Best Director of broad domain warning from musk space

The director of the largest bold federal program in the history of the United States deposits his colleagues in a vibrant email on Sunday morning. Among other things, Ivan Fainman warned that millions of rural Americans can stumble at slow internet speeds if the rules are changed for the benefit of Elon Musk online Starlink.

Until March 16, Fainman was a manager The program of property, access and broad publishing program for the domainA fund of $ 42.5 billion has been approved as part of the 2021 investment and investment law and jobs law. In the Bluezki publicationFeinman looks alert on the proposed changes to a pill.

“The new administration seems to want to make changes that ignore the clear trend set by Congress, reduce the number of American homes and companies that get communications from fiber, and increase the number that gets satellite communications,” Final wrote.

By satellite, it means Starlink. Amazon’s Kuiper technically qualified to obtain bead financing, but it currently contains only two first moon in the sky, compared to more than 7000 for Starlink. (Internet service providers via geological satellites such as Hughesnet and Viasat are not entitled to finance beads because they do not fulfill cumin requirements.)

Bead’s money is distributed to each state by the National Communications and Information Department, which falls under the Ministry of Commerce. Under the Biden Administration, NTIA clearly preferred to spread fiber in rural areas, which is widely considered the golden standard The type of internet connection.

Trade Minister Howard Lootnick plans to take a more “neutral technology” approach in the bead, according to A report published by the Wall Street Journal. This would benefit from Starlink to up to 10 billion dollars to $ 20 billion – an increase of $ 4.1 billion, which was expected to get the old rules.

“Some of the scary scenarios I heard from people close to NTIA and near the Ministry of Commerce will give 50 % of or more funds to Elon Musk,” Gigi Son, CEO of the American General Real Estate Society, told CNET.

“It seems that Lootnick believes, like Trump and like musk, that paying the price of fibers instead of the satellite is money,” said Blair Levin, Chief of Staff of the Communications of the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) and the New Street Research.

Fiber He is Expensive in many areas. A spokesman for the Texas Observer told me In a previous interview Some rural families in West Texas will cost up to $ 130,000 each to contact fiber.

The amount of BEAD Money Starlink’s money can depend on where NTIA determines that threshold. A source told me that Speed ​​to do bead – It included a draft law that was submitted at home earlier in March- a cost threshold of $ 25,000 per fiber site, but was later removed. If the region exceeds this number, the state’s broadband office will be able to resort to it “Alternative techniques” like Starlink.

“This is what (FEINMAN),” said Sohn, who worries that NTIA can determine a location for every site that prefers the satellite. “If we want to return within five years and say,” O Ji, we still have a huge rural digital gap in this country, “This is what we will do.”

Finanman email argues that this shift from fiber to the satellite will be “harmful to the rural and small America.” This is due to two issues with Starlink service: speed and price. It has not been proven that it could meet the requirements of Bead, and $ 120 per month in most regions, and it is also much more expensive than most of them Internet service providers.

None of the Ministry of Commerce spokesman immediately responded to CNET’s request for comment.

Can Starlink agree with the future?

Critics argue that Starlink speeds do not meet the requirements of Bead: The speed of downloading 100 Mbps, downloading 20 Mbps per second and cumin below 100 milliliters. The only one that Starlink currently meet is cumin, and is still much worse than the mediator in the United States.

Sun said: “This is an investment once in the age of the wide range and giving it expensive and slowly incapable service, and this is not resistant in the future-it is just throwing money under the toilet,” Son said.

OKla data shows that Starlink speeds have already decreased with more people joining the network.(Disclosure: OKla owned by the mother company itself as CNET, Zif Davis.)

Starlink launched thousands of satellites since its first appearance in 2019, but millions of additional customers have been added. The speeds have decreased even when Starlink sent thousands of satellites to the sky, and it is currently not available to customers in many American cities.

Levin said: “I am not sure that Lootnick realizes this,” Levin said. “Starlink has a waiting menu. They have a waiting list because they have run out of capacity.”

Starlink said that new satellites will solve capacity problems, but they have not proven that they could do so yet – especially if millions of additional homes are connected across the bead.

Sun said: “As a future technique, it does not cut the mustard.”

A general base has heard a lot in the world of the Internet Nelsen LawWhich states that the speed of advanced Internet user connection grows by approximately 50 % every year, doubles every 21 months. This has been true every year since 1983, and this is exactly what is worried by Feinman. Starlink may be good enough today – and this has not been proven by the FCC definition – but it may not be able to deal with future applications.

What next?

Many in flow now for beads. Lutnick is expected to announce the rules that fix the program on any day, which helps to explain some urgency in Feinman.

“Contact with your Congress delegation and communicate with the Trump administration and tell them to strip the unnecessary requirements, but not to abstract countries from flexibility in obtaining the best links to their people.”

If you want to communicate with your elected representatives about the changes in the Bead program, you can download the 5 call application in App Store or Google Play place. The application searches and writes text programs for various issues, determines relevant decision -makers, and collects phone numbers for their offices.