Starlink benefits as Trump admin rewrites rules for $42B grant program

Trump admin decides fiber Internet won't be prioritized in BEAD grant program.

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[dmsilev]

Guess the local monopolies should have used all that money they got over the decades to develop their networks. Good let them burn.

Elon Musk has managed the extremely impressive feat of being more evil and more money-grubbing than either the cable companies or the phone companies.

 

[shawnce]

damn, maybe there should be some sort of government program to encourage fiber buildout in rural areas

I can't get a BEAD on what such a program could be...

 

[David Mayer]

There are still way too many places in the United States and Canada where even shitty cable still doesn't reach, nor does a DSL connection, letting people deal with..shudder...dialup...

As much as I hate to say it, Starlink is a boon to exceedingly rural households who have zero choice in inexpensive and reliable internet connections.

In Canada there are quite a few fly in communities where the only way in is either via ice road in the winter or literally flying into the community. These communities have massively benefited from Starlink when it's been introduced.

As much as I hate to say it, Starlink is a boon to exceedingly rural households who have zero choice in inexpensive and reliable internet connections.

You know what would be better? Fiber.

 

[vought1221]

It's just another example of their core base voting against their own interests.

Guess who's never going to have any trouble getting fast package delivery? Big ol' urban density residents. My SoCal block crawling in deliveries, I get shit next day easy.

Meanwhile y'all living at the end of 5 mile dirt roads? If I'm trying to make a profit and not provide service driving down your road is red ink on my ledger. Not worth the hassle.

Twelve miles from the Reno airport.

FedEx has taken nine business days to deliver priority overnight from San Francisco. Overnights get here in day three.

No kid is gonna bet their ass on a million dollar truckload every morning for $20/hr when the roads are narrow and possibly icy.

USPS is here every single day in 60+ wind and snow.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

All of you carrying a heavy load of EDS, go pound sand. StarLink is literally the only provider that actually provides internet service of > 5mbs in so many rural areas. That grant should have been award many years ago but wasn't. Fortunately Starlink is such a great product it doesn't depend on federal funding to be available.

Get your head out your ass and give credit for success. Starlink solve a real problem that "Fiber" was never going to. Companies do not want to build out miles of fiber infrastructure to rural Newfoundland or rural Alabama.

So they're providing you service already?

Why do they need the grant then? I don't think my fiber ISP should receive grant money for providing me access that they already provide.

Wouldn't you prefer the option of fiber, which can scale to cover more users in your area? Or are you happy sharing that limited bandwidth with everyone else who falls into the same spotbeam?

 

[Damnicus]

It's 2025 if your ISP didn't get you fiber 10 years ago they never are. But they'll keep promising to develop rural areas for the money though.

My ISP rolled out fiber a year and a half ago, in rural Vermont.

 

[Anti Jimmy]

Fiber is now "woke," too?

WTF even is going on? I don't understand anything anymore.

 

[Vincent Hanna]

Boycott all Musk companies.

 

[wizzywig]

ARREST PRESIDENT MUSK NOW.

 

[tie]

I’ve never heard anyone say that Elon Musk was bad at leveraging money. $250MM in exchange for billions. All he had to do was destroy the entire system of government which has made millions of people’s lives better for the better part of a century.

What a jackass.

It's not just Musk. Everybody at SpaceX is working to enable this corruption. It's a whole company of traitors.

 

[maxoakland]

This is obvious self-dealing and corruption and Ars’s headline is waaay too “neutral” in the face of that

 

[jpera]

If an adversary were to blow up an atomic bomb in the upper atmosphere then the US would be screwed...

Period.

(Internet access would not be your top priority)

Edit: added 'not' , which was my original intention.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

lol, won't advocate it, but will make people think it. Real brave.

One gets you banned, one doesn’t. I’m pretty sure I got temporary ban for that very thing.

 

[SubWoofer2]

My favorite thing about the word "woke" is that when you see someone who doesn't understand it try to use it, you know everything else that follows is going to be bullshit.

I've been hearing it for the last decade, usually from people I wouldn't invite to my barbecue, and I still don't know what it means.

It appears to not have a specific meaning. It appears to possess a phatic meaning, inserted whenever a dog-whistle dislike or hatred is desired to be said about anything.

"I had to drag my sorry ass out of bed today, that woke sun was in my eyes."

As for the conflict of interest that Canadian/South African Musk has about US internet funding? Surely the checks and balances system of US governance would address that?

 

[wxfisch]

Congratulations you live in a area where your local monopoly decided to offer you some extra bandwidth they had laying around. Now try moving 1 mile outside of the city limits and see if you can get fiber.

I mean the only places I have ever had fiber were in the suburbs, the few years I lived in the city all I had was crappy cable internet

 

[raxx7]

Fiber is now "woke," too?

WTF even is going on? I don't understand anything anymore.

Woke has long been taken over by the far-right as an buzzword for anything they don't like.

i guess it's maybe more noticeable here in non-English speak countries where the activist left didn't borrow this term but the Trump wannabes did.

 

[Chuktuds]

One gets you banned, one doesn’t. I’m pretty sure I got temporary ban for that very thing.

well at least you have the guts to say it. If people are too afraid of losing 2 month old accounts on ArsTechnica to say 'death to tyrants' then there really is no hope.

 

[Frodo Douchebaggins]

Boycott all Musk companies.

Go further. Shun spacex/twitter/etc employees, as well as those of tesla who aren’t just working in the factories.

