UPDATE: FCC Rejects Starlink’s Long-Form Application For Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Support

August 10, 2022 – The FCC has announced it is rejecting Starlink Services, LLC’s long-form application to receive Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction support. The announcement was made in an FCC News Release. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel provided the following statement on the decision: “We must put scarce universal service dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements. Starlink’s technology has real promise…But the question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer broadband – which requires that users purchase a $600 dish – with nearly $900 million in universal service funds until 2032.”

December 7, 2020 – The FCC has announced the results of Auction 904 – the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) Phase I auction.

There were 180 winning bidders, with the 10-year support amount totaling $9.23 billion and covering 5,220,833 locations in 49 states and one territory. Bidding concluded on November 25, 2020.

A list of the winning bidders is available here. An interactive map of the RDOF auction results is available on the FCC’s Auction 904 web page at www.fcc.gov/auction/904.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. d/b/a SpaceX was a winning bidder in 35 states. SpaceX won a total of $885.5 million in support to be provided over 10 years.

SpaceX will be required to provided broadband service to 642,925 locations spread throughout those 35 states.

SpaceX applied to participate in the auction and bid in the Above Baseline, Low Latency service tier in all 50 states. The Above Baseline tier requires broadband service at speeds of at least 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. The Low Latency tier requires network round trip latency must be at or below 100 milliseconds. SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband service is currently performing beta testing, but SpaceX expects to begin offering service to end users by the end of 2020.

Space X is now required to submit a post-auction long-form application (FCC Form 683) no later than January 29, 2021.

Below are the state-by-state results for SpaceX’s winning bids: