Starlink operator SpaceX is fighting Virginia’s plan to deploy fiber Internet service to residents, claiming that federal grant money should be given to Starlink instead. SpaceX is already in line to win over $3 million in grant money in the state but is seeking $60 million.
Starlink is poised to benefit from the Trump administration rewriting rules for the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program. While the Biden administration decided that states should prioritize fiber in order to build more future-proof networks, the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location.
This is absolute insanity. To think that fiber and satellites are even on the same playing field is absolute brain damage.
The problem I see is that we’ve already paid for fiber
Yep, $400bn wasted on fiber “deployments” that never went anywhere while telcos pocketed the cash, and that was as of like a decade ago.
I’m so fucking tired of living in this god damned dystopia.
Don’t worry, it ends eventually.
all bleeding stops 🙄
Do something about it then…
PS: maybe you are, if so, Kudos to you… but the majority seem to only rue it
Hey man I’m all ears. Give me something concrete to do.
Electronic Freedom Foundation has a Take Action page.
- Creativity & Innovation; Tell Congress: Throw Out the NO FAKES Act and Start Over
- Privacy; Congress Can Act Now to Protect Reproductive Health Data
- Privacy; Congress Can Act Now to Protect Reproductive Health Data
- Free Speech; Congress Shouldn’t Control What We’re Allowed to Read Online
- Creativity & Innovation; Tell Congress: No to Internet Blacklists
- Free Speech; The TAKE IT DOWN Act Will Censor Legal Speech Without Helping Victims
All campaigns: https://act.eff.org/action
Or become a member and support their efforts financially.
MEMBER BENEFITS Your 12-month membership sustains EFF’s legal work, development of privacy-enhancing technology, and public activism 365 days a year. We’re pleased to offer a few benefits as a token of our appreciation!
EFF member perks include:
- Annual Member Gift
- EFF Member Card & Bumper Sticker
- Digital Member Badge
- Members-Only Email Updates
- Discounts on EFF Events
- Members-Only Speakeasy Invitations
- EFF Online Shop Discount
- Membership Renewal Reminders
- Discounts on No Starch Press books, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and more.
i have some ideas of stuff to do with this
Start talking to people. Tie them together in ways that dont include the state.
Maybe start with doing some research on the Internet yourself instead of asking random strangers from other countries to fix things for you.
I will string together old coathangers and twisted, unheated solder before I use starlink.
If you figure out the right protocol you could probably catapult a series of twisted pears from house to house.
The way the internet is going, bashed and bruised fruit salad sounds preferable to the actual data anyway.
deleted by creator
Hey, we just need someone to innovate the shielded twisted pears, that will give us a much better fruit salad than the unshielded twisted pears.
The visuals are priceless. Screaming, agonized pears flying from building to building with California raisins singing in flight amongst them. I think i just found a reason to play with AI video generation!
Previously i’ve only accepted AI into my life as a thing to use when I get asked ‘stupid business jargon management /HR question’ at work.
but I’m tentatively prepeared to allow this, it might be raisin the bar.
Recently talked my MIL into switching to T-Mobile home Internet instead of StarLink. I even volunteered to mount an external cell antenna on her roof if the signal wasn’t good enough.
Elmo and his shitty satellite company can kiss my ass.
Doesn’t t-mobile use starlink now?
They do offer their T-Satellite service which uses Starlink. It only works with supported mobile devices (not home Internet) and is additional to your regular plan.
T-Mobile is honestly one of the easiest cell operators to deal with in my experience. I would take them over AT&T any day.
Gotcha, I appreciate the clarification.
Musk is a domestic terrorist.
Musk isn’t American; he’s an international terrorist
But he is, he has both US and Canadian citizenship in addition to S. African.
He cheated after coming here illegally. Then did a bunch of sex crimes and destroyed american jobs. No. Sorry but illegal immigrants to the torture prison.
I don’t make the rules; i just write fanfic about them being enforced evenly.
That doesn’t change the fact that he’s an American citizen. That’s what I was correcting.
Oh, so the government doesn’t kidnap or murder citizens now?
I’m not sure how that’s relevant. The OP claimed he wasn’t a citizen, I corrected that.
No, said it was foreign or internatuonal or something.
Which it is.
Reminds me of the German Telekom and their unceasing effort to slow down state subsidised fibre deployment.
