News
ViaSat asks FCC to halt SpaceX Starlink launches because it can’t compete
Under the hollow pretense of concern for the environment, Starlink satellite internet competitor ViaSat has asked the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to force SpaceX to stop Starlink launches and threatened to take the matter to court if it doesn’t get its way.
A long-time satellite internet provider notorious for offering expensive, mediocre service with strict bandwidth restrictions, ViaSat has also been engaged in a years-long attempt to disrupt, slow down, and even kill SpaceX’s Starlink constellation by any means necessary. That includes fabricating nonsensical protests, petitioning the FCC dozens of times, and – most recently – threatening to sue the agency and federal government as the company becomes increasingly desperate.
The reason is simple: even compared to SpaceX’s finicky, often-unreliable Starlink Beta service, ViaSat’s satellite internet is almost insultingly bad. With a focus on serving the underserved and unserved, SpaceX’s Starlink beta users – many of which were already relying on ViaSat or HughesNet internet – have overwhelmingly described the differences as night and day.
In simple terms, if given the option, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that a single public ViaSat subscriber would choose the company’s internet over SpaceX’s Starlink. While Starlink currently requires subscribers to pay a substantial upfront cost – ~$500 – for the dish used to access the satellite network, ViaSat internet costs at least as much per month. Currently, new subscribers would pay a bare minimum of ~$113 per month for speeds up to 12 Mbps (akin to DSL) and an insultingly small 40GB data cap. For a 60GB cap and 25 Mbps, subscribers will pay more than $160 per month after a three-month promotion.
With a fixed cost of $99 per month, truly unlimited data, and uncapped speeds that vary from 50 to 200+ Mbps, any ViaSat “silver” subscriber would receive far better service by switching to Starlink and save enough money to pay off the $500 dish in less than a year. While Starlink is currently in beta and often unstable and unreliable as a result, users continue to notice major improvements in speeds and uptime as SpaceX works to continuously improve the network.
In the US, ViaSat has less than 600,000 household internet subscribers, all of which are almost certainly liable to switch to better alternatives. Short of local and state governments actually standing up for their citizens and forcing monopolistic ground-based internet service providers (ISPs) to fairly serve rural customers, Starlink is currently the only real hope for rural Americans who are tired of settling for second-class internet service.
ViaSat began its latest push to hamstring a looming competitor with regulation when it asked the FCC to perform an environmental review of Starlink’s impact last December. The FCC unsurprisingly failed to heed the company’s spurious, nakedly self-serving demands. Since then, the FCC approved a long-standing SpaceX request to modify its Starlink constellation by lowering thousands of satellites, thus improving service and drastically decreasing the debris risk posed by satellite failures, which would take a few years to reenter from 550 kilometers instead of decades for spacecraft orbiting at 1000+ kilometers.
To a very small extent, there are some real questions worth asking about the environmental impact of megaconstellations. A few recent studies have begun to do so, though it’s such a new field of inquiry that virtually nothing is known with any confidence. However, ViaSat is transparently disinterested in the actual environmental impact given that its petition for the FCC to immediately halt all Starlink launches focuses on Starlink alone and not competitor OneWeb – also in the process of launching satellites – or prospective constellations being developed by Telesat and Amazon.
What ViaSat actually wants is for the FCC to catastrophically hamstring Starlink, thus saving the profit-focused company from having to actually work to compete with an internet service provider that is all but guaranteed to capture most of its subscribers on an even playing field. Incredibly, ViaSat actually removes its greenwashing mask in the very same FCC request [PDF], stating that it “will suffer competitive injury” if Starlink is allowed to “compete directly with Viasat in the market for satellite broadband services.”
News
It’s official: SpaceX takes aim at Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
SpaceX is buying 800 MHz spectrum from Grain to turn Starlink Mobile into a carrier.
SpaceX has agreed to buy a nationwide block of low band wireless spectrum, a deal the company says will let Starlink Mobile operate as a full US carrier rather than a satellite add-on for someone else’s network.
The company announced the agreement on X on Thursday afternoon, saying it will “pave the way for @Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the US.” The seller is Grain Management, a private investment firm that confirmed in a statement that SpaceX will acquire 100% of its nationwide 800 MHz portfolio. That covers up to 14 MHz of paired spectrum in the 817 to 824 MHz and 862 to 869 MHz bands. Neither side disclosed a price, and the deal still needs FCC approval.
We announced an agreement to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum license portfolio that will pave the way for @Starlink to become a major mobile carrier in the US.
With this new spectrum and our Gen2 constellation, Starlink Mobile can ensure Americans have access to high-speed mobile broadband no matter where they are → https://t.co/1Uaf48v5pm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 8, 2026
Grain only recently picked up the licenses itself. It bought the portfolio from T-Mobile in a transaction that closed in August, paying cash plus its own 600 MHz spectrum. Rival AST SpaceMobile had been testing satellites on the same bands before SpaceX stepped in.
SpaceX said its 2 GHz spectrum will handle high bandwidth capacity, while the new 800 MHz layer “ensures Starlink Mobile’s signal penetrates through obstacles, such as walls, and can provide service to customers’ devices even when they are in buildings.” The company added that most existing phones already support the band, so customers would not need new hardware to use it.
That 2 GHz spectrum came from SpaceX’s EchoStar acquisition last year, which gave the company exclusive S band rights in the US and global Mobile Satellite Service licenses. The Grain spectrum is different in an important way: it is tailored for service from ground towers, not satellites. SpaceX said that combination would make Starlink Mobile “the first network operator to deploy both satellite and terrestrial spectrum.”
