SpaceX and Viasat Fight Over Whether Starlink Can Meet FCC Speed Obligations

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Over a year and a half after tentatively winning $886 million in broadband funding from the government's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), SpaceX is still trying to get paid by the Federal Communications Commission. One problem for Starlink -- though not the only problem -- is a series of objections from satellite company Viasat, which says Starlink lacks the capacity and speed to meet FCC obligations. In a new FCC filing, SpaceX denounced Viasat's 'misguided campaign' against the Starlink funding. 'Viasat is transparently attempting to have the Commission impede competition at all costs to protect its legacy technology,' SpaceX told the FCC. The new SpaceX filing was submitted on Friday and posted to the FCC's website Monday, as pointed out by Light Reading.

Viasat submitted an analysis (PDF) to the FCC in April 2021 claiming that Starlink won't be able to meet the speed obligations attached to the RDOF funding due to capacity limitations. SpaceX bid in the 'Above Baseline' tier that requires at least 100Mbps download speeds and 20Mbps upload speeds, and committed to latency of 100 ms or less. Viasat, which primarily uses geostationary satellites with worse latency than Starlink's low Earth satellites, didn't bid in the auction. Viasat's most recent filing last month said, 'Starlink still does not support the 100/20Mbps speeds that SpaceX is obligated to provide to all households covered by its provisionally winning RDOF bids' and that 'Starlink is unable to do so because of its own system design limitations that cannot be overcome by launching more satellites.' Viasat cited Ookla speed tests in its July 2022 filing.

In its July 29 response, SpaceX said the 'filing adds to Viasat's ongoing campaign to oppose every one of SpaceX's applications, regardless of the proceeding... Viasat is perhaps reinvigorated by recent Ookla data showing Starlink has been able to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband service vastly exceeding Viasat's performance.' SpaceX also previously denounced Viasat's objections in FCC filings in July 2021 (PDF) and December 2021 (PDF). The old and new SpaceX filings said the company is cooperating with FCC staff on the Starlink funding review. 'Viasat continues to ignore that the Commission specifically directed the Commission staff -- not competitors -- to review the merits of RDOF applications,' SpaceX's new filing said. 'Starlink has welcomed that staff review and has fully engaged within that Commission-mandated process to demonstrate its ability to meet all of its RDOF obligations and provide high-quality broadband service to consumers that for too long have gone unserved.'

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