The subsidies are primarily for towns left behind with bad ADSL (it was below 30mbit average and is now afaik 100mbit), that want to build their own local fibre nets cause nobody else does.
They seem to watch for construction permits and then swoop in and build a few fibre adsl distribution boxes or elevate a street or two with fibre to raise the average speed in town just above threshold. The local net looses the subsidies and usually stops construction or if already built only commercial customers are still allowed to be connected…
I love it when they reopen construction sites where cables from other carriers were recently buried (after Telekom said no) because NOW they want to provide their shit there too.
It would be a shame if some random accident were to befall those token distribution boxes…
DTAG should be a wholly state owned company again.
When we got cable TV and proper broadband internet with it, the previous company relying on the local monopoly got extremely pissed. Every of their services costed the multitude of what competitors, even on phone line, could offer. Most outrageous was ADSL. Competitor ADSL started at HUF5 000 for 384k download speed, topped at HUF15 000 for 2M, per month. The local provider? It started at HUF20 000, for a laughable 256k download speed. Explanation? The parent company thought it was a luxury, because you could just send a hand-written mail instead of the e-mail, get a dish TV with HBO and a tape recorder with a timer instead of torrenting movies, etc.
they hate you. always remember. they hate your entire existence. they’d literally crush you in a hydraulic press if they could. giving you pain is the only way they feel a semblance of happiness.
I don’t think they hate us, it just that they love money more. They can, and do, inflict untold misery and suffering so long as there is money at the end of it.
no. there’s no end to the amount of disdain they have for you. they’d do it for free too; they just don’t have to.
People who disagree with you are people who never spent time with the ultra rich. I’ve had the pleasure to hang in those circles and it was absolutely eye opening the complete disdain that social class has toward the working class. It’s so fucking crazy that one has to see it for themselves to truly appreciate the hate they have for everyone not in their economic circles.
Preach on brother, but I also understand why the plebs don’t believe you
They are genuinely inhuman monsters.
Look, yes, will we and they and literally all life end they aren’t stopped?
Sure, yes, obviously.
Can they be negotiated with persuaded medicated or coerced into rational sane self interest? Nope. Not one of them.
But if youre not willing to end all life for theit bullshit, to kill yourself in such a slow and spectacylar manner that no life escapes, you’re advocaging violence, you vig murdering dummy.
you almost had me there
Isn’t it that they just don’t care?
Nope. It’s active and malevolent.
I don’t care about most everyone on the planet, even if I had their resources I couldn’t summon up the fucks needed to be actively malicious in the way that they are. Not caring is Howard Hughes buying a TV station so he could watch whatever he damned well wanted, not filing a lawsuit because a state is improving it’s utilities which only vaguely undercuts you if even that.
you kidding? they’re demons, making your life worse is what they jerk off to.
I’m pretty sure they mostly do it for the profit.
Capitalism breeds innovation
If they could put that brain power to innovate on their product instead of innovate on how to fuck people, that would be great!
Federal. Money should go to the poor. Elon musk can fuck off.
the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a “tech-neutral approach” and lower the average cost of serving each location
In other words don’t give the tax payer the best options you can, give them the cheapest options to implement you can.
Capitalism is truly wonderful
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Capitalism, is in fact, Fascism, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Government with Benefits.
Does fiber go down when it rains?
Didn’t go down at my house the other day and my fiber line is still laying in the yard waiting to be buried.
Starlink goes down during heavy rain.
Cybertrucks can’t handle rain either. I wonder if there’s some connection between them and Starlink?
Engineering for water related stuff is stupid when you live on a planet made of earth, duh. You don’t drive or internet underwater!
That’s the magic hand of the market that all talk about…
Capitalist myth similar to how monarchs are chosen by gods. I swear, Americans are so propagandized to that they would chuck disabled people into volcanoes if the Koch brothers told them Jesus wanted them to.
This is libelous. We would chuck differently-abled people into volcanoes.
Why do we need to have debate with lobbyists and groups of that nature.
They have more $ than you and i, can buy their ways. How that shits not illegal is fucked. Guess it goes with insider trading for Congress, make laws for/against companies you’re invested in. USA is beyond rotten and corrupt from the inside. Blatant bribery with Tim cook delivering gold bars to the white house himself.
But they pose no comparison to requirements of what the city or community’s needs. Satellite is slower and pales in comparison to fiber.
But money, you think they care? As long as there is money, your needs mean fuck all.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This company is acting like a spoiled brat of a child.
