Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX )

SpaceX is one of 386 entities that have qualified to bid in a federal auction for rural-broadband funding.

SpaceX has so far overcome the Federal Communications Commission's doubts about whether Starlink, its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite service, can provide latency of less than 100ms and thus qualify for the auction's low-latency tier. With the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) set to distribute up to $16 billion to ISPs, the FCC initially placed SpaceX on the "incomplete application" list, which includes ISPs that had not shown they were qualified to bid in their desired performance and latency tiers. The FCC also said that LEO providers " will face a substantial challenge " obtaining approval to bid in the low-latency tier because they must "demonstrat[e] to Commission staff that their networks can deliver real-world performance to consumers below the Commission's 100ms low-latency threshold."

That changed yesterday, when the FCC announced the list of bidders that qualified for the auction that is scheduled to begin on October 29. Besides SpaceX, qualified bidders include Altice USA, CenturyLink, Charter, Cincinnati Bell, Cox, Frontier, Hughes, US Cellular, Verizon, Viasat, Windstream, and many smaller companies. There were 119 applicants that did not make the final list.

Enlarge / Melvinjohn Ashue, vice chairman of the Hoh Tribe, discusses the tribe's use of Starlink broadband. (credit: Washington State Department of Commerce )

A remote tribe in Washington State is one of the first users of SpaceX's Starlink broadband, having been connected recently after years of struggling to get modern Internet service. "We're very remote," said Melvinjohn Ashue, vice chairman of the Hoh Tribe's governing committee. "The last eight years I felt like we have been paddling upriver with a spoon and almost getting nowhere with getting Internet to the reservation."

The Hoh Tribe's reservation is in western Washington and had a population of 28 households with 116 people in the 2010 US Census. Ashue described the tribe's Internet problems and use of Starlink in a video produced by the Washington State Department of Commerce .

The video serves partly to advertise the state agency's efforts to get everyone connected to modern broadband by 2024, a goal that has been helped along by SpaceX's decision to start its limited Starlink beta in Washington. Previously, we wrote about how Washington State emergency responders are using Starlink in areas ravaged by wildfires. Residents of the wildfire-stricken town of Malden have also used Starlink.

Enlarge / 60 Starlink satellites stacked for launch at SpaceX facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (credit: SpaceX )

SpaceX's Starlink broadband has been available in a limited beta for the past few months , and SpaceX has now launched enough satellites for a public beta that will be available to more customers. However, the newly launched satellites aren't in position yet, and SpaceX hasn't revealed an exact availability date.

After yesterday's launch of 60 Starlink satellites , SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that "Once these satellites reach their target position, we will be able to roll out a fairly wide public beta in northern US & hopefully southern Canada. Other countries to follow as soon as we receive regulatory approval."

Musk did not say when the satellites will reach their target position. SpaceX has over 700 satellites in orbit after yesterday's launch.

Enlarge / A Starlink user terminal and wildfire-devastated areas seen in images shared by Washington State's Emergency Management Division. (credit: Washington Emergency Management Division )

SpaceX Starlink is providing Internet access to Washington State emergency responders in areas ravaged by wildfires. The group has deployed seven Starlink user terminals (i.e. satellite dishes) since it began using the service in early August, as CNBC reported yesterday:

"I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department's IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday.

The broadband service has helped both emergency responders and families in wildfire-stricken areas. Hall "has set up terminals in areas that were burned severely to provide evacuated families with wireless calling and Internet access to file insurance claims," CNBC wrote. Hall said he also "did setup to allow kids to do some of their initial schooling."

Hall said Starlink has "easily double[d] the bandwidth" compared to traditional satellite broadband and consistently provides latency of less than 30ms.

Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket launches a Starlink mission in January 2020. (credit: SpaceX)

SpaceX returns to its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center on Monday for its twelfth launch of operational Starlink satellites. The mission is scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex-39A at 10:22am ET (14:22 UTC). Weather conditions are 70-percent favorable for liftoff.

The Starlink-12 mission will fly atop a Falcon 9 rocket first stage that previously launched the company's first crewed Dragon mission in May, and subsequently the Anasis-II mission in July. SpaceX will attempt to recover the booster on its Of Course I Still Love You drone ship.

The mission, the company's 11th Starlink launch in this calendar year, brings SpaceX closer to offering a public beta of its service.

Enlarge / A SpaceX Starlink user terminal/satellite dish. (credit: SpaceX)

Beta users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-broadband service are getting download speeds ranging from 11Mbps to 60Mbps , according to tests conducted using Ookla's speedtest.net tool. Speed tests showed upload speeds ranging from 5Mbps to 18Mbps .

The same tests, conducted over the past two weeks, showed latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms. This isn't a comprehensive study of Starlink speeds and latency, so it's not clear whether this is what Internet users should expect once Starlink satellites are fully deployed and the service reaches commercial availability. We asked SpaceX several questions about the speed-test results yesterday and will update this article if we get answers.

Links to 11 anonymized speed tests by Starlink users were posted by a Reddit user yesterday . Another Reddit user compiled some of the tests to make this graphic: