Satellite

Starlink asked the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider a decision to deny it $885.5 million in rural broadband funding.

T-Mobile and Starlink made a joint announcement recently about an arrangement where Starlink will enable voice and texting capabilities to T-Mobile cellphones by the end of 2023. Elon Musk touted this as being able to reach people lost in the wilderness, but the much bigger use will be to fill in cellular coverage in rural areas for T-Mobile. While the two companies made a big splashy announcement about the arrangement, they are late to the game as other industry players already have similar plans underway.

Tech magnate Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink has quietly made inroads with public schools nationwide over the past two years, winning over students, families and administrators who say it’s the kind of connectivity that has been sorely lacking in some of the most rural corners of the US. Public school districts in Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia have announced pilot projects or are already using Starlink to bring broadband internet service to students’ out-of-the-way homes via a network of satellites. But it’s not cheap.

T-Mobile and Space X announced their “Coverage Above & Beyond” partnership to bring about the “end of mobile dead zones.” It is one of a growing number of announced partnerships, ventures and rumors of similar nature and purpose of expanding the frontier of connectivity where it hasn’t gone before. “Coverage Above & Beyond” promises to provide satellite-based cellular connectivity directly to T-Mobile’s current smartphones thereby providing coverage anywhere in the U.S., its territories, as well as the vast unregulated oceans. However, much of the technical burden seems to rest on t

Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr made headlines when he denounced the FCC's decision to deny Starlink $885.5 million in broadband subsidy support from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I auction.

SpaceX and T-Mobile are partnering to bring wireless phone service to remote areas with spotty coverage. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert and SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced the collaboration August 25, claiming the service will roll out in 2023 and work with existing phones. They're planning to provide text coverage "practically everywhere" in the continental US, Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and territorial waters, according to T-Mobile. The companies will create a new network broadcast from Starlink’s satellites using T-Mobile bandwidth.

Starlink, Elon Musk’s internet-from-space service provided by SpaceX, is notifying customers with some good news: their monthly subscriptions have been reduced in response to “local market conditions.” “The price reduction factors in your local market conditions and is meant to reflect parity in purchasing power across our customers,” a notice to customers reads. The situation in the US, where the dollar has been surging against foreign currencies, is less clear. 

I was surprised to find out by an FCC press release that agency leadership had suddenly reversed course on an $885 million infrastructure award that Elon Musk’s Starlink won in 2020 to provide high-speed Internet service to unconnected Americans.

Omnispace, based in Tysons, Virginia, wants to be the first company to deliver a global 5G non-terrestrial network with connectivity directly to mobile devices from its low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites. The company believes the future of communications is hybrid — where satellites extend and augment terrestrial mobile networks.

The Federal Communications Commission withdrew nearly $900 million in subsidies that had been granted to satellite operator Starlink to bring the internet to 642,000 remote, rural locations. The FCC subsidy was key anchor revenue for a new satellite broadband constellation that has to heavily subsidize customer terminals — priced in most markets at $599 — in order to expand the service. The FCC, in reversing a December 2020 decision, called proposals from Starlink and another subsidy candidate “risky," and questioned Starlink’s ability to deliver a reliable and affordable offer.