[HN Gopher] SpaceX gets $886M from FCC to subsidize Starlink in ...
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SpaceX gets $886M from FCC to subsidize Starlink in 35 states
Author : samizdis
Score : 206 points
Date : 2020-12-07 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| techelite wrote:
| Take from the 99.9% give to the 0.001%.
| elihu wrote:
| I read a theory once that one of the reasons why so many Boomers
| were able to buy land or houses cheaply that later appreciated
| substantially in value was the interstate highway system built
| during WWII. Suddenly, a lot of real estate was in easy driving
| range of employers, and so there was a period of over-supply of
| highly desirable real estate.
|
| I wonder if Starlink (and changes in work expectations due to the
| pandemic) will have a similar effect; a lot of rural land that
| people might have been inclined to move to if only they had some
| way to do their work remotely is now suddenly a realistic option.
| marcusverus wrote:
| I've had a similar thought regarding the impact of affordable
| autonomous vehicles, for two reasons. 1) Commuters who can read
| / game / whittle while they commute will be willing to commute
| farther, and 2) if widespread adoption of autonomous cars can
| mitigate the effects of traffic (i.e. enable us to actually
| drive the speed limit during rush hour, or at least closer to
| it), we'll be able to commute farther in the same amount of
| time.
|
| Those effects combined would unlock an absolute ton of land
| around urban areas.
| asdff wrote:
| I have my doubts that autonomous cars will do much for
| traffic. Traffic doesn't necessarily happen because there are
| too many cars on the freeway, but too many cars on the much
| more limited capacity streets which back up onto the
| freeways. Everyone taking a self driving car into work isn't
| going to change the fact that traffic is bad because everyone
| insists on traveling 20'x5' apart from one another through a
| dense urban environment, which is the spacing a car gives you
| in bumper to bumper traffic.
|
| Now autonomous articulated bus that can hold 60 people
| sitting down in the footprint of 3-4 cars, that's another
| story.
| bgirard wrote:
| > more limited capacity streets which back up onto the
| freeways
|
| These are often because of a bottleneck such as a traffic
| right (particularly left turn signal) or stop sign. If
| autonomous vehicles can be tweaked to increase throughput
| (better reaction times, shorter follow distance, less
| accidents, higher speed through chokepoints like tolls, not
| distracted or not accelerating slowly on light changes) you
| might see significant traffic reductions as a result.
| Little's law is applicable here.
|
| The problems with bus or commuter lines is it's hard to get
| people to share a route efficiently. I've had it work in
| the past but only where I picked my housing according to an
| effective commuter line for my school or work. But that's
| hard to arrange at scale.
|
| Where effective commuters line don't scale instead if you
| combine the above wins with an uber pool like service where
| 3-4 people are efficiently routed together. You could be
| looking at 2-3x fewer cars on roads that have better
| throughput and fewer bottlenecks.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Traffic doesn 't necessarily happen because there are
| too many cars on the freeway, but too many cars on the much
| more limited capacity streets which back up onto the
| freeways_
|
| That is true in the USA, which has absurdly short on and
| off ramps, but in my experience, many other countries
| around the world don't have this problem.
|
| Canada, Australia and the UK all have much, MUCH longer on
| and off ramps, and traffic doesn't back up onto freeways.
| Freeways still clog up, however.
| notthemessiah wrote:
| Ain't a theory, it's by design: Robert Moses was the architect
| of this suburban vision of America. Not only did they pave the
| way out of the city, the highways also paved over the homes of
| millions of existing residents in the city, displacing them
| further out. Furthermore, highways were often used as barriers
| between rich and poor neighborhoods. You should read _The Power
| Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York_.
| pkaye wrote:
| What percent of workers do work that can be done remotely?
| oedoedxef wrote:
| Currently, or 5 years from now? Anyone working in the
| "services" industry, which is most of the United States, can
| work from home. And if the laws ever change for restaurants
| and auto-repair shops, I suspect you might see that being
| done from home as well.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| What kind of restaurant job do you see being done from
| home?
| elihu wrote:
| I'd guess that user oedoedxef is referring to running a
| customer-facing business (a diner, an auto repair shop,
| or whatever) out of a primary residence, whether that
| means living in a commercially-zoned property or doing
| commerce in a residentially-zoned property or perhaps
| eliminating the distinction entirely.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| That's my guess as well, but that's a very, very strange
| definition of working from home.
| barbacoa wrote:
| >What percent of workers do work that can be done remotely?
|
| Not a huge number, but that's all you need to support a small
| town economy. It's like the plight of the rust belt -- you
| had small communities that relied on manufacturing job to
| support the local retail and services jobs. When those
| manufacturing jobs evaporated due to outsourcing those small
| towns imploded.
| asdff wrote:
| What percent of remote workers do their shopping at the
| local mom and pop vs. online? I would expect this is a much
| higher rate than non remote workers who are commuting past
| that mom and pop store every day, where it would be
| convenient to stop in and grab something on their way to
| work or home. Remote workers in a rural town have little
| reason to leave their house and go to town, which in a
| rural town might itself be a 10-15 min one way drive on
| unlit (and frequently unplowed in winter) roads that
| typically lack a sidewalk.
| elihu wrote:
| I don't know, but I suspect for the readership of Hacker News
| at least it's pretty high. (And I suspect there's a lot more
| people who can picture themselves working from home
| indefinitely than if you had asked the question a year ago.)
|
| Not all jobs can be done remotely, but for the ones that can,
| the various impediments seem to be dropping away.
| spullara wrote:
| Once you buy Starlink does it work from anywhere or does it have
| to remain where you buy it?
| FrojoS wrote:
| Currently (beta) it only works at the registered address
| (30mile radius I believe). However, this is certainly not a
| technological limitation, since SpaceX has demonstrate use in
| airplanes already.
| grecy wrote:
| Currently the beta is geo-locked to within about 35 miles of
| there address you signed up for it.
|
| Elon has said multiple times it will work perfectly well on a
| yacht crossing the pacific, a moving train, etc., so we have to
| assume the "stay in one place" restriction will go away.
|
| Country borders will be interesting though, I assume many want
| to tightly control how you communicate with sats.
| juanbyrge wrote:
| If there is any corporate entity I'd happy giving public funding,
| it would be SpaceX. Their end goal is to settle Mars and
| potentially other bodies in the solar system. Compared with the
| absurd amounts of money wasted on defense contractors, I am
| perfectly happy with funding SpaceX in every way possible.
| bumby wrote:
| I don't know if those who would argue against funding SpaceX
| take the "either traditional defense contractors or SpaceX"
| bait. I think a major argument is that there are better ways to
| spend the money here on Earth. I.e., it's nobler and more
| feasible to protect and improve this planet than settle another
| one.
|
| As a former space industry worker, I don't know if I subscribe
| to that, but that's the best steelmanning I can come up with.
| extropy wrote:
| The problem with protect and conserve is that is leads to
| limited resources mentality. "There is not enough to go
| around" becomes ugly very fast.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/robert_zubrin/status/101347705748.
| ..
|
| Edit: Will surely invest considerable resources to convert
| Earth to a national park once we have outgrown earth's
| economy 100x
| mabbo wrote:
| The problem with the "spend it here" argument is that there
| _is_ plenty of money to be spent here. Nobody wants to.
|
| How many trillions are spent on war? On corporate subsidies
| and kickbacks on everything else? How much money is wasted in
| so many other stupid things? We have a GDP rising at a faster
| rate than our populations and have for decades. We don't
| spend the that extra money helping people. We could, but we
| don't.
|
| And then people look to NASA and SpaceX and say "Look at all
| that waste".
|
| Meanwhile, this money is going to go to providing low-cost
| internet all over America (and then the rest of the world).
| It's going to provide a real, tangible benefit to people at a
| lower cost than the alternatives.
