Fiber Broadband Association CEO Opposes SpaceX Receiving Rural Digital Opportunity Funding

CEO of the Fiber Broadband Association Gary Bolton has regularly argued that federal broadband funding should not be going to SpaceX because the satellites have a limited life, and he recently reiterated that view saying he hoped the Federal Communications Commission would not approve SpaceX’s winning bids in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction. SpaceX is slated to receive close to a billion dollars in RDOF funding to bring 100 Mbps service to 640,000 US homes. In the meantime, Bolton noted that those homes are not eligible for deployments funded through other government programs that have come into being since the RDOF auction because they are supposed to get the SpaceX service. Bolton argued that fiber broadband should be made available to everyone in the US because it is the most future-proof technology available. “We don’t want to be able to discriminate based on your zip code,” he said. “To solve societal issues, we have to make sure everyone has more bandwidth than they could ever use.” Bolton also sees digital equity as the solution to a wide range of society’s ills.