A Republican victory would favor Starlink Elon Musk has 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, it’s a “mind-blowingly” profitable fraction, say analysts. Several broadband policy experts told me that a second Trump administration would be more favorable to Musk. They said Musk would be more likely to receive federal funding and influence policy that would help his satellite company, Starlink. Another industry source told me that they view Musk’s support of Trump as more about his space business than Starlink from a government subsidy perspective. Regardless of which business he’s prioritizing, it’s a safe bet that the winds will start to blow at Starlink’s back if Trump wins the election. Musk has had a turbulent history with broadband policymakers until now, calling the FCC “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. “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 Elon Musk feeling pretty bitter. 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 bucks,” said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell 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, roughly $34K to $86K a mile. But there are a few caveats to Shotwell’s assessment. 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,” Levin 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. (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 a Republican victory. If Trump wins, 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 Musk has brushed off the speed and capacity concerns, saying earlier this month that “small-but-meaningful updates” will get Starlink to 1,000Mbps speeds -- if it can just get FCC approval. But that could change with a Republican victory, which Musk has put all his chips in for. He 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 if Trump wins. 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 has an annual budget of around $9 billion, none of which has gone to Starlink. Musk has no interest in money going to someone other than himself. Blair Levin, former chief of staff at the FCC and a telecom industry analyst at New Street Research “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. Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead his new “government efficiency commission” if elected. Experts say that Musk’s influence would be felt in the selection of a new FCC chair, too. In Project 2025, a collection of conservative policy goals for the next administration, Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr criticized 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 is the front-runner for Trump, but he is not certain to win it. What is certain is that Musk will have a veto over the selection,” Levin said. “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.” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel.