As the dust starts to settle after the election, one person has remained a prominent presence in President-elect Donald Trump's orbit. Elon Musk has reportedly been highly involved in Trump's cabinet picks and chosen to lead a new advisory group called the "Department of Government Efficiency" along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk spent at least $132 million to secure the White House and Congress for Republicans. While his satellite internet company Starlink represents a fraction of his empire, which includes Tesla, SpaceX and X, analysts say it's a "mind-blowingly" profitable fraction.
Several broadband policy experts told me that a second Trump administration could be more favorable to Starlink in several ways, including receiving federal funds and opening up new wireless spectrum.
Locating local internet providers
Another industry source told me that they view Musk's support of Trump is more about his space business SpaceX than Starlink, from a government subsidy perspective -- SpaceX is a key contractor to NASA and the Department of Defense. Regardless of which business he's prioritizing, it's a safe bet that the winds will start to blow at Starlink's back once Trump's back in office.
Starlink could get in on federal broadband funding for rural areas
Musk has had a turbulent history with broadband policymakers until now, calling the Federal Communications Commission "contemptible" on some days and "fair and sensible" on others. What's undeniable is that Starlink has been a boon for many rural residents with few options for high-speed internet.
Locating local internet providers
"Starlink truly is a game-changer for us rural folks," said one user on Starlink's sub-Reddit. "After suffering with dial-up and Viasat for 15 years, it was a godsend."
Even though it's had an immediate impact in rural areas, Starlink has mostly been left out of the $90 billion feeding frenzy for broadband money in the wake of the pandemic. Last year, the FCC rejected Starlink's application for nearly $900 million in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and Starlink has been largely excluded from the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program -- except as a sort of "internet of last resort" in especially hard-to-reach areas.
All of that has left Musk feeling pretty bitter. In June, he blasted BEAD as "an outrageous waste of taxpayer money" and "utterly failing to serve people in need." BEAD has prioritized the expansion of fiber networks to rural areas at the expense of LEOs like Starlink.
"Fiber can be $10,000 to $30,000 per mile. I can bridge that gap with one Starlink kit, which is $500," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in August.
That might actually be understating it. An often-cited study from the Fiber Broadband Association found that typical fiber construction costs range from $6.49 to $16.25 per foot, or roughly $34,000 to $86,000 a mile.
"We want to serve as many people in Wyoming as we can with fiber," Elaina Zempel, former broadband manager of the Wyoming Business Council, said in a recent interview. "But we have six people per square mile, and we have a lot of mountain passes. We're talking about going down a road for 80 miles and having one customer."
While Starlink might sound like the obvious solution in areas like this, a few red flags give experts pause. For one, Starlink hasn't proven that it has the capacity to connect millions of additional households.
"Starlink can correctly claim that it covers a broad area, but spectrum constraints mean that Starlink cannot serve all the locations in that area," Blair Levin, a former chief of staff at the FCC and a telecom industry analyst at New Street Research, wrote in a recent note to investors.
Starlink isn't connecting people at the FCC's definition of broadband, either -- 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speed. The most recent data from Ookla -- albeit a year old -- shows that Starlink users are getting 65/10Mbps on average. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)
"Are we going to allow these extreme high-cost areas to get stuck with Starlink while others are gradually rolling out fiber through BEAD funding?" Christopher Ali, professor of telecommunications at Penn State University, told CNET. "It's good enough today, but it won't be good enough tomorrow, right? We're not sure how well Starlink can scale."
So far, agencies have taken this position when doling out BEAD funding: fiber first, Starlink (and other LEOs) as a last resort. But that could change with Trump's victory.
"There is a real possibility that Elon Musk could prevail upon him to change the program's rules to favor satellite broadband connections, most of which would be purchased from Musk's SpaceX, which has a virtual monopoly," Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America's Open Technology Institute, told CNET before the election.
Musk could have a say in FCC decisions
Musk has brushed off Starlink's speed and capacity concerns, saying in October that "small but meaningful updates" will get Starlink to 1,000Mbps speeds -- if it can just get FCC approval. But that could change now that Republicans control the White House, which appoints the FCC's chair.
Experts say that Musk's influence will be felt in the selection of a new FCC chair, with Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr as the presumptive pick. "Carr is the front-runner for Trump, but he is not certain to win it," Levin said. "What is certain is that Musk will have a veto over the selection."
In Project 2025, a collection of conservative policy goals for the next administration, Carr criticized (PDF) wasteful broadband policies and threw his support behind Starlink, arguing that "the FCC should expedite its work to support this new technology by acting more quickly in its review and approval of applications to launch new satellites." (For his part, Trump said of Project 2025 at the September debate, "I haven't read it. I don't want to read it.")
"Carr has been very vocal about his dissent with respect to the FCC treatment of Starlink, especially when they denied RDOF funds," Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, told CNET. "Whether Elon Musk gives praise or not, Republicans have always been a little bit more open to this tech-neutral approach."
Musk could exercise his influence on broadband policy in several ways. The FCC controls how companies like Starlink can use radio frequencies, or spectrum -- the kind Starlink would need to reach those 1,000Mbps speeds -- as well as how many satellites it can launch into space.
"If you look at Musk's various efforts to improve his spectrum position, whatever his batting average is, it's not hot," Levin told CNET. "It's going to be a lot higher [after the Trump victory]. And that's a very significant win."
Musk could also agitate for a Republic administration to end programs that subsidize his competitors, like the Universal Service Fund, which supports broadband deployment to rural areas, public institutions and low-income Americans. The USF includes the RDOF -- the same one that rejected Starlink's $900 million application last year.
"Think about the final 8% of the homes that don't have what we think of as a broadband service -- that is the easiest addressable market for Starlink," Levin told CNET. "Would Starlink be better off getting a small percentage of government funding or having no government funding for those areas? It's pretty obvious to me they're better off with none."
The USF is managed by the FCC, and has an annual budget of around $9 billion, none of which has ever gone to Starlink.
"I doubt that Elon Musk or his people will say, 'We want to kill USF.' That's not going to happen. But USF has both economic and legal problems, and if you don't solve them, it eventually falls apart," Levin said.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.