The jockeying over the role low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites in general — and Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Starlink service in particular — will play in the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program continued late last month with a letter from 21 Democratic members of the House of Representatives to Arielle Roth, director of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
NTIA is administrating the $42.45 billion program, which the Trump administration transitioned from prioritizing fiber to being technology neutral via changes last June. In late January, SpaceX sent what it characterized as a legal rider to state and territorial broadband offices threatening to not serve the locations in which it had been approved without significant changes to its obligations.
SpaceX’s Starlink platform is a big player in the BEAD Program. The letter cited Connected Nation statistics that say the SpaceX’s provisional BEAD awards total $733.5 million. It has a presence in 45 of the 56 states/territories and was selected to serve 472,604 broadband serviceable locations (BSLs).
The letter to Roth argues against approving the changes. The letter says that SpaceX is asking the definition of “standard installation” as shipping in a box — not a working connection — and allowing Starlink to “falsely demonstrate compliance” with the program’s 100 Mbps download/20 Mbps requirements by excluding many users not receiving services at those speeds from testing. It also is demanding half of funding upon certification, not service delivery.
The letter says that the legal rider raises questions related to affordability, reliability, speed, and latency and says that SpaceX is trying to do something that the BEAD Program doesn’t allow. A sign that the NTIA may be siding with that viewpoint was a FAQ it released in February, which was alluded to in the congressional letter.
“NTIA affirmed in BEAD FAQ Version 18 that subgrantees cannot negotiate terms that violate BEAD program requirements, as outlined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity, the Restructuring Policy Notice, and BEAD General Terms and Conditions,” the letter said.
“Unfortunately, SpaceX apparently seeks to violate those terms. In the cover letter accompanying the rider, the company implicitly admits that it cannot participate without falling short of the standards to which it previously committed, stating that ‘a number of issues remain that, if unaddressed, could render LEO participation in the program untenable.’”
