Late last month SpaceX urged its customers to contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to voice their opposition to DISH Network’s plan to use the 12GHz radio spectrum for a 5G cellular network.
Starlink subscribers apparently took the message to heart, and have flooded the FCC with comments since SpaceX made the request on June 28. According to a review of the filings by PCMag, more than 3,300 comments had been submitted within the first few days.
By Wednesday morning, that number has ballooned to nearly 80,000.
According to SpaceX, if the plans put forward by DISH are allowed to proceed, Starlink would be become unusable for the majority of Americans.
“If the FCC does not reject the rule changes proposed by DISH for 12 GHz spectrum, Starlink customers will experience harmful interference more than 77% of the time and total outage of service 74% of the time, rendering Starlink unusable for most Americans,” SpaceX explained at VoterVoice.net.
While SpaceX is waiting to hear the outcome of this battle, Elon Musk’s aerospace company was victorious in another battle with DISH last week.
After urging the FCC to take action and deactivate Starlink customers who use the service on a moving boat or car, the FCC approved the use on Thursday, paving the way for Hawaiian Airlines and Royal Caribbean to add Starlink to their fleets of planes and cruise ships.
