Starlink operator SpaceX is fighting Virginia’s plan to deploy fiber Internet service to residents, claiming that federal grant money should be given to Starlink instead. SpaceX is already in line to win over $3 million in grant money in the state but is seeking $60 million.
Starlink is poised to benefit from the Trump administration rewriting rules for the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program. While the Biden administration decided that states should prioritize fiber in order to build more future-proof networks, the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location.
This is absolute insanity. To think that fiber and satellites are even on the same playing field is absolute brain damage.
I’m so fucking tired of living in this god damned dystopia.
Don’t worry, it ends eventually.
all bleeding stops 🙄
Do something about it then…
PS: maybe you are, if so, Kudos to you… but the majority seem to only rue it
Hey man I’m all ears. Give me something concrete to do.
i have some ideas of stuff to do with this
Maybe start with doing some research on the Internet yourself instead of asking random strangers from other countries to fix things for you.
Musk is a domestic terrorist.
Musk isn’t American; he’s an international terrorist
they hate you. always remember. they hate your entire existence. they’d literally crush you in a hydraulic press if they could. giving you pain is the only way they feel a semblance of happiness.
I don’t think they hate us, it just that they love money more. They can, and do, inflict untold misery and suffering so long as there is money at the end of it.
no. there’s no end to the amount of disdain they have for you. they’d do it for free too; they just don’t have to.
People who disagree with you are people who never spent time with the ultra rich. I’ve had the pleasure to hang in those circles and it was absolutely eye opening the complete disdain that social class has toward the working class. It’s so fucking crazy that one has to see it for themselves to truly appreciate the hate they have for everyone not in their economic circles.
Preach on brother, but I also understand why the plebs don’t believe you
Capitalism breeds innovation
If they could put that brain power to innovate on their product instead of innovate on how to fuck people, that would be great!
the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location
In other words don’t give the tax payer the best options you can, give them the cheapest options to implement you can.
Federal. Money should go to the poor. Elon musk can fuck off.
Capitalism is truly wonderful
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Capitalism, is in fact, Fascism, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Government with Benefits.
Fascism is just capitalism on speed
Nope. It’s hate driven authoritarianism using Capitalism as a weapon.
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Fascism is fake capitalism, because the market is not deciding anything, government bureaucrats are.
Capitalism is when the market decides who “wins” and “loses” in the race for more money.
But when you add in government overreach and regulatory capture, it loses all semblance of capitalism.
Fascism is when capitalists control the government.
And then they use that government to pick winners and losers rather than letting the market decide. And at that point, the economic system is no longer capitalism.
When government is capable of picking those winners and losers, government service becomes more attractive to capitalists than running an actual business.
Ever notice that, for all their bluster, it’s usually the big business types in government that push regulations in the name of protecting one thing or another? Kids, environment, jobs, etc…
Because it’s not really about helping those kids, or protecting the planet, or anything else. It’s about continuing the size and scope of government to make it harder for new competitors to enter the market and provide a service cheaper than the established players can.
Did you know that in many states in the US, if you have a kid, but don’t have a grid power connection to your local power provider, that you can be charged with child endangerment? Even if you have off-grid electrical power.
Your local power provider loves that. It’s basically illegal to not have their service, so they can charge you basically whatever they want. “What about the public service utility commissions?” What about them? They’re all corrupt AF, and worse, typically run by unelected bureaucrats.
Then, add in the localities where the the utility commissions are so corrupt that they allow those same power companies to charge you a fee if you do add your own power generation. Because remember, you still have to have their service. So if you add, say, solar panels, they levy additional fees on you to make up for lost revenue.
And we can’t even vote the fuckers out, because it’s mostly unelected bureaucrats, and even the few elected officials that exist are just completely bought and paid for by the very same utility company they’re supposed to regulate.
Fascism is capitalism natural end stage
Does fiber go down when it rains?
That’s the magic hand of the market that all talk about…
Why do we need to have debate with lobbyists and groups of that nature.
