After denying approximately $900 million in rural broadband subsidies to SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, the Federal Communications Commission is receiving criticism that the Biden administration is willing to sacrifice much-needed internet access for rural areas of the country in order to punish Elon Musk for his political views.
FCC Commissioner Brenden Carr agreed with the criticism and dissented when his fellow commissioners voted 3-2 to reaffirm its decision from last year to withhold the Starlink funding because they believed the company could not perform as intended. The company had won the funding through a competitive bid.
“Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, President Biden gave federal agencies the green light to go after him,” Carr wrote on X. “And they have. Today, the FCC adds itself to the growing list of federal agencies engaging in the regulatory harassment of Elon Musk. I dissent.”
Carr attached his official dissenting statement to the post, explaining that Starlink secured the award in 2020 “after agreeing to provide high-speed Internet service to over 640,000 rural homes and businesses across 35 states.” He added that revoking the award “is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy.”
Carr accused the FCC of “making up an entirely new standard of review that no entity could ever pass and then applying that novel standard to only one entity: Starlink.”
Musk himself alluded to the possibility that the Biden administration might be targeting him and his companies, telling the All-In Summit back in September that “there does seem to be some significant increase in the weaponization of government and really sort of misuse of prosecutorial discretion in many areas. … I think this is really a dangerous thing for there to be partisan politics with government agencies.”
Musk continued, “I don’t think the whole administration has it out for me. But I think there’s probably aspects of the administration … or aspects of interests aligned with President Biden who probably do not wish good things for me.”
Responding to the decision, Musk posted on X that it “doesn’t make sense. Starlink is the only company actually solving rural broadband at scale! They should arguably dissolve the program and return funds to taxpayers, but definitely not send it to those who aren’t getting the job done.”
Musk then alleged that the decision came down to Starlink not being the intended winner when the bidding for the project opened. “What actually happened is that the companies that lobbied for this massive earmark (not us) thought they would win, but instead were outperformed by Starlink, so now they’re changing the rules to prevent SpaceX from competing.”
For its part, the FCC justified its decision by stating, “After careful review, we find that the [Wireline Competition] Bureau followed Commission guidance and correctly concluded that Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support,” as reported by Zero Hedge.
