D.C. Memo: With RDOF-Era Clairvoyance, FCC Democrat Anna Gomez Once Again Relegates Starlink to the ISP Underclass
“Until it is proven to me that [LEOs] have the capacity and the latency able to serve in our artificial intelligence economy, then I’m not convinced that that is in fact the answer,” Gomez said.
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FCC: Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez on Aug. 18 unveiled her own Sec. 706 Report, after a fashion. But it read more like a Year 1706 Report as it was filled with RDOF-era, backward-looking assumptions that once again relegated Starlink to the broadband ISP underclass – even though UBS analysts expect the low-Earth orbit ISP to reach 20 million U.S. subscribers by 2030. If the U.S. represents 10% of global Starlink subscribership, as it more than likely does today, then Starlink will have 200 million multinational subscribers in less than 53 months, by UBS’s math. “I worry a little bit about this advocacy of, ‘Well, we don’t need [universal service programs] anymore because we’ve had all this deployment, including by the LEOs,’” Gomez said during a fireside chat at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum in Colorado, as quoted in Broadband Breakfast. “Universal service is not just a picture in time, and it’s not just about deployment. It’s also about maintaining the services,” she said. (More after paywall)