They have more $ than you and i, can buy their ways. How that shits not illegal is fucked. Guess it goes with insider trading for Congress, make laws for/against companies you’re invested in. USA is beyond rotten and corrupt from the inside. Blatant bribery with Tim cook delivering gold bars to the white house himself.
But they pose no comparison to requirements of what the city or community’s needs. Satellite is slower and pales in comparison to fiber.
But money, you think they care? As long as there is money, your needs mean fuck all.
This company is acting like a spoiled brat of a child.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
As much as I dislike the muskrat, is this fiber actually real?
ISPs in US have been given billions of dollars, multiple times to bring Fiber out and each time they’ve pocketed the cash and done nothing.
Starlink at the very least, exists.
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If this is going to counties and cities to build out municipal fiber, then screw StarLink.
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If this is going to AT&T, again, for the fourth time to build this fiber, then no, give it to StarLink since AT&T will never actually build out that service, fourth time is not the charm.
I take umbrage with StarLink’s notion that Fiber is slow to build out though - the single biggest expense and time consuming part of rolling out a GPON network is getting it from the street to inside a premesis.
Guess which part StarLink still has to do and it isn’t any cheaper…
I think you’re low key conflating 2 different issues here.
When it comes to technology of fiber vs low orbit satellites fiber will always win in every circumstance that isn’t a battle field or an ocean. It’s one of those technologies that we really nailed. Combined with cell towers we can tap ourselves on the back and say “yay we solved internet” very convincingly.
There’s literally nothing in current practical physics that can match this latency and bandwidth and cost ration. Just try to do napkin math of how many low orbit satellites we’d need to cover today’s bandwidth and latency requirements and we will literally never need less than what we need today unless the world ends.
Now whether corruption has a role here sure - but you sure your trusting SpaceX more when its literally on the news right now for bait and switching the pause feature. There’s no basis of thinking that Starlink would somehow be less corrupt. In fact, it seems like hiding corruption here would be much easier for starlink with feature changes and priority lanes than literal “cable is here or cable is not here”.
BEAD funds are more or less administered by the state, and nothing is fundementally stopping them from doing the right thing and preferring local bids.
It’s entirely possible too, look at North Dakota, it has near 100% fiber coverage for the entire state, because the same model that brought electrification to them brought them fiber. In Utah and surrounding states there are municipal networks building out to member cities.
The real threat is the states capitulating to the incumbent providers like Comcast – but at least it’s a State level issue instead of being totally a given at the federal level.
I got fiber last year. It halved my bill and quadrupled my throughput. It’s real, and since then another vendor arrived and is competing with the one i have. This is hiw it is supposed to work.
I’m not sure why people are commenting that I think fiber isn’t real?
Of course it’s real.
But maybe you’re young- Comcast, AT&T, etc, have been given multiple tranches of money since the early 1990s to deliver a nationwide fiber network in the US, they’ve never delivered more than 0.1% of it.
Giving them more money, won’t make it happen.
Giving municipalities (cities, counties) the funds to build out their own fiber networks is good.
Giving more money to Comcast and AT&T to do nothing, is not good, it’s corporate welfare.
Giving municipalities (cities, counties) the funds to build out their own fiber networks is good.
Assuming the big ISPs don’t sue or lobby to make it against the law for those cities or counties to then build it.
That’s common too.
As much as I dislike the muskrat, is this fiber actually real?
You literally questioned its existence, why are you confused?
Now, everything else you said I either knew, or agree with the assertion.
Btw, I’m definitely not young.
I have fiber internet. I don’t understand this question. Are you suggesting that nowhere in the US has this technology? Like. This situation (where a private company sues a state, county, municipality etc to stop the rollout of fiber internet (or even another private company) happens so frequently that it’s unreal.
There’s plenty of places that already have fiber. And those private companies for the most part want to continue growing that user base by rolling out fiber in new markets.
And if it’s the state actually controlling the rollout that’s better than them just paying a private company to do it? If this weren’t a threat to Musk and Starlink he wouldn’t be suing.
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