The Benton Institute recently wrote an article reminding me that Starlink operates a second satellite network, separate from the one that serves residential and business broadband customers. The company announced this network, which it dubs Starshield, at the end of 2022. Today, this network is now highlighted on the SpaceX website.

Starshield is touted as a military-grade network, which in layman’s terms means a separate network that doesn’t share any traffic with commercial customers. In the U.S., the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has launched several hundred Starshield satellites. This is the federal agency that has always operated military and spy satellites. The British Ministry of Defense is also said to be migrating to the Starshield platform. Other militaries around the world that use SpaceX, like the well-known use of Starlink in Ukraine to direct drone traffic, use the normal commercial Starlink satellite platform. Benton reports that Starshield and Starlink are not yet fully separate, and that a Starlink outage affects Starshield performance, but the company is likely working toward total independence.

SpaceX touts several benefits of Starshield. They can use whatever level of encryption of traffic required by a government customer. The satellites can also carry custom payloads, which likely means spy cameras or other devices. SpaceX also says it can integrate Starshield into other satellite networks.

The Backhaul Capacity Question

Since nobody I know will even be using a government spy satellite, you might wonder why I am writing about Starshield. I’ve been wondering lately about Starlink’s claim that it is interested in providing backhaul to cell sites and bigger broadband connections to rural businesses. This has always puzzled me because, at the local network level, a satellite network is no different than any other network. If Starlink were to connect to a handful of cell sites in a given rural area, the bandwidth used for the cell sites would reduce the capacity available to residential customers. There is only so much bandwidth available in a localized satellite footprint.

We know this is true because even today, there are stories of localized Starlink areas getting overwhelmed. There were reports during the Burning Man festival last year that nearby Starlink customers complained about loss of bandwidth when festival attendees brought along their Starlink Mini satellite dishes.

Dedicated Satellites for Backhaul

This makes me wonder if Starlink plans to have separate satellites just for backhaul. We know what that might look like. OneWeb, owned by Eutelsat, provides big bandwidth to European government locations and large businesses. The company currently has around 650 satellites in orbit to support bigger bandwidth users.

It wouldn’t be hard for Starlink to carve out satellites that specialize in large customers. The company currently has 11,100 satellites in orbit and should be close to its original approved constellation of 12,000 by the end of the year. The FCC has already given the company permission to grow the constellation to 15,000. And since SpaceX is never satisfied, it’s already asked the FCC for permission to double the constellation to almost 30,000 satellites. It doesn’t seem like it would be much of a challenge for Starlink to carve out 500 satellites from the large constellation to specialize in backhaul. This would not only open up new revenue opportunities but would also mean not diluting bandwidth delivered to its millions of residential customers. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it’s an idea that makes sense.