| bumby wrote:
| I addressed this in a different comment, but the
| distinction is one of immediacy of existential threat. The
| DoD funding is framed in this context (and 60 years ago,
| NASA's as well - when it was almost 10x the fraction of GDP
| that it is today).
|
| If people think there is an existential threat to their way
| of life, it's hard to convince them to take from that
| pocket to fund something more fanciful and likely only
| relevant generations away (if ever). That's the insidious
| part of the military boogeyman...and SpaceX probably knows
| this as well since they garner defense contracts too.
| fiftyfifty wrote:
| This money is being spent to improve things here on Earth.
| This is about providing internet to underserved communities
| on Earth. Now you could argue that SpaceX has made it clear
| that they created Starlink to increase their funding for
| settling Mars (developing Starship etc) but at the same time
| StarLink stands to be a huge boon for people in communities
| that don't have access to high speed internet currently and
| that seems like a win-win. According to the article, Charter
| Communications made even more money ($1.22 billion) from the
| FCC as part of this deal, I don't see anyone on here
| complaining about how Charter chooses to spend the profits
| from this deal, it's certainly not going to go to settling
| Mars.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > it's nobler and more feasible to protect and improve this
| planet than settle another one
|
| That's an incredibly short sighted argument. As if this
| planet will last forever. I don't get this attitude at all.
| It's like saying why plan for the future at all!
| bumby wrote:
| It's probably a matter of convention. We consider solar a
| renewable resource even though the sun will eventually die
| out. Humans are wired to think little beyond generational
| timelines, not geological ones.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Entropy waits for no man.
| derekp7 wrote:
| The counter argument to that, is that it is worth while to do
| things, even if there are other things that are worth while
| to do. For any single item one can pick out "Why spend on X,
| when Y has a need", someone else can come along and say "Why
| spend on Y when Z has a need".
| bumby wrote:
| I think that's exactly the point. It's a disagreement about
| what gets priority to get optimized. The problem is
| exacerbated when there are multiple giant sinks for
| resources (e.g., colonizing Mars, combating climate
| change). In a world of limited resources, some things have
| to get sidelined.
| mulmen wrote:
| My disagreement with these arguments is not around what
| gets prioritized. I disagree with the fundamental premise
| that we have to pick _at all_. Human civilization is not
| single threaded. We can absolutely colonize Mars while
| solving global warming. In fact I can even imagine ways
| in which colonizing Mars can help solve global warming.
| bumby wrote:
| While I'm generally in favor of what SpaceX is doing, I
| don't think your point holds up in any sort of
| constrained environment. Could there be a marginal (or
| even reasonable) tangential benefit to other industries?
| Of course, but not as much as if those industries were
| the primary focus to begin with.
|
| With limited resources, you _have_ to prioritize or else
| you can run the risk of being spread so thin nothing is
| adequately funded so nothing really gets accomplished.
| You can 't fight a war on all fronts, all the time.
| aquadrop wrote:
| I think colonizing Mars is pretty small sink compared to
| climate change and many others. With how SpaceX going, I
| think for the first stage it's comparable to something
| like one modern Olympic games event cost.
| bumby wrote:
| > _first stage it 's comparable to something like one
| modern Olympic games event cost._
|
| To continue on with the steelmanning, the first stage is
| probably a drop in a bucket compared to the entire
| effort. How much freight do you think it would take to
| colonize a planet with a population large enough to be
| relatively self-sufficient? Just the payload cost would
| be huge and that's just to park it (not to assemble,
| maintain etc.) I think the steelman argument would be to
| focus on things immediately needed, like healthcare,
| before space adventurism
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| I wouldn't characterize defense spending as waste. China is a
| significant threat, for example, and maintaining superiority
| over them is of national importance IMO.
| rurp wrote:
| I can't think of a single scenario where having more tanks or
| fighter jets would be decisive in a full scale conflict
| between nuclear powers.
|
| Suppose the US and China get into a direct conflict. How does
| the US having a 10x advantage in the number of traditional
| arms vs only, say, 2x stop China from threatening to
| obliterate humanity with nukes the minute their leadership is
| facing an existential crisis?
| unexpected wrote:
| Does something like Starlink prevent direct conflict,
| though?
|
| Imagine a world where anyone can get unfettered internet
| access. Instead of the great Firewall of China, citizens
| can just access a starlink satellite. How does that help
| with spreading democractic ideals? How does protesting and
| information dissemination look different? What if citizens
| in Iran, Middle East, Myanmar, etc. could all do the same
| thing?
|
| I hope Starlink is thinking about these Big questions.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| Nukes have pretty much ensured via MAD that there is no
| future "full scale direct conflict" between major powers.
| No matter how narcissistic some despot might be, their
| overwhelming self-interest still realizes there's not much
| power held over an empty parking lot or when vaporized into
| the side of a building. It's proxy wars from here on out.
|
| Given that, you can't think of a single scenario where
| having multiple floating runways would possibly benefit
| wartime?
| bawolff wrote:
| I guess we are in cold war 2.0!
| Retric wrote:
| Some defense spending is reasonable, but we could get a lot
| while limiting things to say 200 - 300 Billion per year.
| That's 4-6 times what the UK spends for example and they have
| 2 aircraft carriers etc.
| aroch wrote:
| Calling the British navy a battle ready fleet would be
| rather a positive attitude. Their submarine and surface
| ship captains don't know how to navigate, running aground
| and into other boats. And their aircraft carriers don't
| even have enough crew/planes and will deploy US Marine Corp
| units to meet their full complement. It will likely take
| the UK 15-20 years for the two new Carriers to be at full
| operating capability (2009-TBD, probably 2024 at the
| earliest).
|
| That being said, the US could stand to spend less on
| military funding.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Their submarine and surface ship captains don 't know
| how to navigate, running aground and into other boats._
|
| The USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain are US Navy ships
| that have both had serious collisions recently that lead
| to loss of life. Ships having accidents is not a
| particularly good measure of battle readiness.
| saberience wrote:
| What are you saying about UK ships not knowing how to
| navigate? The US navy is far, far worse in that respect,
| the British navy hasn't had anything near as bad as this
| happen anytime recently:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_C
| rys...
| aroch wrote:
| Over the last few years there have been several (4-5)
| instances of British subs nearly striking surface ships
| in their home waters. Also running aground right outside
| their home port in 2010. Not exactly reassuring.
|
| The US Navy is much bigger and has global operations.
| They're just as guilty of being careless but they also
| have proven war fighting capabilities. No one is asking
| the British to sail by as a show of power and solidarity.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| This view presupposes that nations themselves are important,
| and that preserving the existence and concept of nations, and
| their superiority over other nations, isn't wasteful.
|
| I doubt very much that the children born on Mars will share
| your view about the value of Earth nations.
| octopoc wrote:
| Do you think nations are a bad thing? What's your
| alternative? City states? Planet-wide government?
| sneak wrote:
| I left it intentionally ambiguous about my own opinions
| on the topic, as I am not interested in a nationalistic
| debate about my own views, as they aren't relevant here.
| (If you'd like to take an easy guess at them and discuss
| further, my email's in my profile.)
|
| I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that whether
| something is wasteful or not is a value judgement in a
| lot of ways, and that there aren't usually one size fits
| all answers for all members of a society when it comes to
| value judgments, especially for a potentially
| multiplanetary society.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Nations are great. Not everyone agrees on all policies.
| My personal opinion is that I do not want to live in a
| censored or communist country (Such as China). Having
| borders and different countries allows multiple ideas to
| exist and folks can choose where to live.
| sneak wrote:
| > _folks can choose where to live._
|
| This is absolutely not true in practice, even for rich
| people fortunate/lucky enough to be born in a place where
| they receive a passport with lots of options.
|
| For the 99% of the other humans, it's even worse.
