Over $5000 per location is crazy. How many years will that take to recoup a return on investment? Are these locations connected to any other grids like water, or reliant on wells and septic tanks? In which case, Starlink would be the equivalent - "off grid" connectivity.

>"Are these locations connected to any other grids"

Or like an electrical grid?

i happen to live in such an area. (Behind yosemite : Madera) The only grid is the electrical, strung from wooden poles (that get hit by cars and at least one a year there is an outage.) Own well, check. own septic, check. propane? have a tank. Cell phone ? spotty at best. The "denser" areas have comcast (tv and internet) and that is your only option. even ADSL is not available. you are lucky to get POTS. The only internet options are Hughes net (very expensive and 10mb/s if you are lucky. if it rains: adios internet) or the newer mobile internet over 5G ( that also raises lots of protest .. ooh 5G we're all getting irradiated and tracked) and that is also spotty (see cell phone coverage). It's all farmland and homes as spaced very far apart and in clusters of 2 to 10. So starlink would be perfect. Have one access terminal and share with neighbours. Starlink has the ability to do that. Thy have been doing it for the tribes. One terminal and a network switch. https://www.pcmag.com/news/native-american-tribe-gets-early-access-to-spacexs-starlink-and-says-its

So starlink would be perfect.

Out of simple curiosity, why can't you get Starlink now, without a government subsidy?

"i happen to live in such an area...."

Exactly. So I guess my downvotes are because of my title, rather than my sentiment, lol :)

Does Elon, I mean Starlink not offer service to you? Not sure why his company needs $1300 from the Federal government to onboarded you with their services?

Businesses are concerned about making profits, and that's one reason why I am distrustful at best of anyone saying someone should run governments like one. A government *should* be providing essential services to its people regardless of profitability.[1] When it comes to things like infrastructure, rural areas are nearly always money sinks, and on an ongoing basis. Currently in the US, they're already suffering higher per-capita violence, rates of drugs abuse, and crushing poverty from decades of neglect and hopelessness than cities.[3] Unless society decides to just cut them off entirely to die on their own, giving them the resources to potentially reverse this decline isn't going to be a money-maker.

[1] They should do so in a cost-effective manner, as much as possible.[2] But if Starlink doesn't meet the minimum need, then the cost difference isn't the primary issue.

[2] I have no inherent issue with contracting with the private sector where appropriate, although, that would require more auditing and imposing penalties (if necessary) than is currently done. ISPs in particular have taken public funds to build out to rural areas/small towns and then have not done the work they were getting paid to do.

[3] Some of this decline is self-inflicted. Refusal to change and abandon practically 19th century attitudes are huge drivers for young people to leave and never return.

I'm rather confused about what these different figures are actually buying. $1,377 seems adjacent to the annual cost of a Starlink domestic subscription, and rather more than the cost of the terminal, so what would be being acquired? And while $5000 might get you the fibre/cable/whatever installed to remote locations, the cost of maintaining even a fibre network spread over long distances for a relatively small number of consumers would presumably be fairly high, so how would that affect the long term monthly cost even when the capital costs are sunk?

And if the goal is to get broadband to remote areas at an affordable and sustainable cost, wouldn't that be something that might be better arranged by state or regional authorities, perhaps sharing the infrastructure for other purposes?

The whole thing seems to have more than a whiff of the pork barrel, whoever gets the money in the end.

the cost of maintaining even a fibre network spread over long distances for a relatively small number of consumers would presumably be fairly high

True, but those costs are spread out across the whole customer base. I get phone and electric on a pole where I live, newer areas in town have underground service. The latter is cheaper to maintain, but those people aren't getting a discount on their service because of that.

Usually rural broadband is delivered in one of two ways. One, some big established player like a cable TV incumbent adds them to their area, and they have a lot of customers to spread the very tiny added cost of maintaining that new more spread out network, or two, a rural electric cooperative (i.e. customer owned) provides the service - and in that case there is not really any extra cost to maintaining the fiber because they're already having to repair electrical outages in the same places if i.e. a tree falls over and snaps the lines. Many rural electric companies already provide fiber because enough customers agreed to commit to the service for X years they could make the numbers work in the long run. Several rural cooperatives around here did. In less affluent areas, or areas where customers are more spread out (like ranches instead of farms) that's not practical. That's where this rural broadband program steps in.

You should ask Comcast (or your local power provider) how much it will cost to connect to a home that is 10 miles from the nearest service. FYI, they charge by the foot, and they charge a lot.

If State or Regional authorities had gotten broadband out to all their citizens, then the Federal government wouldn't need to. They've had how long now?

The goal is to connect people in unserved areas to broadband networks, so they can pay the regular price going forward. They are unserved because of the high per subscriber cost of connecting them, which makes it economically infeasible to offer them service.

This is similar to the rural electrification and telephone programs decades ago that paid for utilities to provide service to people on farms and other rural areas, where they might have to string miles of wire along poles to reach a dozen customers, then another quarter mile of wire to reach each house. That's why it costs $5000 per customer to wire them up. If they were doing the electrification or telephone programs today it would probably cost that much (more, actually, for electric due to the transformers and multiple wires required) per customer in the same area.

Starlink doesn't deserve any money under the program because they don't have to do anything extra to provide service for an unserved area - they already offer service in those unserved areas! Basically Musk is pissed because despite his MAGA ways, he loves government handouts. Without those Tesla would have gone bankrupt and could have never afforded to start SpaceX or buy Twitter. The guy basically enjoys his current life because of the billions in goverment subsidies to support EVs he got but he's still greedy for more!

Now theoretically Musk could argue that no one should get those subsidies, because Starlink can handle them all, but he can't argue that Starlink deserves a red cent.

