Satellite Internet

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Starlink Sales Are Straining Capacity in Parts of the U.S. And Canada

On June 5th Elon Musk said SpaceX had nearly 500,000 customers in 32 nations and 9 languages. By now, there must be 500,000 customers, most of whom are in the U. S. and Canada, and their performance is suffering. In the first quarter of this year, OOKLA reported that the median Starlink download speed fell from 104.97 to 99.55 Mbps in the U.S. and from 106.64 to 97.4 Mbps in Canada. more

Satellite Companies Fighting Over RDOF

There has been an interesting public fight going on at the FCC as Viasat has been telling the FCC that Elon Musk's Starlink should not be eligible for funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). At stake is the $886 million that Starlink won in December's RDOF auction that is still under review at the FCC. Viasat had originally filed comments at the FCC stating that the company did not believe that Starlink could fulfill the RDOF requirements in some of the grant award areas. more

International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure [CII]: A Comparative Analysis

On Friday December 13, 2024 at 10:00–12:00 CET (09:00-11:00 AM UTC) the Lodz Cyber Hub at the University of Lodz Law School, an ICANN EURALO ALS, and the United Nations University – Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) hosts an online workshop 'International Law of Critical Internet Infrastructure: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China'. more

OneWeb Is Out of Bankruptcy, but Not Out of the Woods

OneWeb, which declared bankruptcy in May, has reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy. Bharti Global, an Indian telecommunication conglomerate, and the British government each own 42.2% of the new company, and most of the rest is owned by previous investors SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems. Hughes will continue work on ground infrastructure and marketing and the original joint venture with Airbus, which designs and manufactures OneWeb satellites... more

Can SpaceX Launch Version 2 Starlink Satellites This Year?

The answer to the question in the title depends on the availability of SpaceX's new Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster rocket, collectively referred to as Starship. Elon Musk says he is highly confident about getting Starship to orbit this year. He also says, "At SpaceX, we specialize in converting things from impossible to late." Starship is critical to Starlink because the version 2 satellites are seven meters long and weigh about 1.25 tons... more

Starlink Comes to Africa - Markets and Competition

SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies." more

Starlink Making a Space Grab

SpaceNews recently reported that Elon Musk and his low-orbit space venture Starlink have filed with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to launch an additional 30,000 broadband satellites in addition to the 11,927 now in the planning stages. This looks like a land grab and Musk is hoping to grab valuable orbital satellite paths to keep them away from competitors. more

Five Thousand SpaceX Starlink Terminals for Ukraine

On March 1, I wrote that a small number of SpaceX Starlink terminals had arrived in Ukraine, and they would be an important asset for distribution to selected government and resistance leaders and journalists. I didn't know who would get the terminals or how many there were, but it was a single truckload. A week or so later, we learned that two more shipments of terminals had arrived and fifty of them went to DTEK, a company struggling to repair Ukrainian electrical infrastructure. more

Starlink in Ukraine: What Three Years of Wartime Connectivity Taught Us

What began as an emergency response evolved into critical wartime infrastructure. Ukraine's experience with Starlink reveals the strategic risks and benefits of relying on privately operated networks for national resilience and defence. more

Havana Can Have 5G Before Miami

Compared to Miami, Havana is an Internet desert, but Havana may have 5G wireless connectivity before Miami. 5G architecture, US politics and policy, and the 5G timetable favor Havana. Let's start with 5G architecture. 5G will require many "small cells" because it uses high-frequency radio signals that don't travel as far as 4G signals and are more easily blocked by obstructions like trees and buildings. more

SES Pursues Multi-Orbit Satellite Internet via Strategic Partnerships

SES's first multi-orbit partnership was Cruise mPOWERED + Starlink, providing a managed blend of SES MEO and Starlink LEO service for maritime operators, and we can expect similar bundled services in aviation and enterprise markets. more

Starlink Update: Expansion, Performance Gains and Network Developments

Starlink expanded to 42 new countries in 2025, added 2.7 million customers, improved network speeds and latency, and continued satellite launches as it nears its first-phase constellation goal of 12,000 satellites. more

Starlink Passes 10,000 Satellites, Expanding Global Internet Reach

SpaceX has launched over 10,000 Starlink satellites, solidifying its lead in low-Earth orbit internet infrastructure and accelerating a broader industry shift toward satellite-based broadband in underserved and remote regions worldwide. more

Is Starlink the Tesla of Broadband Access? I Have a Chance to Find Out

Starlink is satellite internet access from SpaceX, one of Elon Musk's other companies. If it lives up to its hype, it will cure the problem of broadband availability in rural areas, although affordability will still be an issue. Most satellite-based Internet access sucks (that's a technical term). If based on geostationary satellites (ones you can point a dish at), the distance to the satellite is so great that the round-trip time for data is forever; this problem is called latency. more

The $100 Billion National Broadband Plan for America

The new Administration in the USA laid out a $100 billion proposal for broadband investment as part of its $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Under the proposal, the plan is to provide national broadband coverage. The Administration will use better competition measures, such as price transparency, the use of public utility infrastructure, and subsidies for low-income households to achieve its goals. more

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