| pharke wrote:
| That doesn't appear to be a defect inherent to nations
| since there seems to be a pretty even split between free
| and non-free nations[0] Rather, it seems to be a problem
| of bad governance, corruption, ineffective or non-
| existent institutions, etc. My reason for favouring a
| world with many nations is that failures of those
| varieties are generally limited by the borders of the
| nations in which they occur. A world with a single
| governing body is a world with a single point of failure.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
| #:~:tex....
| mlyle wrote:
| It would be nice if we could get away from nations, but I'm
| not really ready to cede the game and entrust China with
| supremacy or even parity and hope that it all works out OK.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| While I absolutely agree that defense contractor spending is an
| abhorrent waste of public funds, this is a bad take. Literally
| every company in this space (ISP's, and more so ISP's that
| utilize satellites) have used it as a platform to grift public
| funds. Examples include Lightsquared, Iridium, Globalstar, and
| the worst of all, DISH) SpaceX has significantly reduced the
| cost of building a satellite ISP but you need to consider the
| history here and the other players that have already cost
| American citizens a shitload of wasted money and resource.
|
| If the FCC believed they should give assistance to SpaceX, it
| should have been in the form of access to the spectrum Charlie
| Ergen has been squatting over at DISH making the same promises
| SpaceX is doing right now. For those unaware of Ergan's
| history, the FCC for the first time decided to give a light
| wrist slap over setting up a constellation of fake shell
| corporations to bid on spectrum that included rural and small
| carrier subsidies. DISH has blown every build-out deadline and
| it's set back terrestrial carriers for years now. There were
| two they completely blew off that came due this year, and the
| only purpose they served was as an excuse to let the
| Sprint/TMUS merger happen, where previously TMUS had been
| calling out their business practices. I'm aware every Elon
| fanboy is going to wax poetic about how it won't be the same,
| but I'd caution you to consider SolarCity and what a public
| funds debacle that has been. There's a history of making big
| promises in areas and leaving a mess.
|
| Running an ISP is an easy to understand business model, either
| be the only option in an area or provide better service (and/or
| price) then incumbents. As others in this thread have said,
| there's already a shitload of capital flowing around, so why
| should this capital come from the public. Why didn't Elon just
| run another 'Deposit $100 to get in line for Starlink!' As it
| stands most of the US is stuck with shit ISP's because of a
| lack of competition, and giving subsidies to incumbents (like
| Charter) are only going to enrich them and further entrench
| their monopolies.
|
| SpaceX didn't launch this service as a practical or sensible
| business model for them, they already get paid to launch other
| telecommunications equipment into space, they are doing this to
| keep on the government, the public's tit.
| sneak wrote:
| SpaceX is also a defense contractor.
|
| https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/10/05/nro-reveals-plans-for-...
| hobofan wrote:
| Is there any launch provider that is not a defense
| contractor?
| [deleted]
| smithza wrote:
| SpaceX is a defense contractor that is disrupting the market
| considerably. While much of the existing industry is slowly
| adopting modern development strategies (design,
| manufacturing, etc. in SW and HW), SpaceX is leading the
| agile front here.
|
| More distinctly, SpaceX has the corporate intention of
| interplanetary exploration and settling. SpaceX's integration
| into the established defense/NASA business table will help
| this end come to fruition.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Good.
|
| They seem to be the first defense contractor in a long time,
| maybe ever, with a specific eye on controlling costs. It may
| not be this way forever, but for now the taxpayers should get
| the savings where they can.
| serf wrote:
| 1) Every defense contractor mentions interest in
| controlling costs; they bid against each other with these
| specific values in mind.
|
| The problem is over-run and underestimation, and the govts'
| lack of flexibility with regards to contract termination in
| most instances.
|
| 2) Defense spending has been historically hovering between
| 15-25 percent in the United States.
|
| 'Taxpayer savings' does not, nor has it ever, indicated
| more money in the hands of the taxpayer -- it indicates how
| many new projects will be budgeted.
|
| In other words : The tax payer saves _nothing_ , but the
| military is given extra toys within the same budget.
|
| Now, whether or not you are for or against the further
| arming of our troops and allied fighters -- that's a
| personal question.. but let's not pretend this equates to
| saved cash for the citizenry.
| bumby wrote:
| > _The problem is over-run and underestimation_
|
| I would argue this is a bug for the taxpayers but a
| feature for the contractor. Much of their profit comes
| from change-orders after they win a poorly administered
| low-bid contract. It seems the M.O. often is "bid low to
| get the contract, and then argue/nickel-and-dime the
| taxpayer to pad the profit margin"
| vsareto wrote:
| Maybe they can relax the work/life balance now
| tF73d78kq8t3R6n wrote:
| That'd cause their costs to skyrocket.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Maybe they can relax the work /life balance now_
|
| Nobody should feel forced to work more than they want to.
| (The abjectly lazy aside.) But we should also be free to
| work as hard as we want. And to freely associate with
| those with similar preferences.
|
| I used to love burning both ends of the candle. It was
| invigorating. I didn't ruin my health for it. And it gave
| me life lessons I could not have learned any other way.
| The fruits of those years, as well as finding other
| interests, nudged me to a different preference. Which
| involved new (or changed) colleagues. I don't see why, to
| be satisfied with one arrangement, we must denigrate the
| other--they're just different solutions.
|
| Work and life don't balance on a scale. The dynamic is
| more like homeostasis. One's stable ratio depends on a
| variety factors, extrinsic and from within, and what
| makes one person happy will be ruinous or lethargic for
| another.
| staunch wrote:
| Imagine what we could do if it was possible to identify and
| fund a thousand Elon Musks with hundreds of millions each?
|
| He's eliminating gas vehicles, improving solar adoption, fixing
| rural internet, improving space science, making life
| interplanetary, etc.
|
| It may be that Elon Musk types are extremely rare but I doubt
| they're as nearly as rare as most people think and we only need
| a thousand out of billions. The thing that makes him extremely
| rare, I think, is that he lucked upon a windfall of $200+
| million from PayPal, a startup success that he had almost
| nothing to do with.
|
| Now that I think about it, an Elon Musk Prize funded and
| designed by Elon Musk would be viable. His current net worth
| could fund 600+ Elon Musks. Elon Musk could create more Elon
| Musks...it's almost too simple!
| [deleted]
| notthemessiah wrote:
| He also lucked out on inheriting fortunes from his parents
| diamond mines. But, there are lots of people who inherit
| fortunes and do nothing with it. There are lots of people
| with drive and intelligence comparable to Elon Musk who don't
| have the privilege necessary to accomplish anything. Seems
| we're still a long way away from a meritocracy.
| Reedx wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking of someone else?
|
| _"You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after
| awhile," he said. "And of course pasta and a green pepper
| and a big thing of sauce. And that can go pretty far, too.
|
| "So it's like, 'Oh, okay, if I can live for a dollar a day
| then at least from a food cost standpoint, well it's pretty
| easy to earn like $30 in a month anyway, so I'll probably
| be okay.' "
|
| This isn't the only example of a young Musk roughing it.
| When he started his first company, Zip2, he and his brother
| slept in their office instead of renting an apartment. They
| showered at the YMCA.
|
| "We were so hard up, we had just one computer so the Web
| site was up during the day and I was coding at night," Musk
| recalled during a commencement speech at USC. "Seven days a
| week, all the time."_
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/03/
| 2...
| saberience wrote:
| This is bollocks and the sort of mythology that CEO's
| also love to create about their "beginnings." Read up on
| Elon's family background and father, he didn't grow up on
| a farm or in an orphanage in darkest Congo... he lived a
| well-off and privileged childhood.
| cma wrote:
| His father was a seed investor in Zip2.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _a thousand Elon Musks_
|
| This may well be his next project.
| peey wrote:
| "Mars Terraforming Not Possible Using Present-Day Technology"
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2018/mars-terrafo...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0529-6
| cromwellian wrote:
| And? Building bases on the moon, mars, or the asteroid belt
| doesn't require terraforming, anymore than living on an
| Antarctic base through winter requires the ability to farm
| for food, and wear a bikini.
