A SpaceX petition against Dish Network has prompted thousands of Starlink subscribers to send messages to the FCC, demanding it protect the satellite internet system.
“Do NOT allow Dish to screw over consumers yet again,” wrote one Starlink user named John Davidson to the FCC.
On Tuesday, SpaceX began recruiting US-based Starlink customers to sign a petition calling on the FCC to reject a Dish Network plan to use the 12GHz radio spectrum for a 5G cellular network. The FCC’s filing website now has about 3,000 messages from Starlink users urging the commission to dismiss Dish Network’s effort to secure the radio spectrum.
The outpouring of support occurs as SpaceX is claiming Dish Network’s plan to tap the 12GHz band risks making Starlink “unusable.” This is because Starlink also uses the same radio spectrum to offer high-speed downloads.
“If Dish’s lobbying efforts succeed, our study shows that 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 claimed earlier this month.
For months now, both companies have been arguing about the matter within FCC proceedings. But on Tuesday, SpaceX decided to escalate the dispute by calling on Starlink users to lobby against Dish Network in its favor.
The company’s petition, which is hosted on votervoice.net, is designed to send a pre-written message to both the FCC and US lawmakers, demanding they intervene. As a result, the petition made it easy for Starlink users to generate a flood of complaints to the FCC.
It’s unclear how many of the complaints might be from duplicate users. But in some cases, the Starlink subscribers added their own opinions on top of the pre-written messages.
“I live in rural America and my children do not have access to internet without an open market that allows Starlink to provide services. Please allow the American spirit of competition to prevail!” wrote a user named Brandon Johnson.
“Without Starlink, I won't have access to high speed internet in the remote part of the county I live in. It's my only option,” wrote another user named Douglas Friedman.
Dish Network hasn’t responded to a request for comment about SpaceX’s petition. But the company is part of the 5G for 12GHz coalition, which includes over a dozen companies. The group argues that a 5G network using the spectrum can coexist with Starlink without causing major interference, citing its own study on the matter.
The coalition told PCMag it remains “committed to working in good faith with the FCC and stakeholders to ensure that the American public is able to reap the immense benefits of 5G services in this band.”