Spacex broadband coming to New York

Elon Musk, who has revolutionized the electric car market and brought the space program back to life, could also be bringing high-speed internet to rural areas of the Capital Region.

Musk’s Spacex company won $886 million from the Federal Communications Commission to build out its satellite internet broadcast system, called Starlink, to 642,925 new potential customers in 35 states, including New York.

Many of the areas in the Capital Region that will get new broadband service under the FCC program, which is known as the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, will be served by Spacex, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Spacex has been launching hundreds of extremely lightweight satellites into space for its Starlink program, which it has already started to roll out in some areas of the country. The service is currently being sold for $99 a month in a “beta” rollout, although that doesn’t include a $499 equipment fee. It is unclear how much Spacex would charge for the services awarded under the FCC program.

Spacex asserts that its Starlink service has “performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations” and will “deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or com

pletely unavailable.”

New York state originally wasn’t allowed to participate in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund after the Trump administration had decided that the state already had received enough broadband internet subsidies through other federal internet programs.

However, U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D -Amsterdam, along with U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado, D - Rhinebeck, convinced the FCC to include New York state in the phase one funding.

“You can’t just step over us,” Tonko said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is a modern-day need. It’s not a luxury.”

Areas that will be served by Starlink include places like Berne, Westerlo and Rensselaerville, as well as a small sliver of the Port of Albany on the Hudson River.

Tonko said Wednesday that his office would make sure that the Starlink service would be both reliable and consumerfriendly in terms of pricing.

“We’re going to stay on top of it,” Tonko said.