|
| We spent $700 billion a year on the defense budget, and $7
| trillion on wars, $1 billion on inspiring stunts like moon
| landings or mars landings once a generation, are not really a
| waste, the money is mostly spent on earth, dual use
| technology comes out of it, and it opens the possibility of
| space tourism, not to mention just cheaper launch
| capabilities (driven by the need to send a million tons to
| Mars) also benefit building a better space-based
| asteroid/comet defense system too.
| bumby wrote:
| > _We spent $700 billion a year on the defense budget, and
| $7 trillion on wars, $1 billion on inspiring stunts like
| moon landings or mars landings once a generation, are not
| really a waste_
|
| That's because they are framed as a more immediate
| existential threat. Humans are present biased and don't
| like to spend lots of money on low-probability events until
| they are unavoidable (see: attitudes towards pandemic
| preparations in 2019).
| qz2 wrote:
| Actually we don't fix stuff as a species until people
| start dying. How long it takes is how much bad PR is
| involved. Avoiding that bad PR instead of solving the
| problem is an art that we have become better at than
| solving problems.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Yup. Paul Krugman once said something to the effect that
| the human race would benefit from an Alien Invasion,
| because the way things are going, we don't invest in the
| planet, we don't unify and put aside petty grievances and
| selfishness, until there's a unified enemy.
|
| If an actual high probability ELE asteroid collision was
| detected, people would get their shit together real
| quick. Or maybe not, the COVID crisis has shattered my
| faith. I'm sure a bunch of people would claim the
| asteroid prediction is a NASA scam to install socialism
| or something.
| qz2 wrote:
| I share your cynicism. I'm not sure that's a comfortable
| position though but it's better to live in fear than
| ignorance I suspect.
| elihu wrote:
| Talking about terraforming is kind of off-topic, but I would
| note that the articles refer specifically to terraforming by
| increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, which has pros and cons. It
| would raise the temperature, but it wouldn't result in human-
| breathable atmosphere, if that was a goal.
|
| Perhaps there aren't any better alternatives, but I'd think
| that orbital mirrors at least would be an option (like the
| soletta from Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy), though the
| scale of construction would be beyond anything that's been
| done before even if it were extremely thin. Placing a million
| square miles of mylar into space doesn't sound like an easy
| problem, though something much smaller and specifically
| focused at, say, the equator or specific sites might be more
| practical.
| markdown wrote:
| If we can't even stop our own planet from warming...
| cromwellian wrote:
| It's not an either-or. This canard comes up a lot. The US
| federal government invests in an enormous number of things,
| think of it as a huge portfolio. NASA's budget is less than
| 0.5% of the federal budget, it's existence won't harm
| policies needed to mitigate climate change (e.g. carbon
| taxes), and indeed, a chunk of NASA's investment helps
| climate science.
| markdown wrote:
| Oh I didn't mean what you think I meant. I'm sorry I
| wasn't more clear.
|
| I'm not one of those "why spend money on space when
| humans are starving on Earth" people.
|
| My point was more about the actual technology required to
| terraform a planet. Why talk about terraforming Mars when
| our own would be saved by the same non-existent tech.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Oh sorry, my bad. I'm just triggered from seeing that
| argument so much. I agree, we need to terraform earth
| first. 1) stop the damage from getting worse 2) if it
| doesn't reverse itself, we may need geo-engineering,
| carbon capture, orbital mirrors, etc
| Forge36 wrote:
| And that's fine in the future maybe it's possible. Parent
| reply doesn't mention terraforming.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Yes, sending your enemies to Mars is the best defense for sure.
| Nobody _in their right mind_ would voluntarily spend the rest
| of their lives in a can filled with a few cubic feet of
| recycled air.
| akarma wrote:
| Also, when a company has such an impactful goal that will, if
| successful, lead to it having power, it feels important that
| it's at least somewhat tied to the government.
|
| I'm very capitalistic, but if SpaceX successfully colonizes
| Mars and builds factories there, I can imagine some frightening
| scenarios where it has considerable control over the U.S.
| rather than the U.S. having control over it.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Musk is pretty clearly in the "my way or the high way" school
| of governance.
| mtgx wrote:
| Are there any caveats to these subsidies, like allowing the
| government to tap all Starlink connections for surveillance, etc?
|
| I mean the U.S. government already has such deals with other
| ISPs, and now the U.S. military wants to use Starlink, too, so I
| wouldn't be surprised if the DoD got involved in this FCC deal
| with SpaceX for more reasons than one.
| nikolay wrote:
| Elon Musk is no Iron Man. All his companies are built with
| taxpayer money. When did I sign up to be irradiated by his
| satellites?!
| stetrain wrote:
| Those darn radio waves! Hold on I gotta take this call on my
| iPhone.
| nikolay wrote:
| Well, I may want to go to a refuge without any electronics.
| AveryEm wrote:
| What are satellites up in orbit stopping you from not using
| electronics?
| stetrain wrote:
| If you find a spot on Earth with no radio waves let us
| know.
|
| AM goes pretty far, even amateur radio can travel across
| continents in the right atmospheric conditions.
|
| GPS
|
| Satellite TV
|
| Every other civilian and military Comsat since we started
| launching things.
|
| Starlink isn't the problem if you are worried about being
| "irradiated", the nuclear fusion reactor at the center of
| our solar system is likely of greater concern.
| cromwellian wrote:
| Tesla was built before tax payer money, they got loans for
| scaling. They paid them back with interest, the tax payer
| profited.
|
| SpaceX was also mostly built with Musk's personal fortune,
| after they developed the Merlin engine, and got the Falcon 1 to
| orbit, only then did they get contracts from NASA, and they
| actually saved NASA money, because SpaceX launch costs are
| significantly lower, ergo, in a way, they also paid the
| taxpayer back.
|
| Pretty much most large successful companies have been
| subsidized by tax payer money in some way, if not by direct
| loans or contracts, then by taking publicly financed research
| from the military or academia, and commercializing it. Silicon
| Valley was started by Fairchild Semiconductor whose first
| contracts were military contracts. Computing started out funded
| by military. The CIA through In-Q-Tel put $150 million into 90
| companies, including Google. Google Maps, acquired from
| Keyhole, was a CIA funded satellite mapping company.
|
| Let's dispense with the rugged individualism. We all benefit
| from the government, and we all have a duty to pay it forward.
| wmf wrote:
| Tesla also makes money selling various environmental credits
| which are usually viewed as a government subsidy.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/23/teslas-sale-of-
| environmental...
| nikolay wrote:
| So, Elon Musk first flirted with Democrats, because this is
| how he got the buddy favors. But this year, he probably saw a
| change in the wind and started to flirt with Republicans - I
| expect him following the wind again...
| cromwellian wrote:
| What would you do if the local mafia showed up at your
| business and said "Nice little space/car company you got
| there, it would be a shame if something happened to it?"
|
| Call it an act of cowardice, but all of the top companies
| are currying favor with governments, because cronyism is
| everywhere, and if you are not in the game, you are out of
| it.
|
| Do you think SpaceX would have beat ULA, who literally had
| the Apollo moon landing astronauts badmouthing competitors
| in front of congress, if they had not curried favor?
|
| China is an especially great example of this: Don't play
| ball, you lose. (e.g. Google leaves China). Play ball, and
| find yourself continually kow-towing to keep the goodies
| flowing, as Tim Cook travels every year to Beijing and
| stroking the hearts of the government or nationalists.
|
| Until we end money in politics and ban the revolving door
| of lobbyists, we're not going to address the problem of
| contracts being handed out with questionable rationale.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| The government has been subsidizing rural ISPs for quite a while.
