Posted on 08/14/2025 9:21:43 AM PDT by MagillaX
SpaceX warned on Wednesday that Virginia is planning to spend over ten times what was required for its proposed high-speed internet access program by not sharing a large chunk of the incentives for Starlink.
In a letter addressed to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, SpaceX said that the final proposal for the program was a “massive waste of federal taxpayer money,” before noting that SpaceX could have served virtually every eligible household at $60 million, compared with the $613 million in expenditure proposed by the Commonwealth.
“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,” SpaceX wrote in the latter as Virginia chose the Elon Musk-headed company for only 5,579 of the total 133,000 locations selected for subsidized broadband installations.
The program at the center of the controversy is called the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD), an $42.5 billion initiative of the Biden administration to enhance internet access for Americans across the country. The Trump administration tweaked the program to shift from fibre-based broadband to ‘technology neutrality’ and paved the way for satellite broadband providers such as Starlink and fixed wireless service providers.
Retail sentiment on Stocktwits about AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), another satellite broadband provider, was in the ‘bullish’ territory at the time of writing.
SpaceX further alleged that, according to Virginia’s current plan, Starlink will receive $3.2 million in funding, which translates to approximately $584 per site, while faster fiber installations can cost around $6,000 to $8,000 per site. The company said that Virginia “failed to observe technology neutrality,” before adding that Starlink could provide faster broadband and “at one-tenth of the cost.”
(Excerpt) Read more at in.investing.com ...
The current governor is on his way out of what has recently been a blue state and finds himself surrounded by political deep state. And hard to tell friend or foe at times.
Louisiana put forward their proposal with a cap of competitive 8k per service while Virginia was nearly double. And may be the reason no complaint has been levied by StarLink on Louisiana.
There are legitimate concerns for Low Earth Satellite and there are some interesting opportunities it presents as well. I would hope Sec. Lutnick finds the appropriate balance between fiber and LOE soon that prevents the lawsuits.
It would be idiotic to rely on the very vulnerable StarLink for vital communications.
Musk has a point on this one.
And you are ok with spending tens of thousand$ of taxpayer money to provide someone in the hills to get a fiber run to to his house?
What happened to the fiber optic trial in the intercept cable on transmission lines in southwestern VA?
The utility was the middle man for broadband access to the internet.
No, in this case Space X is quite correct, but also tilting at windmills because this, like most government contracts, are all about graft. I meant in general that satellite Internet is quite vulnerable to attacks from China.
“I meant in general that satellite Internet is quite vulnerable to attacks from China.”
We have 31 GPS satellites.
Starlink has over 8,000.
It looks like this is Internet for low income people, not involving things like 911 services and such. (The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD), an $42.5 billion initiative of the Biden administration to enhance internet access for Americans across the country.)
In the article it also said: "...The Trump administration tweaked the program to shift from fibre-based broadband to ‘technology neutrality’ and paved the way for satellite broadband providers such as Starlink and fixed wireless service providers..."
To me, this is just more proof that the grown-ups are in charge. This makes sense.
We don't need high end/high speed Internet access for people who aren't able or willing to pay for it.
We need the most inexpensive option, and if SpaceX is right (it says in the article that SpaceX asserts: "...SpaceX could have served virtually every eligible household at $60 million, compared with the $613 million in expenditure proposed by the Commonwealth...") then absolutely they should have been considered.
However, as Freeper MagillaX astutely points out: The deep state sees fiber as an infrastructure jobs package. And maybe with some political kickbacks.
That is no doubt true, and how the Democrats and Deep State view this kind of thing. This anecdote illustrates the vacuousness of that point of view:
"...Milton Friedman was once visiting China when he was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, thousands of workers were toiling away building a canal with shovels. He asked his host, a government bureaucrat, why more machines weren’t being used. The bureaucrat replied, “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton responded, “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, you should give these workers spoons, not shovels!”
The same infrastructure argument happened with telephone infrastructure.
We laid millions of miles of copper, because that is all we had. Now it is all about cellular.
In other countries they jumped straight to cellular, especially where the terrain was mountainous or the population decentralized.
Not perfect but much more achievable.
We also built out a cable TV network, only to have it replaced by Internet connections.
And we used to complain about the cost of cable TV bundling, but today we volunteer to pay for podcasts, apps and YouTube.
I prefer “fiber”...
Can Starlink provide 2 GB input to me like fiber does?
Can the chicoms attack Starlink?
Can the chicoms attack the fiber cables?
Can the chicoms attack the fiber cables?
—
Ever wonder how signals get to your fiber cable?
Yikes!
Are you implying that it's not a fiber fairy?
Losing the tooth fairy was bad enough, but losing the fiber fairy will be devastating...
“ I prefer “fiber”...
Can Starlink provide 2 GB input to me like fiber does?”
I prefer fiber as well.
That said, I have a vacation place on a lake where fiber isn’t an option and isn’t commercially feasible. The people these types of programs are intended to help are typically in areas that are difficult to service with fiber which is why it hasn’t been done already.
My cabin has fiber available so that’s what I use. The lake doesn’t, so Starlink is the best choice. One size doesn’t fit all here.
As to whether Starlink gives you 2Gb, no. It doesn’t. Thankfully the vast majority of people (perhaps even including you) don’t need 2Gb of internet bandwidth. Your provider, like all others and even commercial data center networks, do a thing called over subscription. Your connection may be able to achieve 2Gb download, but you won’t come close to that if everyone was trying to do so at the same time.
I had an opportunity yesterday to do a speedtest on Starlink.
The guy to whom it belonged had bought the lowest class service at 50 GB/month.
Speed was 420 MB/s down and about 15 up.
Impressive.
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