Starlink operator SpaceX is fighting Virginia’s plan to deploy fiber Internet service to residents, claiming that federal grant money should be given to Starlink instead. SpaceX is already in line to win over $3 million in grant money in the state but is seeking $60 million.
Starlink is poised to benefit from the Trump administration rewriting rules for the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program. While the Biden administration decided that states should prioritize fiber in order to build more future-proof networks, the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location.
I think you’re low key conflating 2 different issues here.
When it comes to technology of fiber vs low orbit satellites fiber will always win in every circumstance that isn’t a battle field or an ocean. It’s one of those technologies that we really nailed. Combined with cell towers we can tap ourselves on the back and say “yay we solved internet” very convincingly.
There’s literally nothing in current practical physics that can match this latency and bandwidth and cost ration. Just try to do napkin math of how many low orbit satellites we’d need to cover today’s bandwidth and latency requirements and we will literally never need less than what we need today unless the world ends.
Now whether corruption has a role here sure - but you sure your trusting SpaceX more when its literally on the news right now for bait and switching the pause feature. There’s no basis of thinking that Starlink would somehow be less corrupt. In fact, it seems like hiding corruption here would be much easier for starlink with feature changes and priority lanes than literal “cable is here or cable is not here”.
Isn’t fiber also winning on battlefields now because it’s resistant to jamming?