 

[clackerd]

Wow that is just so fortunate for the guy who placed themself in charge of who gets government money. What are the chances this good fortune landed at his feet? Luck is so neat

 

[David Mayer]

lol, won't advocate it, but will make people think it. Real brave.

Just because the only way you know how to solve problems is with murder doesn't mean there aren't other options.

 

[Vincent Hanna]

Go further. Shun spacex/twitter/etc employees, as well as those of tesla who aren’t just working in the factories.

I just told my buddy that I won't ride in his Telsa anymore. He was shocked.

 

[Koga Onutalepo]

My favorite thing about the word "woke" is that when you see someone who doesn't understand it try to use it, you know everything else that follows is going to be bullshit.

"Woke" is a mirror, one sees in it one's own reflection.

Good people see woke as good, evil sees woke as bad.

 

[barich]

It's 2025 if your ISP didn't get you fiber 10 years ago they never are. But they'll keep promising to develop rural areas for the money though.

I live in a suburban/rural area, and our local independent cable company is in the process of deploying fiber to the premises over its entire footprint, which includes a county that is mostly cows. It just became available to me a few months ago.

If this tiny local company can do it, and make it profitable, so can others.

 

[Resolute]

I've been hearing it for the last decade, usually from people I wouldn't invite to my barbecue, and I still don't know what it means.

It appears to not have a specific meaning. It appears to possess a phatic meaning, inserted whenever a dog-whistle dislike or hatred is desired to be said about anything.

"I had to drag my sorry ass out of bed today, that woke sun was in my eyes."

As for the conflict of interest that Canadian/South African Musk has about US internet funding? Surely the checks and balances system of US governance would address that?

"Woke" is the socially acceptable way to be a bigot in public.

Complaints about being "woke" literally always involve cases where people are upset about scenarios or media where a visible minority is seen as the equal to a white person. Where a woman is treated as an equal to a man. Where a LGBT person is treated as equal to a cishet person. Where a religious minority is treated as equal to Christian.

I have never once found someone who complained about "woke" who was not at least one of a racist, homophobe, misogynist, islamaphobe, or almost always, a combination of the lot.

 

[SunnyD]

Starlink is INCREDIBLE if you live on a boat or in an RV. Otherwise, there is almost no benefit and many downsides for anyone living in a house connected to the ground - even in rural areas.

I live in a small town of a few hundred people and have gigabit fiber from a local utility co-op. It's slightly more expensive than buying shitty cable from Xfinity, but it's still cheaper, faster, and more reliable than Starlink.

Side note: I get to vote for my co-op's board members every year and their workers are paid fairly.

I have two choices "on the ground" where I live: 10/1 DSL or StarLink.

I had that DSL for all of two weeks before StarLink opened up my grid, and I was lucky to get 2/.25 on that DSL on a good day. I have ZERO other options. Even our local CUD, which received a broadband grant two years ago to roll out fiber, has zero information on when it will do so. I'm currently hoping our incumbent Telco which is wiring up the next town over might show up "soon", but even if they come to my town odds are they won't come to me. At this point I'd love even cable over StarLink just to stop paying Elon and money, but it's the only real option I have. So don't tell me there's zero benefits to it, because it's quite literally the best possible option.

 

[Koga Onutalepo]

I just told my buddy that I won't ride in his Telsa anymore. He was shocked.

Shocked because of what you said, or because of tesla build quality?

 

[LostFate]

Exhausted... I guess fiber is woke now?

 

[wastrel]

The GOP is all about corruption... as they keep proving. How else can Chump get away with his crap.

 

[ktmglen]

My woke fiber looking pretty good versus your DEI-free satellite tbh.

View attachment 104465

I have woke socialist fiber through my city's municipal broadband provider. I'm very happy with their speeds and reliability.

 

[SteveBigandTall]

reminds me of when Verizon was given money to spread the fiber and...well they did but no one told them they also needed to turn it on.

I don't want anything with a built in speed of light lag.

 

[mas tacos]

Krasnov, Kouch and Ketamine.
3 krazy guys who run your kountry.

 

[SteveBigandTall]

Fiber is now "woke," too?

WTF even is going on? I don't understand anything anymore.

Biden had the audacity to require the ISPs to serve all folks not just the 2.5 million dollar mansions.

 

[barich]

Cost savings.
Fiber in this county is $11,500 per home and $90 a month.
Starlink is $500 per home and $100 a month.

Cost savings in the short run. For a much worse product that can't scale beyond a certain point and requires an endless infusion of new satellites to even continue functioning. Put fiber in the ground now and it'll need little maintenance or repair for decades.

 

[jlredford]

Oh, it's going to get even better. SpaceX has a near-monopoly on launch, so no one else can put up competing comsat constellations. Now that Musk's minions control the FAA, no one else will be legally able to either. Once gov't support is withdrawn, competing rural broadband efforts will collapse. Starlink will be the only option, and it'll be subsidized too. They'll be able to charge anything they want, and the gov't will have to pay part of it. You thought that Comcast was an evil monopoly? So evil that they had to change their name to Xfinity? Just wait until you're under the thumb of the Starlink monopoly!

 

[Lord Kimbote]

Color me shocked.

 

[Flitzpiepe]

Guess the local monopolies should have used all that money they got over the decades to develop their networks. Good let them burn.

Every now and again there is a comment which exposes its author as the know-nothing knucklehead they are in the purest of clarity. A diamond of a knucklehead. A clear mountain spring of words untainted by thought.
Refined knuckeheadery of the highest quality.