The most expensive broadband investment in America ever lost its first leader and supporter, Evan Feinman. Feinman expressed a net warning to colleagues in an email on Sunday morning that millions of rural Americans could be stuck with slow internet speeds if the rules are modified to promote the Elon Musk Starlink internet company.
In a CNET interview, Feinman echoes this warning and provides advice to consumers. His farewell email to his colleagues, reported for the first time by Craig Silverman de Propublica In a Bluesky postThe alarm sounds on the modifications proposed to the program of equity, access and deployment with broad band, passing the most significantly from a fiber approach first of the one that would favor the satellite internet.
“Obviously, there is a very important figure which is a major player in this administration which has a network of satellites in low terrestrial orbit,” Feinman told Cnet.
Until March 16, Feinman was the director of Bead, a fund of $ 42.5 billion adopted within the framework of the Investment Act and the 2021 infrastructure jobs. Feinmand said that the Trump administration had refused to renew its contract.
Elon Musk’s Internet Starlink Internet service is essentially the only satellite game in town. The Amazon Kuiper’s project is also technically eligible for the financing of pearls, but it currently has only two prototypes of satellites in the sky, against more than 7,000 for Starlink. (Geostationary satellite internet suppliers like Hughesnet and Viasat are not eligible for the financing of pearls because they do not meet its latency requirements.)
Bead’s money is distributed to each State by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is the Ministry of Commerce. Under the administration of Biden, the NTIa has clearly favored the deployment of fibers to rural areas, which is largely considered to be the type of internet connection in gold.
Commerce secretary, Howard Lungick, plans to adopt a more “neutral” approach to pearl, according to A report published by the Wall Street Journal. This would benefit Starlink up to $ 10 billion at $ 20 billion – compared to $ 4.1 billion which he was to obtain under the old rules.
“Some of the frightening scenarios that I heard from people close to NTIA and close to the trade department would give 50% of money or more to Elon Musk,” Cnet Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Broadband, told Cnet Gigi Sohn.
Fiber East dear in many areas. A spokesperson for the Texas controller told me in a previous interview that some rural households in western Texas would cost up to $ 130,000 each to connect to the fibers.
“Lunick apparently believes, like Trump and as Musk, that paying fibers instead of satellite is wasting money,” CNET Blair Levin, former staff chief of the FCC and analyst of the telecommunications industry at New Street Research told CNET.
The quantity of pearl that Starlink will be able to obtain could depend on where the NTIA defines this threshold. A source told me that the Speed for Bead Act – An invoice presented to the room earlier in March – originally included a cost threshold of $ 25,000 per location for the fibers, but was then deleted. If an area exceeded this number, the broadband office of the state would be able to turn to “alternative technologies” like Starlink.
Feinman says that this passage from fiber to satellite would be a bad service to rural America.
“It is not acceptable to consult a set of communities with worse educational results, worst economic results, less good results for health – which all come with a lack of good connectivity – in order to subsidize a political ally or a misunderstanding of the way these stuff works,” Feinman told Cnet.
This comes down to two problems with the Starlink service: speed and price. He has not proven that he can meet Bead’s speed requirements, and $ 120 per month in most areas, it is also much more expensive than most Internet suppliers.
Neither the spokespersons of the Starlink or trade department immediately responded to the request for CNET comments.
Can Starlink follow the future?
Critics argue that Starlink’s speeds do not meet Bead speed requirements: download speed of 100 Mbps, Download and Latence of 20 Mbps under 100 ms. The only one of these requirements that Starlink currently meets is latency, and it is always much worse than the median in the United States.
“This is a unique investment in broadband and to give it to an expensive and slow service that is not scalable, it is not the test of time – it only throws money in the toilet,” said Sohn.
Ookla’s data show that Starlink’s speeds have in fact dropped as more and more people have joined the network.(Disclosure: Ookla belongs to the same parent company as Cnet, Ziff Davis.)
Starlink has launched thousands of satellites since he made his debut in 2019, but he also added millions of additional customers. The speeds have dropped even as Starlink sent thousands of other satellites in the sky, and that he is currently not available for customers in many American cities.
“I’m not sure Lunick is aware of it,” said Levin. “Starlink has a waiting list. They have a waiting list because they are short of capacity.”
Starlink publicly said that his new satellites will solve capacity problems, but he has not yet proven that he can do so – especially if millions of additional houses connect via a pearl.
“What we know with certainty how people use data and calculation power is that you never use less than what you used yesterday,” said Feinman.
This follows the golden rule that I heard a lot in my time covering broadband. Nielsen’s law Indicates that the connection speed of a high -end internet user increases by around 50% each year, double every 21 months. This has been true every year since 1983, and that’s exactly what is worried. Starlink can be quite good today – and it has not proven that it is by the definition of the FCC – but it may not be able to manage the applications of the future.
That said, Feinman noted in our conversation that Starlink has was an incredible boon in rural areas that had not previously had other good options. But the extension of the Starlink service via Bead could decrease capacity in places where it is really the only option, Feinman said.
What is the next step for Bead?
Many things are currently being achieved for the pearl. Lutnick is expected to announce program review rules during the week or the next two weeks, which helps explain part of the urgency of the Feinman email.
“People must absolutely reach out to their members of the Congress. They must reach out to the offices of their governor,” Feinman told Cnet. “And these members and governors must be courageous enough to say what they know how to be faithful to the Trump administration, and say:” We want to get the best possible link on the budget of our communities. “”
If you wish to contact your elected representatives on the changes in the pearl program, you can download the 5 calls to the App Store Or Google Play store. The application research and writes scripts for various questions, identifies relevant decision -makers and collects phone numbers for their offices.
