The US FCC initially approved SpaceX’s proposal to deploy a million satellite internet terminals in the U.S. in March 2020. The same year, SpaceX asked the agency to extend the licensing limit so that Starlink could scale to serve 5 million customers in the United States. The high cost, though, still remains a hurdle from an accessibility standpoint, and of course Starlink needs clear skies which could lead to patchy connectivity in areas that face frequent extreme weather. Overheating has also been highlighted as a lingering issue over the years, as SpaceX iterates on its terminal design.
That process is costly but essential: SpaceX’s initial designs actually ended up costing the company considerably more than it could sell them for. In addition to the bigger fees from the High Performance service tier, SpaceX has also been seeking out new government funding, albeit with mixed results. Though shortlisted for a U.S. contract worth about $886 million, to provide internet services in rural areas, the FCC rejected the proposal over concerns that Starlink couldn’t actually deliver what SpaceX was promising.
In its dismissal, the FCC classified Starlink as a technology that is still in its development stage, and argued the company couldn’t live up to its promise of providing reliable, high-speed internet during its testing. SpaceX has since gained support of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr over the expensive rejection. On the flip side, there’s continuing outcry from the astronomy community, which has claimed that ever-growing Starlink constellation increases collision risk and obscures the view of satellites, both visible and in the radio region. Plus, hackers are now increasingly seeing Starlink as an intriguing target, while space debris concerns are mounting, too.
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