The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday reaffirmed its 2022 decision to deny SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies.

The FCC said the decision impacting Elon Musk’s space company was based on Starlink’s failure to meet basic program requirements and that Starlink could not demonstrate it could deliver promised service after SpaceX had challeged the 2022 decision.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Rurally here, HughesNet has existed for years. I have never used its service, but why would anyone have been compelled to switch to Starlink?

    • Nawor3565@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      In theory, StarLink would have been faster because they use many low-orbit satellites as opposed to a handful of further-away geostationary satellites like HughesNet. But “faster speeds” isn’t everything and this money is meant to expand actual broadband/optical internet.

    • AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Looks like Hughesnet starts at 15 GB per month and 15Mbs down for $49.99 a month**

      **Monthly Fee reflects the applied $5 savings for ACHⓘ enrollment. Enroll before the 2nd billing cycle for continued savings.

      Service plans require a 24-month commitment. Equipment Lease or Purchase fees extra.

      That is pretty bad.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Traditional satellite internet using geostationary satellites not only have bandwidth limitations but also very high latency. This is simply physics, even at the speed of light, GEO is pretty darn far out. For regular web browsing that’s not an issue, but anything that is latency dependent either starts failing or becomes unbearable.

      Latency to GEO is about 500 milliseconds, that’s half a second for a request you send to get up there, then another half second for it to be sent back to ground stations, then normal internet latency, then another second back up and then down to you. So you have normal internet latency, plus 2 seconds, at the best of times. So things like VoIP and gaming often have many more issues, or sometimes may not even be really usable.

      The Starlink contstellation being in a Low Earth Orbit means a much lower latency. Real world latency has been around or below 100ms total, similar to LTE latency times. In the real world it is just more like a mobile connection that works even in the middle of nowhere.