The FCC voted to reject Starlink’s application to receive $900 million in public support through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program.
The FCC determined that “Starlink failed to demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service,” and therefore funding “would not be the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars to bring broadband to unserved areas across the United States .”
The RDOF program authorized more than $6 billion in funding to bring primarily fiber gigabit broadband service to over 3,458,000 locations in 49 states and the Northern Mariana Islands.
“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable. The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.”
In a dissenting statement, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr writes “Today, the Federal Communications Commission adds itself to the growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses. I am not the first to notice a pattern here….First, the FCC revokes Starlink’s $885 million award by making up an entirely new standard of review that no entity could ever pass and then applying that novel standard to only one entity: Starlink. In particular, FCC law provides that a winning bidder like Starlink must demonstrate that it is “reasonably capable” of fulfilling its end of the bargain that it struck with the FCC back in 2020. In this case, that means Starlink needed to show that it was more likely than not that Starlink could provide high-speed Internet service (specifically, low-latency, 100/20 Mbps service) to at least 40% of those roughly 640,000 rural premises by December 31, 2025. Starlink did exactly that in a voluminous series of submissions that it filed with the FCC throughout 2021 and 2022. Indeed, the record leaves no doubt that Starlink is reasonably capable of providing qualifying high-speed Internet service to the required number of locations by the end of 2025.“