Starlink doesn't deserve any money under the program because they don't have to do anything extra to provide service for an unserved area - they already offer service in those unserved areas! Basically Musk is pissed because despite his MAGA ways, he loves government handouts.

Exactly. The only subsidy should maybe subsidising connectivity, which might mean some kind of means testing and probably isn't something that should be administered by Starlink. Plus I think that already exists.

It's not about return on investment. If they wanted to do that, people in rural areas could continue to live under the "we don't earn enough from your area so have fun with the microwave link" policy. They've gotten money to add service even though it won't turn a profit, and they're trying to use that money to add service that will last for some time. They could pay Starlink, and a lot of people would get service right now and the service would, while not meeting the speed requirements most of the time, be quite a lot better than what the users had before and useful for most things. The problem is that the money is not a recurring annual budget, but a one-time allocation. When it runs out, the satellites are still as expensive as they were before, they still need replacing every five years, and so there will be a lot of ongoing costs which will return to the individual consumer. With cables already having been installed, the fixed cost will have been paid for and the ongoing costs will be lower, so there's actually some chance that people can continue to run them after the money has been spent.

Maybe if he hadn't outed himself as a russian spy, and habitual liar?

I am confident there are off-grid homes that it is nearly impossible to dig fiber to.

But, we must remember Starlink is an "easy" button that Telcos would love, love, love to resell instead of expanding their fiber network in rural areas.

The US Govt has no business funding sat connectivity if there isn't any infastructure to invest in.

Which has greater bandwidth, Starlink or fiber?

Ultimately, I'd rather see Comcast expand their network than throw billions at a social media mogul who also sells cars that allow people to run their high-beams during the day, blinding oncoming traffic.

Come on, Elon. Suns up. How do you guck that up?

"...cars that allow people to run their high-beams during the day..."

True of just about every car I've driven, including owned, leased, or rented, and I've been driving since 1995. I don't use the high-beams often (quite rarely, actually), but I could if I wanted, because in the past cars had less smarts and fewer controls on user behavior. I remember back when there wasn't even a safety check that the driver's belt was buckled. If anything, a high-tech company like Tesla would be the kind of opportunity to introduce such a feature to override the user input and keep the high-beams off for daytime safety's sake. (Some cars already have auto high-beams for nighttime, making me think it's tied into the situational awareness sensors; a daytime override wouldn't be a big addition.)

And to your other point: Comcast? Really? Only if the gov't can get them to stop the predatory price hikes that make "customers" (victims) call and change plans every year (or worse, 6 months). And they need to improve their reliability also, based on the reports of my neighbors. In the capitalist tradition, I'll stick with any company -- even ignoring politics -- that gives me what I actually pay for as long as I'm getting a fair deal, and everyone I know says Comcast ain't it.

I am confident there are off-grid homes that it is nearly impossible to dig fiber to.

Unlikely, just very expensive. It could be run alongside power infrastructure, but with the same risks, ie polls getting knocked down, trees damaging wires. Or it could be dug into roads, but then road infrastructure in a lot of rural areas isn't great and has risks like landslides, roads being washed out. I think the long-term approach is to expand fibre coverage as part of road infrastructure upgrades. The incremental costs of adding ducts and access pits to roads is small compared to the cost of trying to do that as a stand-alone project. But there are a lot of challenges in doing something that is technically pretty simple, like who owns the roads.

As I'm not American, I'm not overly familiar with the ins and outs of this subject (*), but I do recall some enlightening comments from the last major discussion on this topic, including these:-

[1]"Dimmer" said :-

> My understanding is that ALL satellite based internet is not considered a broadband solution [because] if an ISP that wants to get funding to build into an area, that area must not be already serviced by a provider even when they can’t or don’t provide service [thus] When you allow for space based internet. It could in theory exclude everyone [from being able to benefit from that subsidy]

This is a problem because, as [2]"DS999" replied :-

> They are looking for companies to serve unserved areas that have been ignored, with the intent of funding the high cost of setting up the necessary infrastructure in a sparsely populated area that would otherwise not make economic sense to provide service in. That way people who live in those areas can benefit from affordable broadband. One person in a rural area getting Starlink doesn't make it any cheaper or more available for others the way running cable or fiber in a rural county does, they all still have to pay $1000 or whatever to get Starlink installed and it still costs over $100/month on the cheapest plan .

> The government would have to permanently subsidize Starlink service in those areas to accomplish the stated goal , and while Musk loves government handouts (so long as it is being put into his hands) this isn't a program that's got a recurring budget.

(All emphasis mine).

(*) Though I'm familiar enough with Musk himself to assume that any time he comes out with something like this nowadays, it's likely for purely self-serving reasons.

[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/12/14/fcc_starlink_spacex/#c_4775865

[2] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/12/14/fcc_starlink_spacex/#c_4775891

“ Elon Musk has reacted angrily to the Biden administration pledging millions of dollars to bolster high-speed internet access. ”

A bit disingenuous. Musk is objecting to Starlink being excluded from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

“ The FCC decided that the chance of Starlink meeting its needs was not worth risking nearly a billion dollars over ten years. ”

[1]Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

[2]Starlink Availability

[1] https://satellitemap.space/

[2] https://www.starlink.com/map

...and suffering it's utterly corrupt telecom setup.

Would it not be excluded more on the fact that it is proprietary and exclusive?

Once you have starlink, you can ONLY have their service. It's not like you can decide actually I'd like the Starlink connection but use a different ISP.

Blustering bozo billionaire bashes Biden broadband buildout binge.

What's the problem, isn't this one step towards what he wanted?