Biden's FCC Denies Elon Musk's Starlink, Funds Awarded For Rural Broadband Program: 'Regulatory Harassment'?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded SpaceX with nearly $900 million worth of federal subsidies to support rural broadband customers through the company’s Starlink satellite internet network. However the US regulator, on Dec. 12, issued its final decision to deny the Elon Musk's rocket company of the funding.

In what critics denounced as biased and meritless rationale, the FCC claimed that Starlink satellite-based service is “still developing technology” and the company “failed to demonstrate that [it] could deliver the promised service.” The broadband provider “failed to demonstrate” that it could deliver the claimed service, according to a statement from FCC.

Critics pointed out that FCC's reasoning is ludicrous, given that US department of defense is working closely with SpaceX on the space company's Starshield program, and that the satellite internet service is currently working, and is popular in many countries and remote areas around the world.

Musk and his companies have been facing a barrage of investigations and legal actions from President Joe Biden's administration. In remarks to the press on Monday, the president suggested that Musk needs to be investigated; saying that the Tesla chief needs "to be looked at ....in many ways.."

Observers say the targeting of Musk's companies by Biden is politically motivated. The X owner has been vocal in recent years in his opposition to the left's increasingly fascist ideology which he calls the "woke mind virus."

The decision singles out SpaceX for not meeting RDOF speed requirements years before it had any obligation to do so, the company said in a Dec. 12 letter to the FCC.

SpaceX also took aim at the FCC’s use of Ookla speed tests used by FCC, which the company said came without warning and involve nationwide averages covering areas that would not be served with RDOF support.

“This decision directly undermines the very goal of RDOF: to connect unserved and underserved Americans. Starlink is demonstrably one of the best options—likely the best option—to accomplish the goals of RDOF,” SpaceX vice president Christopher Cardaci wrote. “Indeed, Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”

Republican FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington, have dissented from the FCC Starlink subsidiary denial decision.

Carr slammed Biden administration for engaging in "regulatory harassment" of Musk's companies.