The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction has wrapped up, setting the stage for $9.23 billion in subsidies to be doled out over the next decade in support of high-speed rural broadband deployment.
That deployment will come as a combination of wireline, fixed wireless and space-based internet service, as Elon Musk’s SpaceX has won nearly $886 million in support of its low-earth-orbit satellite service, Starlink. Starlink recently opened up its “Better Than Nothing” beta testing to the public, with start-up equipment costing about $500 and a monthly fee of $99 for service that tells users to expect speeds varying between 50 Mbps and 150 Mbps, with latency between 20-40 milliseconds.
