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I think it was pretty clearly written to encourage investment in running fiber in rural areas. Except in case of backhoes, good fiber should last decades with minimal maintenance and an frequently can be updated with only new parts on each end. I know relatively rural folks that have gotten fiber in the last decade funded by programs like this and they are all pretty happy with it.
While Starlink might meet some of the listed requirements, it seems in some ways not the investment they were trying to push, and doesn't necessarily end up with a durable infrastructure product to point to as a success even if the company folds. Free space RF also has inherent bandwidth limits compared to point-to-point fiber.
Granted at this point it seems on slightly better footing than a few years ago -- I have my doubts about it's financial case, but as a private company they don't have to publish the numbers and they do seem to sell like hotcakes.
I also am not entirely sure how the economics of Starlink work out. Supposedly it's profitable. But I don't know how many red numbers have been moved from the "Starlink" column to the "SpaceX" column. However they do the accounting, the fact that Starlink gets to take advantage of Falcon 9 launches virtually at cost is enormous. The fact that SpaceX has dropped the $/lb cost by almost a factor of 10 helps a lot too.
Yeah, even if they've cut the launch costs by a factor of ten, they've still launched something like 200 flights just for internal use -- around two thirds of total flights this year. And as a LEO constellation that is (at least in part) an ongoing cost to replace satellites over time. And that's presumably all getting paid for (plus the satellites themselves, the ground stations, and operations) by a bunch of users paying around $1400/yr. I haven't recently run numbers on that, but it feels at least ambitious without a deep-pocketed anchor customer willing to guarantee the bills get paid (which they may quietly have, so I'm not betting against them).
And performance degrades (something folks funding them for rural bandwidth care about!) as they start oversubscribing areas.
That customer is supposed to be high-frequency traders once they get the inter-satellite laser-link running -- light in a vacuum is enough faster than light in glass that it's attractive for comms between (for instance) NYC and London.
I think the latest version of the satellites is capable of this, but there aren't enough in the constellation supporting it yet? Haven't heard recently.
The most obvious anchor customer is the DOD, IMO. But neither side there is going to shout about it. Low-latency, worldwide comms, resistant to anti-satellite weapons by sheer numbers. Directional antennas are more robust against jamming and detection, too.
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So, Bing's AI response to "Starlink Customers" was
Although I see a more recent PCMag article says 2.7m customers. Assuming they are all paying the same $120 a month I am, that puts them closing in on $4B in revenue per year. If I did my math right (2.7m * 12 * $120 = $3,888m).
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Airlines (United and Hawaiian air have deals), Starlink is $10k per month per airframe, and cruise lines at $5k per month. Combined with other corporate operators (biz jets, oil platforms, etc) all of whom are frigging starved for reliable high speed internet in-transit and on remote locations, frankly Starlink is going to be printing money in exponentially increasing volumes.
Starlink is almost certainly a 100b plus company standalone. You almost wonder if they will be spun out to go public at some point.
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It also has substantial value in crisis contexts, in the 'natural disaster just cracked the ground-based infrastructure, can anyone tell me what's going on' sort of system.
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