| ▲ | Reason077 16 hours ago |
| Starlink would need to license LTE spectrum in every country it operated. Much easier to work with local carriers and piggyback on their existing bandwidth. |
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| ▲ | mrandish 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > license LTE spectrum in every country I think this is the biggest reason. All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers. Why? Preventing losing national capabilities, government revenue (taxes, licenses & other domestic carrier fees, lobbying, kickbacks, bribes, etc) and, most importantly, losing the ability to snoop at will on calls and data (at least metadata if not full-take). Even in countries where the major carriers are all based in other nations, existing towers being land-based creates jurisdiction for the government to control and tax. While many westernized democracies like to proclaim their commitment to freedom, rule of law and individual human rights - in practice there are currently zero governments on earth free enough to not consider loss of that absolute control over citizen's private communication an existential threat. Even in places where existing laws don't currently make it illegal, as soon as technology enables it - it will certainly be made illegal (by any means necessary). I assume SpaceX is smart enough to understand this reality. |
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| ▲ | sangnoir 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > All nation's governments will absolutely ensure, overtly or covertly, that their national regulators limit any space-based supra-national system from being able to threaten their national telephony and data carriers The ITU is pretty overt about how frequency allocation governance works. Absolutely no one wants a free-for-all frequency regime, for a multitude of reasons - not even SpaceX. You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei. 1. Pretty much every country on earth with a government regulates how radio spectrum is licensed for telecommunications, not for the purposes of control as an end, but coordination and preventing interference. | | |
| ▲ | perihelions 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | - "...without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse..." Well, how did those predictions of the future perform? - "The Chinese government espionage campaign that has deeply penetrated more than a dozen U.S. telecommunications companies is the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far,” a senior U.S. senator told The Washington Post in an interview this week." https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/11/21/... | |
| ▲ | lmm 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You may recall that Huawei 5G equipment was expunged from domestically-controlled, western infrastructure without having broken any laws, due to fears of future abuse. Your suggestion of a foreign company unilaterally, and illegally[1] imposing it's foreign-controlled, space-based phone network goes much further than whatever fears Washington had over Huawei. Radio Free Europe has been doing something similar successfully for what, 70 years? Of course being in violation of a given country's laws is a tradeoff. |
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| ▲ | thelittleone 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | An example is flying over India. Satellite internet service is not permitted. It cuts off the moment your flight crossed land in India and usually re-actives immediately after leaving. |
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| ▲ | jaimex2 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Would they? Given the satelites are in space I would assume pirate radio loopholes apply. |
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| ▲ | pbmonster 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Pirate radio is a lot less fun to run if you need it to be two-way. Because you need your customers on the ground to run their own pirate transmitter (which can be located and penalized by ground authorities), and your satellites need to receive signals from the ground - which ground authorities from first-world countries can make arbitrarily difficult, deciphering a multitude of <1W transmission from customer cellphones is kinda difficult when a modern electronic warfare radar transmitter is tracking your satellite at the same time. |
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