The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday reaffirmed its 2022 decision to deny SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink $885.5 million in rural broadband subsidies.
The FCC said the decision impacting Elon Musk’s space company was based on Starlink’s failure to meet basic program requirements and that Starlink could not demonstrate it could deliver promised service after SpaceX had challeged the 2022 decision.
Every major corporation gets lots of subsidies from the government and few actually deliver what they promised in exchange. But yeah, yet another hyped up product by Musk today fails to live up to the promises. In this case it’s because the sats still need to communicate directly with the grind station instead of being able to bounce signals between them. That was the original promise and it’s still far from becoming reality.