A program that once favored fiber-optic cable over low Earth orbit \u2014 or LEO \u2014 satellite service and fixed wireless now has put them all on equal footing. With the low bidder winning the grants, satellites would appear to have an advantage over cables. Instead of spending money running fiber across utility poles or underground, a Starlink or Kuiper project would only provide that little square dish to customers, with BEAD money paying for them.<\/p>\n
BEAD funding will now focus on any project providing 100 megabits per second download speed, 20 megabits per second for uploads and 100 milliseconds or less latency (how fast information travels from a browser to a server and back).<\/p>\n
All previous applications for Virginia\u2019s $1.48 billion chunk of BEAD\u2019s $42.5 billion funding were rescinded in the Commerce Department notice, and Virginia\u2019s Department of Housing and Community Development has restarted the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The commonwealth\u2019s broadband office says the law prevents them from releasing many details about bidders. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said that the state had received $3.22 billion in BEAD applications for broadband deployment, covering each of its 133,000 eligible locations. Multiple bidders competed for awards in similar ZIP codes, accounting for a number higher than the $1.48 billion expected award to the state.<\/p>\n
The United States\u2019 unserved and underserved communities will get something workable in Starlink, but not the same quality as fiber-optic cable, said Christoper Ali, a Penn State telecommunications professor and author.<\/p>\n
\u201cWireless offers \u2026 a short-term solution,\u201d Ali said. \u201cShort term in that you can deploy it pretty quickly, and it is good enough for right now, right? The fees are good enough you should be able to do what you need to do with a lot of wireless, including low Earth orbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is where our digital needs are going to go in the next five years. We have an opportunity with this $42 billion to plan for the next 20 years rather than plan for yesterday, and that\u2019s the problem with the new BEAD funding, is that it\u2019s connecting us with the speeds we needed yesterday, not the speeds we\u2019re going to need in five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Commerce notice implies that Starlink and fixed wireless services from cellphone providers do fit into the definition of what it calls \u201cpriority broadband projects.\u201d As such, they \u201ccan easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies, and other advanced services.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attempts to contact Starlink through SpaceX were unsuccessful. In a post on its website<\/a>, Starlink claims more than six million subscribers worldwide, with more than two million in the United States.<\/p>\n Developing broadband for future needs<\/p>\n Low Earth orbit extends to 1,200 miles above Earth, a region NASA<\/a> calls \u201ccommercial space.\u201d Broadband satellites operate even closer than that, between 340 and 400 miles up. Starlink has at least 7,000<\/a> of its satellites up there, while Amazon\u2019s initial plans<\/a> call for more than 3,000.<\/p>\n The key is in those numbers. Starlink\u2019s website<\/a> says that its fleet provides for 25 milliseconds latency, compared to 600 milliseconds for companies that rely on fewer satellites that are higher in orbit. A map on the site notes 87 to 243 Mbps download speed and 13 to 26 Mbps for uploads, with 25 to 34 latency at various Southwest and Southside Virginia sites.<\/p>\n Fiber-optic cable, on the other hand, features glass filaments with pulses of light processing information. Its capacity is \u201cgigabits upon gigabits per second\u201d with equal upload and download speeds, said Ali, the telecommunications professor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Customers with basic needs require something closer to BEAD\u2019s standard 100 megabits per second download, 20 Mbps for uploads and no more than 100 milliseconds latency. Fiber-optic cable providers in the region offer multiple gigabits per second (one gigabit = 2,000 Mbps) download and about 100 Mbps upload, for higher price rates.<\/p>\n As an AI economy grows, higher capacity will be key, Ali said.<\/p>\n \u201cNow in the days gone by, when what we were using the internet for was \u2026 watching a lot of Netflix, YouTube, stuff like that, maybe upload wasn\u2019t a big deal, but as we\u2019re increasingly doing things like telework and telehealth, upload is exceptionally important, so we need that symmetrical speed that fiber can deliver,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While satellites will require replacement every few years, cable can last about 40 years, so while it costs more to deploy, it will last longer, intense weather events aside.<\/p>\n \u201cAll you have to swap out are the electronics, but it can pretty much handle an almost unlimited amount of data request and bandwidth without having to swap out the fiber-optic element,\u201d said Ali, whose books include \u201cFarm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity.\u201d \u201cSo what fiber does is, it anticipates community needs, not just what they\u2019re needing right now or what they needed five years ago, but rather any sort of future needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting up to speed<\/p>\n Musk and Starlink are working to further increase their speeds. The Federal Communications Commission in November 2024 approved a plan from Musk\u2019s SpaceX to send thousands of its next generation of Starlink satellites into orbits as low as 211 miles above Earth\u2019s surface. SpaceX said that move, combined with technology inside the satellites, would ultimately increase speeds into the gigabits and provide faster latency, science and technology publication Ars Technica reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk said in a post on his X.com<\/a> social network that the Gen2 objects, which \u201care so big that only [SpaceX\u2019s giant rocket] Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency.\u201d The FCC approved 7,500 for low Earth orbit. SpaceX has published information detailing its plans for these objects to burn up in the atmosphere shortly after they are no longer usable. Meanwhile, the company continues to launch smaller Gen2 orbiters.<\/p>\n SpaceX on July 14 announced a third generation that it said will further increase upload, download and latency, and expects to launch them next year.<\/p>\n How soon these larger, more advanced satellites can actually get into orbit is unclear. The Starship testing program has seen multiple failures that included spectacular explosions and losses of both booster and payload port stages, both designed with the intent of being fully reusable.<\/p>\n SpaceX has planned at least one more launch this year for Starship, Space.com<\/a> has reported.<\/p>\n The lightly populated Catawba Valley and other rural parts of Virginia should get fine connectivity from LEO satellites, experts say. But places that are more densely packed with customers could see problems \u2014 more users mean more demand, said Lingjia Liu, a Virginia Tech professor and co-director of Wireless@Virginia Tech, a research, teaching and consulting office focused on wireless networks and technologies.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat inevitably will actually affect their dialing rate and uplink rate,\u201d Liu said. \u201cIf its users are sparsely located, the subscribers within that region will be less, and \u2026 mitigate the issue we just mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n A working paper that three researchers released Friday appears to back up that point, in news first reported on the Broadband Breakfast<\/a> website.<\/p>\n![\"SpaceX](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/falcon9.jpg\")
SpaceX Falcon 9 departing Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with Starlink satellites in June 2024. Photo by Jack Kennedy.<\/p>\n