The announcement also follows a key regulatory win. Earlier this week, the FCC approved SpaceX’s plan to deploy 15,000 second generation Starlink Mobile satellites, which the company has said will carry up to 100 times the data density of the current system, as Teslarati previously reported.
Shares of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile fell in extended trading after the announcement. T-Mobile is currently SpaceX’s launch partner for Starlink Mobile in the US, which makes its position the most complicated of the three.
SpaceX has not been subtle about its plans. During the company’s August earnings call, President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said she expected Starlink Mobile to win over customers from the major carriers. “I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better,” she said, pointing to dead zone coverage and resilience during disasters. Shotwell also described plans for low cost cellular base stations that could pair with existing Starlink dishes.
SpaceX has targeted 2027 for deployment of its next generation Starlink Mobile satellites, with upgraded service expected by the end of that year. The FCC review of the Grain deal now determines when the terrestrial half of that network can come online.
Elon Musk
Trump presents Elon Musk with National Medal of Science, calls him “modern-day Thomas Edison”
Trump gave Elon Musk the National Medal of Science and compared him to Thomas Edison.
Elon Musk now has the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers. President Donald Trump presented him with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s “Science: A New Golden Age” summit, held at the Institute of Peace in Washington, according to the White House.
Trump called Musk a “national treasure” and “our modern-day Thomas Edison.” “Few Americans in history have done more to advance America’s national interest than Elon in one field after another,” the president said. He also described Musk as an “industrial titan, brilliant engineer and one of the greatest technology founders to ever live.”
The official citation credits Musk “for engineering achievements of extraordinary ambition and scale that have pushed the frontiers of space exploration, intelligent systems, communications, and beyond, renewing American technological leadership and opening a new chapter in American manufacturing.” Tesla is not named in it, but “intelligent systems” and “American manufacturing” cover a lot of ground that Tesla and the Terafab chip project occupy.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su received the same medal. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell were given the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. It was the first time Trump has handed out either award in his two terms. As Teslarati noted when the list was first reported on Wednesday, the National Science Foundation says 529 people have received the Medal of Science since Congress created it in 1959.
🚨 IT’S OFFICIAL: President Trump just PERSONALLY presented Elon Musk the National Medal of Science for his INCREDIBLE contributions to our nation
I can’t think of ANYONE who deserves this honor more 👏🏻
Congratulations, @elonmusk! https://t.co/GkAaVp9wb9
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 8, 2026
The ceremony closes a loop that opened in 2025, when Musk left DOGE and criticized the “Big Beautiful Bill,” sparking a public feud. Al Jazeera noted that Musk was the largest contributor to Trump’s 2024 campaign, and CNBC reported that all of the honorees have given financially to Trump or Republican causes in some form. The reconciliation has moved quickly in recent weeks. Musk sat at Trump’s left at the September 29 White House AI lunch, was named to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare, and adopted the administration’s “super intelligence” wording when he said SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI.
For Tesla and SpaceX shareholders, the practical question is what the closer relationship means for federal approvals. Tesla’s Robotaxi and Cybercab expansion depends on national autonomy rules, and SpaceX’s Starship and Starlink plans run through the FAA, FCC and NASA. Thursday’s ceremony did not change any of that directly.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
The Boring Company signs Abu Dhabi tunnel agreement while adding more Prufrock machines in Nashville.
The Boring Company has signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi to study underground transport and utility tunnels across the emirate, adding a second UAE city to its pipeline as it prepares to also scale up tunneling back home in Nashville.
The deal was signed Thursday at the Liveability and Investment Exhibition (LIVEX 2026) by Boring Company President Steve Davis and Maysarah Mahmoud Salim Eid, director general of the Abu Dhabi Projects and Infrastructure Centre (ADPIC), according to the Abu Dhabi Media Office. Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of the emirate’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, attended the signing.
Under the agreement, the two sides will assess feasibility, delivery and operating models for tunnels that could carry passengers or utilities. They will also look at Abu Dhabi’s potential as a regional hub for tunneling work. The current phase is exploratory, and no construction commitment or project budget has been announced.
“Abu Dhabi provides an ideal environment to explore the next generation of underground infrastructure solutions, supported by its ambitious growth vision and strong commitment to advanced technologies,”
Davis said. He added that the company wants to assess how tunnels can “expand urban capacity more efficiently, and enable better use of available space.”
The timing lines up with the money, considering last month, The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D led by the UAE and affiliated investors, valuing the company at $23 billion, as Teslarati reported. That round came with a commitment to build more than 150 kilometers of tunnel across the UAE, separate from the Dubai Loop pilot already under contract with Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority. That pilot covers 6.4 kilometers and four stations linking DIFC and Dubai Mall at a cost of about $154 million.
Back home, The Boring Company projects in Nashville are also scaling up, with the company telling local NewsChannel 5 that a third Prufrock machine could start digging the Music City Loop in late October. A fourth is also targeted before the end of the year. Two machines are already mining Nashville limestone at the same time, and work is underway on a new launch site for the third.
The company said it has made more than 300 design and performance upgrades to its original Nashville machine. It is also working with property owners on more than 40 planned stations, with approvals in place for a future Nashville International Airport connection, a downtown station near the Music City Center, and stops at residential towers and the JW Marriott.
Construction on the Music City Loop began the same evening Tennessee and federal regulators approved the project’s lease in February, and the company targeted its first operational segment for late 2026. Back in Las Vegas, The Boring Company has said it plans to double its Vegas Loop station count by year’s end.
It’s official: SpaceX takes aim at Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile
Trump presents Elon Musk with National Medal of Science, calls him “modern-day Thomas Edison”
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