| This effort is much more reasonable than many similar efforts
| because unlike many of the people sucking up these subsidies, it
| actually reaches everyone. Most of the carriers who accepted
| subsidies to increase rural internet access just picked the low
| hanging fruit and often introduced new service in regions which
| were already covered by other services.
|
| My old house was stuck on 10GB service for years while ISPs
| bumped up subsidized service to many closer in/ semi rural areas.
| I have good access now, but just a few years ago I'd have loved
| the option of getting SpaceX's service at full price.
| grecy wrote:
| For fun, highest to lowest: Etheric:
| $3,857/home CentryLink: $3,396/home Frontier:
| $2,916/home Windstream: $2,715/home LTD
| Broadband: $2,500/home Connect Everyone: $2,484/home
| Resound: $2,443/home AMG: $2,082/home
| GeoLinks: $1,831/home Rural Electric: $1,779/home
| SpaceX: $1,377/home Comcast: $1,151/home
|
| Even just 5 years ago who would have guessed satellite internet
| would be the cheapest...
|
| EDIT: Sorry for the ordering mistake - Comcast are "cheapest",
| SpaceX 2nd.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Most of the others are providing gigabit versus Starlink's
| 100Mbit.
| wmf wrote:
| Gigabit at ~$3,000 seems like a bad tradeoff compared to 100
| Mbps for $1,377.
| ars wrote:
| In your table Comcast ($1,151) is cheaper than SpaceX ($1,377).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Subsidies for Frontier are pretty galling. I have an urban home
| in their original core market and they wouldn't bother fixing a
| phone line that went from 4Mb to 2Mb after switching to a new
| pair when the original went bad. They are pocketing everything
| and disinvesting in their wires.
| mempko wrote:
| All of Musk's endeavors are subsidized by public funds. He is the
| master of getting public money to develop his products.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| As a taxpayer, I'm quite pleased with the SpaceX ROI for
| getting "my" astronauts and satellites up.
|
| Especially when you compare what Orion or paying the Russians
| for a ride to the ISS has cost.
| davidkuhta wrote:
| For the curious.
|
| > The 35 states where SpaceX won FCC funding are Alabama,
| Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia,
| Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland,
| Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada,
| New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina,
| Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont,
| Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
| ccorda wrote:
| This was a reverse auction, where the goal was to minimze cost to
| government to get high speed internet in rural areas.
|
| Starlink bid in the Above Baseline tier, meaning >= 100/20 Mbps
| (with data cap of >= 2 TB).
|
| According to the FCC [1], 99.7% of locations are at that tier or
| higher, and 85%+ in the highest Gigabit (1000/500) tier.
|
| So it looks like the auction funded gigabit where there was a
| provider bidding at that tier, and the rest went heavily to
| SpaceX.
|
| One question I have is whether these gigabit deployments actually
| happen, or if Starlink will pick off legacy business so quickly
| (full launch nationwide next year) such that rural providers
| aren't able to take the subsidies and actually implement the new
| offerings.
|
| [1]
| https://mobile.twitter.com/matthewberryfcc/status/1335978529...
| madamelic wrote:
| >One question I have is whether these gigabit deployments
| actually happen,
|
| No.
|
| Every time the US gives money to telecoms to roll out fiber,
| the telecoms play a shell game and disappear the money or use
| it to fight against municipalities that try to build their own
| infrastructure.
|
| https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-...
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Verizon signed a contract with NYC in 2008 to pull fiber to
| New Yorkers by 2014 and I _still_ can 't get fiber here in
| Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At this point I've really given up
| hope that I'll ever get fiber into the home on a reasonable
| time scale.
| myself248 wrote:
| Thank you for that link. I remember the disappearance of the
| Project Pronto money in the 90s, and it's bothered me ever
| since. It's nice to know I didn't dream the whole thing.
| StillBored wrote:
| In TX, a number of the rural telco providers already have
| really good service in the towns they cover. Presumably at
| least partially due to previous handouts of the universal
| service fund being used for broadband. So I assume the higher
| tier rollouts are in similar situations.
|
| For example there is a rural co-op that covers a number of the
| towns just west of where I live. The towns actually have better
| service than I do (cheaper, and faster) because the entire town
| is a mile or two along a major highway, and a few rows of
| residential streets. The density is at least as good as the
| suburban area I live in for a square mile or so.
|
| Drive a few miles out of town though, and your on some kind of
| wireless or sat service.
| cprayingmantis wrote:
| I really hope this benefits the area of the country where my
| parents live. They pay $60 a month for 5M service (from a local
| Co-op that's the only game in town) which just isn't fast enough
| for my mom's dream of a work from home job.
| tzm wrote:
| I live in the Mission hills of SF Bay and pay $600 / mo for
| internet via mobile hotspot (LTE). HughesNet is terrible. Nothing
| else is available. I can't wait for Starlink beta!
| martinald wrote:
| Very doubtful starlink will work close to major metro areas.
|
| They may ration service to a few people in big cities but i'm
| doubtful they will offer it at all to be honest.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Why in the world wouldn't they offer it everywhere at
| whatever their max terminal per square mile is?
| martinald wrote:
| I think I read somewhere the beam size for starlink is
| around 200km diamater. That's actually really far. You'd
| probably want to service rural areas fairly distant from
| metro areas well, rather than slam the sat with a handful
| of suburban city customers.
|
| I could be wrong but my guess is they will blacklist areas
| near cities entirely at least to begin with and focus on
| very rural areas with literally no alternative (no LTE
| etc).
|
| Personally I think Starlink is going to have capacity
| crisis quickly if takeup is anywhere near as strong as
| demand seems to be and I'm sure SpaceX know this, so by
| fcoussing almost entirely on very rural areas (and maybe
| niche commercial/govt uses in more urban enviroments) they
| have a chance at managing demand a bit. Or they will start
| ramping up cost of service and/or putting very punitive
| bandwidth caps on (like all other sat providers).
|
| I still think Starlink is an amazing breakthrough, but it
| really is a solution only for the 'last'/most rural 1% of
| households (or less).
| zaroth wrote:
| I assume they will eventually dynamically price based on
| density, to ensure it's available to whoever needs it and
| not where other equivalent or faster options are available
| for less money.
|
| By definition I think the places that need Starlink the
| most won't hit density limits. But I think a lot of people
| will buy Starlink just because it's Starlink -- anything so
| their dollars aren't going to Comcast.
| cobookman wrote:
| Check-out T-Mobile home internet. 50$/month unlimited 5G & LTE
| hotspot.
| wogijrwoiroij wrote:
| bro why are you paying so much for LTE?
|
| you could get one with 400gb LTE data for $80 a month:
| https://www.onlinewirelessmall.com/att-hotspot-49-99prepaid-...
|
| or there's these ones that don't have a cap???
| https://www.onlinewirelessmall.com/att-netgear779s-with-plan...
|
| or buy a grandfathered plan off of ebay that has truly
| unlimited (no throttling) for less than $100 a month
|
| or there's dozens of other options with hundreds of GBs of data
| per month that are a fraction of the $600 a month you're
| paying. There is no reason to be paying that much and there are
| other options you haven't considered.
| gok wrote:
| Whom are you paying that much?
| politelemon wrote:
| > $600 / mo for internet via mobile hotspot (LTE).
|
| I'm not familiar with that area but my mind boggles at this
| amount. What kind of speeds do you get? Are that ISP able to
| offer a cheaper deal of some sort, eg 12 months? Why is it so
| much!?
|
| Wishing you well, I hope you get Starlink soon in your area, or
| any alternatives.
| tw04 wrote:
| I would assume it's so expensive due to data usage. Anything
| over LTE I've seen has ridiculously low data caps. I think as
| part of this funding the FCC should have a mandatory
| requirement of no data caps, or a cap of something more
| reasonable like 10TB a month that increases 5TB every X
| number years.
