FCC Commissioner calls out agency for hypocritical take on SpaceX Starlink

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling out the agency for a hypocritical take on SpaceX’s Starlink.

Last week, we reported on FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel calling Starlink “a monopoly” and calling for more competition amid the internet provider’s recent milestone of 7,000 satellites in orbit.

Rosenworcel said:

“[Starlink has] almost two-thirds of the satellites that are in space right now and has a very high portion of internet traffic… Our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies. So we’ve got to invite many more space actors in, many more companies that can develop constellations and innovations in space.”

FCC says ‘our economy doesn’t benefit from monopolies’ in dig at SpaceX Starlink

However, Carr brings up an interesting point: The FCC said last year that Starlink was not “reasonably capable of providing high-speed internet.” This was the reason SpaceX was denied a nearly $900 million grant that would help provide more internet coverage for 640,000 homes and businesses.

Now, it is saying that Starlink is a “monopoly.”

Carr is not buying it.

In an interview with FOX Business, Carr said:

“You have an agency that in 2023 says that Starlink is not reasonably capable of providing high-speed internet. And then in 2024, they’re saying it’s so capable of providing high-speed internet that we’re going to toss the word monopoly out there. There’s just no way to sort of, I don’t think, square what’s going on here with a fair application of the law or the facts, it just looks like partisan politics in my view.”

He continued:

“I’ve got no problem with anyone saying we need more competition, I’m for more competition. But I think it crosses the line when you just casually float the word monopoly out there. Was it said that they are a monopoly? No, but the word monopoly was used in the same speech as saying we need more competition with Starlink.”

Carr believes the hypocrisy is politically driven. He said, along with another Republican-appointed commissioner, that the Starlink grant decision came after President Biden said CEO Elon Musk’s relationships with other countries were “worthy of being looked at.”

This has led to an “unprecedented campaign of regulatory harassment,” Carr added.

Lawfare https://t.co/Y7eGLYllMW

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 18, 2024

Carr pointed out that Musk is not necessarily the loser in all of this, either:

“The real loser here is rural America. We’re now planning on spending billions and billions of dollars to try to get high-speed internet service to those same, or some of those same, locations – we’re doing it spending dollars on the penny.” 

The FCC denied that politics came into play when Starlink was denied the grant:

“The FCC is an independent agency. Any notion that its decisions are politically motivated and not fact-based is false. In this instance, the agency denied public funds to more than a dozen companies—not just Starlink—who did not meet the program requirements. The FCC takes seriously its obligation to ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to entities that fully comply with the rules and the law.”

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