SpaceX says FCC's 'grossly unfair' rejection of $886 million Starlink subsidy leaves many Americans stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide
- SpaceX said the FCC's rejection of an $886 million Starlink subsidy was "unreasonable" and "unfair."
- It leaves Americans stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, SpaceX said in a filing.
Elon Musk's SpaceX has slammed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for rejecting a $886 million subsidy for the company's Starlink satellite internet service.
As part of a $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), SpaceX had been seeking a subsidy from the FCC to expand Starlink to rural homes and businesses in almost 650,000 places across 35 US states. The FCC dismissed SpaceX's bid on August 10, saying the company had "failed to demonstrate that the providers could deliver the promised service."
In a regulatory filing released Friday, David Goldman, SpaceX's director of satellite policy, said the FCC's decision to deny the company funding was "flawed as a matter of both law and policy."
Goldman said the information included in the FCC's decision was "cherry-picked from somewhere on the internet."
Turning down a subsidy for Starlink internet leaves many Americans "stranded indefinitely on the wrong side of the digital divide," Goldman said.
In August, the FCC said in its release that it didn't make sense to fund Starlink's "still-developing technology," nor afford to subsidize ventures that weren't delivering the promised speeds. But Goldman said in the filing that the FCC ignored the evidence in SpaceX's application that showed Starlink could meet the requirements for the RDOF.
He said the rejection of SpaceX's application for the subsidy was "erroneous and unreasonable," as well as "contrary to the evidence" and "grossly unfair."
Starlink, which costs $599 for the user terminal, has more than 3,000 satellites in orbit and serves hundreds of thousands of users across the US, according to the filing.
Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner from the FCC, criticized the agency for its decision in late August, saying it was "without a lawful basis" and "constitutes clear error and plainly exceeds agency authority."
The FCC and SpaceX didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.