from the this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things dept
There are $42.5 billion in broadband grants that are headed to the states thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill most Republicans voted against (yet routinely try to take credit for among their constituents).
But Republicans, despite a supposed feud between Trump and Elon Musk, have been rewriting the grant program’s guidance to eliminate provisions ensuring the resulting broadband is affordable to poor people, and to ensure that Elon Musk gets billions in new broadband subsidies for his expensive and increasingly congested satellite broadband company, Starlink.
The rewrites delayed the underlying grant program, forcing many states to revamp their plans for the already earmarked funds. That includes states like Virginia, which recently tried to finalize their plans to spend $1.48 billion on faster, better broadband across the state. But they immediately ran into complaints by Elon Musk’s Starlink for not giving Elon Musk enough subsidies:
“The Virginia plan “represents a massive waste of federal taxpayer money, reverting to the Biden Administration’s failed approach to BEAD and completely disregarding the Trump Administration’s effort to restructure the program to accelerate broadband deployment and reduce spending,” SpaceX alleged. “Simply put, Virginia has put its heavy thumb on the scale in favor of expensive, slow-to-build fiber bias over speedy, low-cost, and technology neutral competition.”
Ideally, you want to spend most of taxpayer-funded broadband grant money on high capacity, future-proof, fiber optic broadband. From there, you want to fill in many of the remaining gaps with 5G cellular and fixed wireless. After that, you can fill in any remaining gaps with Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband services, which generally lack the capacity to be anything more than a niche player.
Musk and Republicans are demanding that states reverse that order, prioritizing Starlink service. The argument is that Starlink is cheaper to deploy than fiber.
And while technically true, Starlink has a long list of caveats. It’s often too expensive for users most in need of affordable broadband. The network is congested and can’t really handle a massive influx of users. It also harms the ozone layer and astronomy research. It’s not entirely guaranteed the service will even exist in ten years, making Starlink only “cheaper” if you ignore objective reality.
This is all before you get to the fact that the company is run by an overt white supremacist asshole.
Because they want more taxpayer subsidies, Starlink and SpaceX are urging the NTIA to reject Virginia’s latest plan. States now have to risk potentially losing out on billions in historic broadband grants if they fail to pander to Elon Musk, or dare to include provisions that actually try to ensure the resulting broadband access is affordable and evenly deployed to marginalized communities.
That means not only more expensive and less reliable broadband, but it means redirecting a lot of taxpayer money away from things like open access community-owned broadband and cooperatives, and toward a less reliable, more expensive, more congested alternative. All so the country’s richest man (who pretends to hate subsidies) can get even richer on the taxpayer dime.
This is going to be playing out in every state in the country over the next six months, and obviously the Republican states are going to be more likely to sell out their own constituents in order to make Elon Musk happy. But Democratic states may also be quick to fold on issues like Starlink subsidies and affordability provisions for fear of incurring Trump administration ire.
This pandering to Elon Musk is causing significant new delays in broadband deployments in a program Republicans complained during election season was taking too long to deploy broadband.
When Starlink inevitably struggles to handle the influx of new subsidized users and overcharges rural Americans for service, Republicans, as per tradition, will be nowhere to be found. And because a core component of the second Trump term is destroying all functional federal regulators, nobody will be able to hold Starlink accountable when that inevitable disappointment comes.
Filed Under: bead, billionaires, broadband, broadband equity access and deployment, donald trump, elon musk, leo, low earth orbit, ntia, satellite, subsidies, virginia
Companies: spacex, starlink
