When You Wish Upon a Star(link)

Elon Musk’s satellite broadband company – Starlink – is poised to receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies should the recently announced changes to the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program be approved by Congress. While presented to the public as a way to end the digital divide – the divide between those who have access to high speed internet “broadband” and those who don’t – these changes will end up subsidizing a technology that offers only “good enough” connectivity and risks creating a new digital divide as parts of the country go to satellite while others move to fiber optics. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Musk, and President Trump want to change the rules of BEAD under the premise of “technological neutrality.” For months, Starlink has lobbied the federal government and individual states to get access to the BEAD program. Should these changes go through, the Wall Street Journal predicts that Starlink could receive almost half of the BEAD funding package – a whopping $20 billion. In this scenario, Elon Musk wins, and American communities find themselves stuck with a mercurial provider as the rest of the world embraces fiber.