Starlink: Elon Musk’s project for the widespread Internet collects skepticism
Starlink is an ambitious project by Elon Musk to bring the internet everywhere via a constellation of low- flying satellites. The company was awarded a US $ 900 million contract from the FCC, the US telecommunications agency, to bring the internet to rural areas. Technically, the satellite is an almost optimal solution, because it does not require fixed structures on the ground, and therefore less investments and maintenance.
But something is wrong : some regional Internet service providers are urging the FCC to review this contract awarded to Elon Musk's firm. The protests come mainly from the cooperatives that currently provide electricity and internet services and contesting the granting of this Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to Musk's company. The accusation is of using too innovative technologies, never tested for the granting of this type of service, so, according to the ISP service providers, there is no certainty that Starlink can actually provide the service.
Commercial group leaders today voiced concern about RDOF bidding processes, exposing potential flaws in how the bidding process itself works and why it is so important for federal dollars to go to ISPs who can actually implement broadband services in the affected areas. This mainly concerns the more advanced services. those related to the supply of a band of the order of a Gigabit. Among other things, the Beta users, called to test the service, do not seem to be receiving all the connection, even if for now the data are not definitive.
The fear is that the 900 million of the FCC goes to waste on untested technology that does not actually guarantee the service. This dispute, if it continues even with new evidence, could lead to considerable economic damage for Elon Musk.
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The Starlink article : Elon Musk's project for widespread Internet collects skepticism comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/starlink-il-progetto-di-elon-musk-per-internet-diffuso-raccoglie-scetticismo/ on Fri, 05 Feb 2021 09:00:37 +0000.