Musk’s Starlink is a monopoly, FCC chair claims. But who will step up to compete?

The Elon Musk-owned space technology firm SpaceX, and specifically its Starlink division, is being accused by US government officials of running a monopoly when it comes to the space satellite industry.

SpaceX is now the latest big tech firm on the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) watchlist for maintaining market dominance in possible violation of US anti-trust laws.

Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, Alphabet's Google, Meta Platforms, and Amazon have all been investigated or sued by the FCC in recent years over a plethora of monopolistic-based business practices, from strategic partnerships to unfair market manipulation.

FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel accused Musk’s Starlink on Wednesday of controlling the market and said that more companies should be competing to launch internet-beaming satellites in the Earth’s lower orbit.

Rosenworcel, attending a conference on Wednesday, singled out SpaceX and said the company controls nearly two-thirds of all active satellites in space today.

Starlink has "almost two-thirds of the satellites that are in space right now and has a very high portion of internet traffic... Our economy doesn't benefit from monopolies,” she said.

Rosenworcel stressed that “we've got to invite many more space actors in, many more companies that can develop constellations and innovations in space."

Rise of Starlink competitors

SpaceX launched its first satellite in 2018, introduced internet service to the public for the first time in November 2020, and since then, the Starlink constellation of satellites has grown to about 7,000 spacecraft.

The current Starlink constellation provides high-speed internet service for roughly two million people across the globe.

Musk has pledged to increase SpaceX’s network of satellites to 12,000 by the year 2027, and has mentioned 42,000 at a later date.

Earlier this month, the tech mogul boasted on X that Starlink was the only high-bandwidth Internet system that covers all of Earth. "It will probably deliver over 90% of all space-based internet traffic next year," he said.

Starlink is the only high-bandwidth Internet system that covers all of Earth.

It will probably deliver over 90% of all space-based Internet traffic next year. https://t.co/jOXlZfd2w9

undefined Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 1, 2024

Meanwhile, almost a dozen competitors are ready to challenge Starlink with similar services and solutions, according to a September 6th report by Daniel Pereira’s Business Model Analyst.

The report lists ten viable alternative companies, although some, such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’ Project Kuiper, are still in development.

Pereira states that some of the companies “focus on specific industries or geographic areas, while others offer broader coverage.”

US firms mentioned include ViaSat, Telstra, Project Kuiper, EchoStar Mobile, and its subsidiary, the Hughes Network System, as well as OneWeb and Inmarsat, which are both headquartered in the UK.

Luxembourg-based SES, Canadian firm TeleSat; and Australia’s NBN Sky Muster round out the list.

Starlink gets caught up in politics

On September 6th, as a result of political unrest in Brazil over stolen elections, the government there decided to ban Musk’s social media platform X and freeze access to Starlink satellites.

The move revived discussions from a previous decision by the federal government last December to shoot down, for the second time, an $886 million Starlink bid to provide broadband to rural communities as part of a subsidiary program to expand internet access in the US.

Rosenworcel had stated that funding Musk’s company "would not be the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars to bring broadband to unserved areas across the United States," while critics of the FCC have said the move was simply political fodder against Musk.

“If you gave Elon Musk $42 billion, how quickly could we achieve 100% access to high-speed internet for rural residents? Overnight, is the answer. Starlink is up and running. $42 billion subsidy. Done,” X user and news writer @EllisItems said about the decision.

If you gave Elon Musk $42 billion, how quickly could we achieve 100% access to high-speed internet for rural residents? Overnight, is the answer. Starlink is up and running. $42 billion subsidy. Done. https://t.co/hylfKAomy1 via @politico

undefined EllisItems (@EllisItems) September 8, 2024

Another X user posted that despite the Biden-Harris administration allocating $42 billion for the program, it “failed to connect a single person to the internet” and that Musk and his “Starlink network could have completed the job for a fraction of that sum.”

So far Musk has not responded to Rosenworcel's comments on Starlink from Wednesday.

Satellite wars are a thing

Starlink’s Washington state orbital headquarters may control 75% of the active satellites in space and have to contend with US partisan politics – but, there’s much more that potential Starlink competitors will have to deal with than just Washington interference.

China last year vowed to create a mega-constellation and bump SpaceX from hogging up the desirable low-orbiting satellite placements in near-Earth.

At the time, the People’s Republic of China had also admitted to researching how to disable or destroy Musk’s satellites if the Chinese government deemed them a threat to national security.

Since its declaration, China has only managed to launch about 500 satellites, according to a May report by US/EU-based small satellite technology firm Kongsberg NanoAvionics, also a competitive contender of Starlink, but not for lack of effort.

Last September, the German government nixed a deal for a Chinese firm to take over the Berlin-based satellite startup KLEO Connect over security concerns.

To note, there are currently just under 10,000 active satellites in various Earth orbits, the NanoAvionics blog post stated – with the US possessing the majority, and then China, followed by the UK for the top three.

Russia, with even less satellites in lower-Earth orbit than the UK, already possesses the ability to to attack commercial satellites.

Russia was blamed for a cyberattack on Ukraine’s Viasat Ka-Sat network on the first day of the 2022 invasion, causing connection outages for thousands of users across Europe.

By that April, Musk swooped in with thousands of Starlink terminals to provide free internet connection for war-weary citizens, which was also vital for the Ukrainian military to communicate, gather intelligence, and conduct drone attacks.

In February, a New York Times report disclosed that Russia was testing a powerful electronic weapons system capable of disrupting Starlink’s satellite internet service in Ukraine.