I am no fan of either Musk or Bezos, but my opinion is that both approaches have worked. SpaceX has been more move fast and break things. Kuiper has been more move slow and get it mostly right. Both of them have lots of money to burn. So I wouldn’t count Amazon out. I would have been more aligned with your opinion before their recent successes.
It does have kind of a Sirius vs XM feel, where I wonder if we need both of them. Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall at the state broadband offices where they decided how to score the wireless and LEO bids after the Benefit of the Bargain reset? Did Illinois go with Kuiper instead of Starlink because Amazon’s bid was lower? Did they just want to screw with Musk for using his political clout to change the rules? Did they say let’s throw some money at Amazon and see what they can do, after all, it’s not like people can’t get Starlink right now without BEAD? Similarly, I see some smallish local WISP/FISP companies got some sizable fiber awards, they seem like companies I can identify with and am happy for their success, but I wonder if they are like the dog that caught the school bus. Luckily they seem to be young pups who will be excited about catching a school bus. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Bill Prince Sent: Thursday, October 2, 2025 10:33 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] how will BEAD subsidize LEO? My personal opinion is that Kuiper won't actually get "done". It will be partially baked in a couple of years, and they will pull the plug around 2028. As of now, I think they have fewer than 100 sats in the sky. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com> On 10/1/2025 9:49 PM, Jason McKemie wrote: You think it will be done in 2 years? I don't think they will start building until around then, but I guess we'll see how it goes.. On Wed, Oct 1, 2025 at 2:31 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Has anyone figured this out? Other than free hardware for any resident at the location for 10 years, I can’t find what else BEAD will pay for. What about installation? And are the monthly fees discounted? I assume it varies by state, but what’s typically being done? The reason I ask is now that my state’s proposed awards have been publicized in the form of a map, I can see where they are subsidizing fiber and where it will be Amazon Kuiper. This figures bigly into our future plans. Most areas will get fiber, and while they have 4 years to get it done, I think most of it will be done in the next 2 years. I’m not going to try and deploy fiber anywhere that is getting BEAD fiber. It’s another matter where private money has been overbuilding cable companies in town that charge north of $100/mo. They also knew they wouldn’t face BEAD fiber because the locations weren’t unserved. But the areas where there were no bids to do fiber for below whatever the threshold was for LEO, probably you’d have to be a fool to do fiber in those areas with 100% your own money. So that’s where we’d focus any WISP expansion or upgrades, and what we’d be competing with is subsidized Amazon Kuiper. If we’d be competing with a free satellite receiver, that’s entirely possible. If it’s 100 Mbps for $10/mo, that’s another matter. -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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