In the press release for the rejection, FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel was quoted as saying, “After careful legal, technical, and policy review, we are rejecting these applications. Consumers deserve reliable and affordable high-speed broadband. We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements.”
The FCC went on to say in the order that there were several technical reasons for the Starlink rejection. First was that Starlink is a “nascent” technology, and the FCC doubted the company’s ability to deliver broadband to 642,925 locations in the RDOF areas along with serving non-RDOF areas. The FCC also cited the Ookla speed tests that show that Starlink speeds decreased from 2021 into 2022.
Not surprisingly, Starlink appealed the FCC ruling this month. In the Starlink appeal, the company argued, “This decision is so broken that it is hard not to see it as an improper attempt to undo the commission’s earlier decision, made under the previous administration, to permit satellite broadband service providers to participate in the RDOF program. It appears to have been rendered in service to a clear bias towards fiber, rather than a merits-based decision to actually connect unserved Americans”.
Rather than focus on the facts in dispute in the appeal, today’s blog looks at the implications on the broadband industry during the appeal process. Current federal grant rules don’t allow federal subsidies to be given to any area that is slated to get another federal broadband subsidy. This has meant that the RDOF areas have been off-limits to other federal grants since the end of 2020. This has included NTIA grants, USDA ReConnect grants, and others. Federal grant applicants for the last few years have had to carefully avoid the RDOF areas for Starlink and any other unresolved RDOF award areas.
As a reminder, the RDOF areas were assigned by Census block and not in large coherent contiguous areas. The RDOF award areas have often been referred to as Swiss cheese, meaning that Census blocks that were eligible for RDOF were often mixed with nearby ineligible Census blocks. A lot of the Swiss cheese pattern was caused by faulty FCC maps that excluded many rural Census blocks from RDOF that should have been eligible, but for which a telco or somebody else was probably falsely claiming speeds at least 25/3 Mbps.
ISPs that have been contemplating grant applications in the unresolved RDOF areas were relieved when Starlink and other ISPs like LTE Broadband were rejected by the FCC. It’s difficult enough to justify building rural broadband, but it’s even harder when the area to be built is not a neat contiguous study area.
The big question now is what happens with the Starlink areas during an appeal. It seems likely that these areas will go back into the holding tank and remain off-limits to other federal grants. We’re likely going to need a definitive ruling on this from grant agencies like the USDA to verify, but logic would say that these areas still need to be on hold in case Starlink wins the appeal.
Unfortunately, there is no defined timeline for the appeal process. I don’t understand the full range of possibilities of such an appeal. If Starlink loses this appeal at the FCC, can the agency take the appeal on to a court? Perhaps an FCC-savvy lawyer can weigh in on this question in the blog comments. But there is little doubt that an appeal can take some time. And during that time, ISPs operating near the widespread Starlink grant areas are probably still on hold in terms of creating plans for future grants.
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