| google234123 wrote:
| 1TB sounds more reasonable than 10. 10 is way over the top
| drusepth wrote:
| I'm not OP, but my parents house in Missouri sits around
| $300/mo for internet via mobile hotpot, occasionally getting
| up to around $500/mo in the months were a lot of family
| visit. HughesNet is their only available ISP, so they just
| went with a data plan through either AT&T or T-Mobile
| ("unlimited" but with a data cap with expensive overages that
| also drop you down to dialup-esque speeds) and stick that SIM
| card in their router.
|
| There was also a brief stint of time when I lived in Europe
| in a long-term Airbnb that didn't tell us there was a data
| cap (and since we weren't real residents, we couldn't set up
| our own internet) and I got nearly $500/mo for a few months
| doing video calls for work etc from my LTE.
| [deleted]
| iptrans wrote:
| Riddle me this, would SpaceX not have built out Starlink if they
| didn't get this subsidy?
|
| Since they already put Starlink satellites in orbit without any
| guarantees of subsidies, was this good use of government funds?
| rictic wrote:
| Two more questions:
|
| Can the subsidy be used to accelerate making the service
| available to more users sooner, and at higher quality? Most
| likely yes, because with the design of Starlink, more
| satellites gives better service.
|
| A related question: Were early subsidies into solar power a big
| help in climbing the learning curve while solar power had
| uncompetitive performance/$, or did advancements in related
| disciplines like chip manufacturing carry most of the weight?
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Why should rural lifestyle be subsidized ?
| stetrain wrote:
| Because not everyone has full freedom in deciding where to
| live, and access to broadband is a positive factor for
| financial mobility and economic activity.
| serf wrote:
| (playing devils' advocate)
|
| City/population-center living is wildly inefficient for a
| host of reasons, and a dollar of urban development towards
| a major metropolis goes much less far than a dollar of
| urban development for a rural community.
|
| We deal with the inadequacies of living in such big
| population dense areas because we want to; not because it's
| efficient.
|
| Turns out it's not efficient to stack up as many people
| vertically as possible.
|
| It over-burdens local municipal systems to the point of
| skyrocketing economic costs, creates more job scarcity due
| to sheer population and high real-estate costs, and creates
| untenable situations during times where population density
| is a net-negative, like during a pandemic.
|
| Rural living has major problems too; lack of access to high
| quality services and travel come to mind -- but these are
| things that can be improved upon, and by every metric these
| things _are_ improving.
|
| There is no such game-plan for dealing with the burdens of
| heavy density populations mid-city; it's considered to be a
| fact of life.
| xxpor wrote:
| >We deal with the inadequacies of living in such big
| population dense areas because we want to; not because
| it's efficient.
|
| >Turns out it's not efficient to stack up as many people
| vertically as possible.
|
| >It over-burdens local municipal systems to the point of
| skyrocketing economic costs, creates more job scarcity
| due to sheer population and high real-estate costs, and
| creates untenable situations during times where
| population density is a net-negative, like during a
| pandemic.
|
| These are all exactly the opposite of true? It's very
| efficient to stack people vertically. What's not
| efficient is delivering sewer service to people whose
| houses are a half mile apart or having someone drive 60
| miles round trip in a single occupancy vehicle to get to
| work every day.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Why should any lifestyle be subsidized? Subsidies happen
| for rural and urban individuals.
| baq wrote:
| Because dense urban is unsustainable without sparse rural
| providing food?
| btilly wrote:
| To answer your related question, I believe that the answer is
| yes.
|
| As https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-
| insanely-c... explains, Wright's law says that while a
| technology is improving, we generally get a fixed percentage
| drop in cost every time we double production. Therefore the
| production increases thanks to subsidies caused those cost
| drops to come much sooner than they would have otherwise.
| btilly wrote:
| SpaceX has had 42,000 satellites approved. They have just under
| 1000 operational and are about half-way to phase 1. Which will
| only be able to provide broadband for a limited number of users
| at latitudes for Canada and some northern US states. (That is
| why they are doing beta programs, they don't have the capacity
| for more.)
|
| Money to launch more satellites will give the company the
| ability to get broadband for more people in more of the rural
| USA much more quickly. It also helps Starlink through a chicken
| and egg problem where they can't make money unless they have
| satellites up, and they can't put satellites up unless they get
| money.
| iptrans wrote:
| Not quite.
|
| The subsidy isn't large enough to pay for all the satellites
| they need. They have money to launch more satellites and will
| be doing more launches subsidy or no subsidy.
|
| The subsidy will only go directly to their bottom line.
| simonh wrote:
| The objective of the government is not just to ensure that one
| or even two companies have infrastructure reaching most or all
| rural areas, but to ensure enough players in this field to
| establish a genuinely competitive market for pervasive rural
| internet access. The FCC has decided that without this subsidy
| there would not be enough companies offering enough access to
| enough areas to meet their mandate.
|
| Given this goal, it's simply unreasonable to deny funds to a
| company that has already set up that access, but only grant
| funds to new entrants. That clearly screws over the existing
| companies, which now can't afford to compete on price with the
| new government funded entrants.
|
| The only way to establish a level playing field and not
| penalise companies that already invested heavily is to give the
| grants regardless of past investment. Then you can genuinely
| allow the competitive market to establish fair and competitive
| prices for these customers. Free market principles should in
| theory ensure that this price competition should recoup a
| significant proportion of the subsidy costs for consumers and
| tax payers.
| iptrans wrote:
| I think you have misunderstood the purpose of RDOF grants.
|
| The RDOF grants are not there to establish competition. RDOF
| grants exist purely for _some_ company to provide broadband
| service where there is none.
|
| If anything it's funding a local monopoly.
| simonh wrote:
| If that wee true, since Starlink will reach everywhere,
| they would only need to fund Starlink. In fact the OP would
| be correct and no subsidy would be needed since Starlink is
| already being built.
| wmf wrote:
| It sounds like the FCC took a beauty contest approach to
| this funding so ISPs promising gigabit took 90% of the
| money and Starlink got what was left.
| iptrans wrote:
| I am glad we agree, me being both the one you are
| replying to and the OP you are referring to.
|
| For the avoidance of doubt, here's the link to the FCC
| RDOF auction and the relevant quote:
|
| "... Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to bring high speed
| fixed broadband service to rural homes and small
| businesses that lack it."
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904
| baq wrote:
| You can provide high bandwidth low latency access to the
| internet in places where not even 1.3B fiber subsidy's won't
| reach or you can build few hundred miles more fiber to mostly
| nowhere for the same price.
|
| The fact is, starlink is the absolute best option in quite a
| few places - sparsely populated, far from dense urban areas.
| This is actually the best way to spend government money for
| that purpose even if it ends up in subsidizing terminal
| purchases.
| iptrans wrote:
| > The fact is, starlink is the absolute best option in quite
| a few places - sparsely populated, far from dense urban
| areas.
|
| If it were only subsidized there. Some of the Starlink areas
| are next door neighbours to subsidized fiber builds.
| [deleted]
| adventured wrote:
| If it helps ensure the diversity of ISP competition in the US
| market, then yes. $886m is a bargain if it helps meaningfully
| with that (assuming it's not a frequent subsidy).
|
| There is a large difference between putting up a few percent of
| their constellation to reach initial minimum viability and
| putting up enough satellites to properly cover the rest of the
| world (a very expensive endeavor that will take years).
|
| Plus, the US Government may directly benefit in a very big way
| from utilizing Starlink and that may make it a bargain compared
| to the alternatives. If US defense contractors were building
| that constellation, they'd be spending ten times what SpaceX
| is.
|
| And that's before we get to the potential for intelligence
| gathering globally. The powers that be will be all over that,
| no matter what SpaceX claims to the contrary (SpaceX will have
| a gun to their head and will not have a choice, just as the
| Prism gang had no choice).
