Corporate Welfare at its Worst …and About to Get Worse

As we all know, Trump is preparing to re-enter office. What we may not realize is that with Trump’s elevation of Republican Corporatist Brendan Carr to the chair of the FCC, Trump is getting ready to pay Elon Musk back for his campaign contributions. So heads up: Trump and Carr plan to back the worst broadband solution possible for the poor and middle class: Starlink.

Starlink is NOT the answer:

This is coming at a time when the general population’s understanding of how broadband connections work is at an all time low, along with most other education. Remember when they told us that we didn’t need fiber, that 5G would work? But then it didn’t come close to living up to expectations? Well, get ready, because they are about to make the same false claim about Starlink. 

Several years ago, I wrote an article called “Starlink is No Star.”  Turns out, I was right. Those wireless and satellite solutions that they “offered” at the highest prices possible, and were “given” to the poorest among us, turned out to be virtually worthless when compared to fiber. Then, to add insult to injury, and remember this was during the pandemic, once the charitable funding for these connections ran out, the poor couldn’t possibly afford them and lost their internet. But I guess that was ok, it didn’t work well anyway.

 That was the reason the Biden administration initially refused to give Starlink $855.5 million in rural broadband funding years ago.  They knew it was not a real solution, especially for the poor. They also knew that Starlink, a $42 billion dollar company, did not need corporate welfare. Did the Biden administration screw up on broadband in other ways? Yes, unforgivably so.

Biden didn’t learn from the previous administrations that had pumped money into big telecom only to have it disappear, WITHOUT giving us the critical infrastructure upgrades they promised and we needed. We’ve given billions to private companies and always end up with inferior products providing inferior service. Private companies consistently install the bare minimum, charge the highest price for it based on a made up metrics, and pocket the profit. This is why we’ve consistently paid the highest prices for internet service in the developed world.

Starlink’s biggest problem, like all wireless, is that it is an EXTENSION of fiber, NOT a replacement for it. But you know this from the book “Fiber” by Susan Crawford. In some situations, Starlink can send signals in space from satellite to satellite, but even Musk himself has admitted that he needs more fiber on the ground to make Starlink work correctly years ago in Fierce Wireless. He calls Starlink a “nice compliment to fiber.”

The best quote I found was pulled together by the Google AI from several sources commenting on the need for fiber even with Starlink, “While Starlink can function independently, it essentially relies on fiber-optic networks to deliver its best performance, as the data from Starlink satellites must ultimately connect to the internet through existing fiber infrastructure, meaning that the quality of your Starlink connection is heavily influenced by the quality of the fiber network it connects to; therefore, if you want the best possible Starlink experience, having access to a robust fiber network is crucial.” So, Starlink is an inferior product when compared with fiber-to-the-premises which is confirmed in this article and many others as well. 

Let’s compare pricing: 

These numbers are for fiber on a public network, below are numbers for Starlink.

Public Network in Chatanooga, TN:

300 Mbit (80 Mbits faster than Starlink’s “best” plan) = $58/month

Gigabit (1,000 Mbits) = $68/month

2.5 Gigs (2,500 Mbits) = $98/month

10 Gigs (10,000 Mbits) = $300/month

Note: This public network has NO MONTHLY DATA CAPS OR OVERAGES, UNLIKE COMCAST, STARLINK, etc.

Starlink is less reliable than fiber in most cases, and has a 50 GB data-cap before “overage” fees are charged, so all pricing should be considered “at least.” Starlink also applies upfront equipment costs, ranging from $350 to $5,000. Many plans have limited coverage areas.

Starlink residential connection costs:

25-100 Mbits (maybe) = $120/month.  Note: This is 12X slower than Chattanooga's 300 Mbit option. And remember, Chattanooga also offers $30/month fiber to the poor, which is still faster than Starlink.

40-220 Mbits = $140-$500/month.   Note: This is 7.5X slower than Chattanooga, at a price that is 8.6X more expensive than Chattanooga. And remember those equipment costs. 

Starlink is so expensive that the poor can only afford it if charitable organizations give them corporate welfare, but if that funding dries up, their connections disappear—just like they did here during the pandemic. Even if we give Starlink corporate welfare, the connections are awful compared to fiber connections. This is corporate welfare at its worst.

Beyond all that, Starlink is an Environmental Nightmare

So what does this have to do with us? Here? Now? 

Remember County Executive Sidhu’s corporate welfare scheme to provide Starlink, via overpriced WAVE fiber, to the Nooksack Tribe? Remember that it crashed and burned at a loss of about $2 million that could have been used to start building the tribe a fiber network instead? Surely that experience taught us that Starlink is only a band-aid solution and ultimately too expensive to help the poor. And yet, they seem determined to try again. Did that $2,000,000 “lesson” not stick, or did our $2,000,000 go to WAVE/Starlink, right where it was supposed to go?

A few months ago, I wrote the article, “How to Get Nothing Done,” about the “fiber report” that was presented to Bellingham City Council as a “plan,” (in name only). Even council-member Lilliquist told the Interim Public Works Director that this terrible report was not a plan. Yet, the most recent information from the COB is that they are “still working” on a plan based on this deeply flawed document, and of course they are working on it behind closed doors with WAVE broadband, and big telecom is calling the shots.

The suspicion, based on past experience, is that they want to take the infrastructure we need—which should be a public fiber network, controlled by the people who paid for it, and installed under a county-wide Dig Once Policy—and they want to turn what should be ours, into corporate welfare instead.

In fact, they say their only goal is to “upgrade the COB network to a carrier class network” for their own use. Meaning we’ll be paying for the upgrade, and it will have lots of excess capacity, but they haven’t decided if they’re even going to give us access to it after the upgrade. The answer is probably not. 

In the 10 years I’ve been working on the fiber/broadband issue, I have learned that this is what they do. The establishment here, both Republicans and Corporate Democrats, stall ANY action for as long as possible, then present half-assed solutions as if they were new opportunities. These tried-and-true maneuvers successfully line the pockets of special interests with public funds. They did this many times during the pandemic, particularly with worthless wireless solutions. And they are about to do it again with Starlink. The cycle is about to repeat itself, which is, of course, their goal. 

Bolstered by a new FCC chair and backing from the incoming Trump administration, the local Democrats and Republicans who are invested in Starlink hope to fool us into giving corporate welfare to Elon Musk to pay him back for his campaign investments, I mean contributions. In a happy coincidence, this will also cause their stock to go up. So they plan to steal from us, via Starlink, plain and simple. And all they need is for us to be dumb enough, and complacent enough, to let it happen.  

The Solution: 

Based on the money we have given big telecom over the years, every home in America should have Gigabit fiber for $58/month or less. The best value to be had is a public fiber network installed as other repairs are made, which saves us 90% of the installation cost, and pays for itself via leasing and new business opportunities. Just like virtually all Americans have access to electricity thanks to the Rural Electrification Act, we must have a  Dig Once Policy to get it done. Fortunately, fiber is even easier to install. So the solution is what it always has been, is ridiculously easy, and we already have a roadmap to follow: We need to establish a public network with a Dig Once Policy. And it’s all been written down RIGHT HERE. 

Actions to Take:

Write to the City Council and mayor and demand that they establish a real plan as laid out in the aforementioned broadband strategies document. Demand that no matter what, if public funds are used on a public fiber network, then the public better have access to it.
You can do this easily by signing the fiber petition here and encouraging others to do so as well.