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Comment by belltaco | Hacker News Reader

> If the goal is to get levels of performance that Starlink cannot provide, then this makes sense?

I think the metric is 'more likely than not meet peformance goals in 2025'. The technology itself is capable of the goals of latency and bandwidth.

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Sure, and that makes sense if the competitors have proven approaches to meeting the requirements. While I expect Starlink to be able to improve, I can see their point that the outcome is far from certain.

The government shouldn’t give out billion dollar participation trophies.

There’s a set of metrics to meet. Starlink is moving the wrong way against those metrics. As such, they’ll need to succeed unaided in the marketplace, instead of getting a government handout.

Perhaps not billion dollar, but shouldn’t it give some participation trophies? How else to entice innovation in certain areas, especially when the interest rates are killing small tech outfits.

No, it should not.

Agreed. The FCC shouldn't be giving out any funds. They should stick to their role as regulator. Starlink as a properly grounded libertarian outfit should have lobbied to have any subsidy role by the FCC discontinued. Starlink should have just competed in the broadband marketplace - as should have everyone else. In such a level playing field, I think Starlink would do just fine.

I agree with this. But we have to operate in the world that exists and not necessarily the one that we wish to exist.

LEO space is a limited global resource. I think government should regulate (and sometimes subsidy) to avoid it become a private company's suck.

> I think government should regulate

That would just move it from private company suck to nation-state suck. It needs to be regulated by the International Telecommunication Union (UN).

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