Americans Need Reliable FCC Commitments, and So Does Starlink

In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission committed to providing Starlink, a satellite internet network operating in 40 countries by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, with $885.5 million to expand broadband in unserved rural areas of the United States. But in August 2022, the FCC announced with almost no explanation that Starlink would receive nothing. Such whiplash must have other broadband providers reassessing their confidence in FCC decisions and in the broadband programs run by the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA).  Among the reasons given were that the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) had concluded that LEO (low-earth orbit)-based broadband is a “nascent” and “risky” technology, questioned Starlink’s “ability to timely deploy future satellites,” believed that Starlink could not deliver the speeds it promised, and believed that Starlink’s business plans were “not realistic” or “predicated on aggressive assumptions and predictions.” No details were provided. The Bureau’s claims are questionable. LEO-based internet is hardly nascent. The EU is investing nearly $6 billion in developing and deploying LEOs. These conclusions and the lack of transparency are troubling because the FCC knew Starlink’s technology, capabilities, and plans before the auction took place. The agency offered no explanation as to what had changed since 2020, except that the Bureau was unhappy with Starlink’s “inadequate responses to the Bureau’s follow-up questions” and that, according to Ookla data not in the official record, Starlink’s delivered speeds had declined (by an unspecified amount) the first six months of 2022. The FCC owes Americans and investors an explanation. It is hard to have faith in a process that reverses an $885.5 million decision with a vague, one-paragraph explanation hidden away on the ninth page of the FCC’s public notice.

[Mark Jamison is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and is concurrently the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.]