| iptrans wrote:
| > If it helps ensure the diversity of ISP competition in the
| US market, then yes
|
| The US ISP market is already fairly diverse. There are some
| 3000 ISPs in the US.
|
| > $886m is a bargain if it helps meaningfully with that
| (assuming it's not a frequent subsidy).
|
| Aye, therein lies the rub. Starlink will require a frequent
| and recurring subsidy, unless it can become profitable on its
| own.
|
| Each and every satellite they put up will burn up in five
| years.
|
| > There is a large difference between putting up a few
| percent of their constellation to reach initial minimum
| viability and putting up enough satellites to properly cover
| the rest of the world (a very expensive endeavor that will
| take years).
|
| Maybe Starlink should have been required to demonstrate
| viability before allowing it to qualify for government
| subsidies?
|
| > Plus, the US Government may directly benefit in a very big
| way from utilizing Starlink and that may make it a bargain
| compared to the alternatives. If US defense contractors were
| building that constellation, they'd be spending ten times
| what SpaceX is. > > And that's before we get to the potential
| for intelligence gathering globally. The powers that be will
| be all over that, no matter what SpaceX claims to the
| contrary (SpaceX will have a gun to their head and will not
| have a choice, just as the Prism gang had no choice).
|
| If the DoD wants Starlink then they should pay for it
| themselves.
| tw04 wrote:
| >Riddle me this, would SpaceX not have built out Starlink if
| they didn't get this subsidy?
|
| I feel like that's a rhetorical question, but the obvious
| answer is yes.
|
| >Since they already put Starlink satellites in orbit without
| any guarantees of subsidies, was this good use of government
| funds?
|
| I suppose that depends: if Space-X's original timeline was 10
| years... is it more or less valuable to the US to have
| broadband access on an accelerated timeline? My guess is,
| especially in the face of covid, the more access to high speed
| the better.
|
| Would you rather have had those funds going to Frontier and
| Comcast? The funds are GOING to be spent, the only question is
| how. Not having rural broadband has been deemed an unacceptable
| outcome by the majority of Americans. The way the funds have
| been spent to date have definitely been a mixed bag.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/07/fcc-dig...
| smithza wrote:
| I don't think the logic holds up here. It is conceivable that
| SpaceX could have entered into the market to disrupt the
| relatively lo-tech GEO options without FCC subsidy options (I
| think you agree here). Hughes (a GEO provider) themselves
| received a subsidy despite their being well established in
| North America. To ask that about SpaceX is to ask the same
| question about Hughes.
|
| In the age of COVID-19, any investment in ISP infrastructure is
| beneficial.
| iptrans wrote:
| The Hughes grant is highly questionable too. Luckily they
| only got about a million.
|
| > In the age of COVID-19, any investment in ISP
| infrastructure is beneficial.
|
| Not if you end up having nothing to show for it.
| liquidise wrote:
| This headline is only part of the story, looks like ~10 ISP's
| were awarded sizable subsidies.
|
| While i am not a fan of subsidies in general, the ISP space is
| particularly tricky for free-market forces to ensure competition.
| The capital requirements are overwhelming in many cases for a
| traditional startups, leaving the only other option as
| local/municipal votes, which have been successful in some areas.
|
| Long-term, i could see internet access to receive utility status
| in the states. Until that happens, funding ISP competition,
| particularly in rural areas feels like a wise move.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > The capital requirements are overwhelming in many cases for a
| traditional startups, leaving the only other option as
| local/municipal votes, which have been successful in some
| areas.
|
| I disagree. Especially today, capital is highly abundant and
| dirt cheap. The markets are starved for yield on any sort of
| fixed income product, especially when it's secured by tangible
| assets with predictable cash flows. Every day the market sees
| new successful covenant-lite bond and loan sales raised with
| payback periods measured in decades.
|
| The larger issue is that many municipalities explicitly enforce
| the local cable co's monopoly. This takes the form of exclusive
| "pole attachment" contracts. The local governments took
| kickbacks from the first broadband company that came along. For
| a quick payday upfront, they screwed their constituents out of
| any sort of competitive marketplace.
| gwright wrote:
| The "last-mile" problem has been around for a long time and
| doesn't seem to be going away, although wireless solutions
| (including Starlink) is one way to bypass that problem.
| chorsestudios wrote:
| > I disagree. Especially today, capital is highly abundant
| and dirt cheap. The markets are starved for yield on any sort
| of fixed income product, especially when it's secured by
| tangible assets with predictable cash flows.
|
| I disagree here. Capital might be highly abundant and cheap
| in general but not necessarily in the ISP sector for
| startups. There are enormous costs associated with laying and
| maintaining fiber lines or building/launching internet
| satellites. SpaceX has an advantage by being able to launch
| their own satellites, it might not be profitable if they had
| to contract out all of their satellite deployments. I don't
| think investors will be eager to throw lots of capital at an
| ISP startup, especially after Google Fiber.
| jjeaff wrote:
| It does seem wise, except I believe that ISPs have already
| received large subsidies in the past and then never completed
| their end of the bargain. Without consequence, of course. I
| hope none of those companies received any more subsidy.
| 1996 wrote:
| > never completed their end of the bargain. Without
| consequence, of course
|
| That's exactly why they need more money!! Because, maybe,
| this time they will?
|
| If not, give them a bit more!!
|
| Government subsidies at their finest! /s
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| My recent employer was one of the ISP providing rural telecom
| service. These subsidies accounted for a hefty percentage of
| our income and the company was still perpetually on the edge of
| failure. Most of our competitors were in similar situations,
| loaded down with breathtakingly large amounts of debt and
| expensive to maintain decaying infrastructure, much of it
| purchased from the Baby Bells when they got out of the market.
| I can't say that the company was particularly well run but am
| certain that without the government subsidies, the business
| would collapse and large numbers of rural customers would be
| without telecom services, which extend beyond just internet
| access.
|
| Not sure what Starlink's existence is going to do to the
| company. Offering 25 Mbps aDSL with low reliability isn't going
| to compete very well if a customer can get 100 Mbsp service for
| a similar price and higher reliability. On the other hand, this
| might be justification the company can use to stop servicing
| the most expensive of the rural accounts to service while
| focusing on small town gigabit service that can compete with a
| reasonable expense to service.
| runj__ wrote:
| Isn't Starlink supposed to have the lowest ping of any
| solution out there (light not travelling in fiber but
| air/space) and be a breakthrough for financial customers?
| Bandwidth doesn't really matter _too_ much in those
| applications does it?
| pbreit wrote:
| According to Morgan Stanley (not the final arbiter) Starlink
| is the bulk of SpaceX's commercial value:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/morgan-stanley-spacex-to-
| be-...
|
| SpaceX currently has a massive cost advantage in replenishing
| the satellite fleet which ever advancing equipment.
|
| It already offers the lowest transcontinental latencies which
| for high frequency trading alone would be a bonanza.
| xoa wrote:
| > _It already offers the lowest transcontinental latencies
| which for high frequency trading alone would be a bonanza._
|
| Inter-satellite optical links aren't ready yet (and they're
| only barely getting to MVP on their initial generation sat
| shell). When those come online yes, Starlink should have a
| latency advantage over most any distance sufficiently long
| enough to make up their fixed RTT mileage cost with their
| 40% speed advantage vs standard optical fiber [1]. But for
| the current and near future deployment Starlink satellites
| act purely as "bent pipes" connecting terminals to a
| groundstation, both with LOS to the sat.
|
| HFT gets cited a lot but probably one of their biggest
| bonanzas once intersat links are up will be marine and
| aviation internet. If you think rural pricing is bad...
|
| ----
|
| 1: _Possibly_ with a very few rarified exceptions that use
| terrestrial microwave links or if someone went to the
| trouble of using photonic bandgap fiber.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I'd love to get 25Mb DSL but you can't get that in the US
| where you're lucky to have anything above 4Mb. Not all of us
| need 100Mb+ internet access.
