonstrate that providers can deliver the promised services.”
In a recent regulatory filing, SpaceX’s director of satellite policy, David Goldman, said the FCC’s decision to refuse to fund the company was “a mistake, both legally and politically.” Goldman said the information contained in the FCC’s decision was “obtained from somewhere on the Internet.” Goldman said rejecting the Starlink subsidy has left many Americans “vaguely on the wrong side of the digital divide”.
In August, the FCC said it didn’t make sense to fund Starlink’s “emerging technology.” He also said that he could not give subsidies to businesses that did not deliver the speed he promised. But Goldman said the FCC ignored the evidence in SpaceX’s filing that Starlink could meet the RDOF requirements.
Goldman said the denial was “false and unfounded” as well as “contrary to evidence” and “largely unjustified”. According to the filing, Starlink currently costs $599 per user terminal and has more than 3,000 satellites in orbit and serves hundreds of thousands of users in the United States.
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Source: Breitbart