| nevdka wrote:
| The infrastructure those companies have built already exists,
| and the subsidies are mostly going to pay debt. If the
| subsidies stopped, the companies would go bankrupt. Their
| assets would be sold to another company, likely at a price
| less than the debt. The new company could therefore have a
| lower debt burden, and wouldn't necessarily need the
| subsidies to provide the same level of service. The subsidies
| are stopping the market from efficiently allocating capital.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Sure, but what about the people who will have disrupted or
| potentially no internet access/support while the market is
| sorting itself out?
|
| If your plan is to be carried out, then there is ripe
| opportunity for a politician to come to these areas an say,
| "vote for me, I will protect your internet access" and then
| fight for the funding instead.
| nevdka wrote:
| Treat it like any other utility - it continues to run,
| just without servicing its debts. Most of the expense is
| paying for capital. Stop that (because bankruptcy) and
| the ISP can be profitable, and sold to whoever pays the
| most.
| spullara wrote:
| There is some similar thing that happens with ski resorts.
| Something like 3 bankruptcies and debt buyouts before they
| are successful.
| apexalpha wrote:
| In my country they simply force the main ISP to open their
| network on fair rates. No need for and entire new physical
| network but there is competition.
| jseliger wrote:
| I've worked on various broadband-related projects as a grant-
| writing consultant (https://seliger.com/2009/11/13/adventures-
| in-the-broadband/), SpaceX will definitely not be the worst of
| the bunch and will almost certainly be among the top quarter.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I don't have a terrible issue with this, it's actually not very
| much money and could have good benefits that have an economic
| impact much larger than $886M. I am against wasteful spending,
| but I believe on an economic/GDP basis this will more than pay
| for itself in the long run.
| lgats wrote:
| SpaceX has been awarded $885.51 million by the Federal
| Communications Commission to provide Starlink broadband to
| 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states.
|
| That's $1376.52 in subsidies per customer
| veilrap wrote:
| My initial reaction agrees that does sound quite high.
|
| However, I wonder what the alternative strategy costs for rural
| broadband are. My guess is that laying a lot of cable to remote
| locations could possibly be even higher than the $1376.52 per
| customer cost? It seems like something like Satelite internet
| connections could be less to set up, but it's not clear to me
| the cost of the equipment, installations and upkeep are in that
| case?
|
| Also 1376 / 12 months averages out to only about $110 per month
| per customer for just one year. Which honestly doesn't sound
| too bad.
| myself248 wrote:
| I wonder, what're the costs of providing fixed landline
| service, even in a city?
|
| From burying the lines or stringing them on poles, to wiring
| up each drop into each dwelling, all the splices and
| repeaters and what-not, to the central office building and
| equipment and power and stuff, and maintaining that entire
| physical plant for years, it's all got to add up.
|
| I'd imagine it's well within an order of magnitude.
| xoa wrote:
| The beta terminal cost is $500, and beta service is $100/month
| (at up to ~150 Mbps or so right now?). So the money would cover
| the terminal cost to those customers and then full freight 8
| months of service at current pricing. Alternatively/in
| addition, and more similarly to traditional in-ground service,
| it may also simply help fun actual infrastructure in the form
| of more/faster deployment of ground stations and sats. SpaceX
| may also (and it seems likely) have more standard service tiers
| for full general release, so something at 25 Mbps for $25/month
| say, and then working their way up. If they use this money to
| cover the minimum tier and then let people choose to pay the
| difference for more if they desired, then that'd bump the
| coverage to close to 3 years.
|
| For the level of service they're offering that seems pretty
| reasonable honestly, and a much more efficient use of dollars
| than typical efforts (though WISPs might do even better in
| certain areas, they have different trade offs). Since it
| appears how the companies make use of the money is fairly
| flexible SpaceX will probably deploy it towards a few different
| metrics. The $500 upfront capex is probably the biggest
| impediment for a lot of people so getting that down is
| important, but if internally they had any issues with getting
| their sat shells filled out that'd be a good upfront usage too.
|
| This is also spread out over 10 years, so where the most bang
| for buck is delivered will probably vary over time, by 2025 let
| alone 2030 SpaceX's economics will certainly look quite
| different with Starship deployment and filled shells/done
| ground stations.
| asdfaoeu wrote:
| According to some leaked info SpaceX is paying $2400 per
| terminal.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The leaked info is sort of wrong in both directions. (Or,
| the info is correct, but is widely misinterpreted.)
|
| The $2.4B they paid to ST Micro is not for terminals, as ST
| Micro doesn't manufacture electronics, they are a foundry
| and so they only make the chips. The $2.4B includes the
| costs for the chips for the first million receivers, but
| the assembly and non-chip costs add a lot on top of that.
| So in that sense, $2400 per terminal is a serious
| underestimate.
|
| But it's also wrong in the other direction, because the
| $2.4B didn't just include the chips, it also included the
| development and mask costs for those chips. This should be
| considered to be NRE and not considered as part of the
| price of the terminals, as SpaceX will not have to pay that
| for the next million terminals.
|
| So the real number is above or below $2400 depending on
| what costs more, the motors, pcbs, the antenna layers, the
| chassis and the assembly of a terminal, or 1/1000000 of the
| NRE of developing the ASICs for Starlink. Who knows.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I don't believe the subsidies are meant to subsidize the
| customer. Rather they are subsidizing the upfront capital
| cost to build out infra.
|
| In other words, they get all the money, even if no one
| subscribes.
| xoa wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > _FCC funding can be used in different ways depending on
| the type of broadband service. Cable companies like Charter
| and other wireline providers generally use the money to
| expand their networks into new areas that don 't already
| have broadband. But with Starlink, SpaceX could
| theoretically provide service to all of rural America once
| it has launched enough satellites, even without FCC
| funding._
|
| > _One possibility is that SpaceX could use the FCC money
| to lower prices in the 642,925 funded locations, but the
| FCC announcement didn 't say whether that's what SpaceX
| will do._
|
| SpaceX is still in the painful bootstrapping phase of
| things, and their cost structure right now is still higher
| then what they ultimately hope for. But from the sound of
| it they've got a lot of flexibility in how they deploy this
| money so long as they ultimately meet service targets, and
| they're only one player amongst many even for this subsidy
| money. If they're satisfied with service people don't tend
| to casually switch providers, so there is real value in
| being first. I think therefore SpaceX may consider using
| some of the money at least to lower the bar of someone
| signing up and try to get currently underserved households
| onboard as customers faster.
|
| Additionally, don't forget this is only the first round,
| there is even more money available next time. Given the
| nature of bidding, I assume strategic calculations about
| how to win more next time will also play a role.
| smithza wrote:
| There is nothing in the article about customers personally
| benefiting from this. SpaceX could take the money and put it
| towards ground infr., etc., customers only seeing reduced
| payments due to NRE/maintenance subsidies. It sounds like
| SpaceX has quite a bit of autonomy here.
| baldeagle wrote:
| It is also over 10 years... so maybe a set of free equipment
| and $8 off a month?
|
| Note: a traditional cable company got more than $1B is
| subsidies, so maybe the distributed model is actually cheaper.
| Depends on replacement costs and lifecycle (in both cases).
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The subsidy goes to SpaceX, in exchange for offering service
| at the required locations at the required performance. There
| is no requirement whatsoever for SpaceX to pass any of it on
| to the customers, and in fact doing so would be against the
| spirit of the offering. It's meant for incentivizing the
| buildout of infrastructure, not for passing on savings to
| consumers.
| [deleted]
| leecb wrote:
| That's $11.47 per month, per customer. Slightly over 10% of
| current pricing.
|
| > Funding is distributed over 10 years, so SpaceX's haul will
| amount to a little over $88.5 million per year.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Welcome to the US, where cities are constantly sucked dry of
| money to pay for people to move in to rural areas and destroy
| nature. Yay!
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