Tesla & SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's "Starlink Project" has long been regarded as a pioneer in the global tech community, and for those countries and regions that are sparsely populated and cannot (or do not want) to bear the cost of satellite networking, they have little reason to refuse Starlink. As an example, on March 4 this year, SpaceX sent a full truckload of StarLink user terminals to Ukraine and announced that it would officially launch the StarLink Internet service in the country.
But on the other hand, there are many markets that hold a repulsive mentality towards StarLink, and the European Union is one of them.
Just two days after StarLink officially landed in Ukraine, SpaceX and lobbying group Politic Impact Partners submitted a document to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. SpaceX mentioned in the document that the EU is likely to give preferential treatment to its own satellite broadband Internet system, which will put "other" operators at a disadvantage in the competition.
Image from Yandex
SpaceX warned that eu direct or indirect funding of certain satellite internet services could create a conflict of interest and would have knock-on effects in the UK. "This will not only affect competition in the intra-EU satellite internet services market, but more importantly, once alternative services are excluded, the cost to UK consumers may be higher."
In fact, the EU's efforts to make its own satellite Internet services have long been an open secret. As early as the end of 2020, the European Union signed a low Earth orbit project similar to StarLink, which will provide secure and secure communications for relevant government agencies in Europe, as well as satellite network services for remote areas. European countries want to spend a combined effort of 6 billion euros (about $7.3 billion) to build a satellite network project of their own to change the current backwardness of Europe on satellite networks.
"Starlink is already so big that Musk alone has half the world's active satellites — in fact, he's making the rules, and Europe hasn't reacted fast enough." In an interview with the Financial Times, Josef Aschbacher, director of the European Space Agency, commented on the rapid expansion of the Starlink. He believes that the thousands of communication satellites launched by StarLink will squeeze competitors, making their expansion space greatly reduced.
The EU's actions also reflect the fact that the tech giants' successive involvement in space is not as flattering. Many industry insiders have expressed doubts, saying that giants such as SpaceX and Amazon may use satellite networks to create a competitive advantage for themselves, just like Facebook's Internet.org cooperation plan in the past, excluding competitors' websites from services in India and other regions. This actually deviates from the original intention of the birth of various networking projects: to achieve the ideal of universal coverage of the global Internet.
Perhaps because of this, Musk will be eyeing the British market that has left the European Union, and even directly send a lobbying team. But the problem is that the chances of the British government giving the Starlink plan a green light are equally slim.
Perhaps influenced by the EU's many neighbours, the UK has also made frequent moves in space networking programs in recent years. In July 2020, the UK government's investment agency invested $500 million in oneweb, a near-bankruptcy satellite startup, taking a 45% stake in the latter, and ranked as one of OneWeb's largest shareholders alongside Indian telecom operator Bharti Global. Upon completion of the transaction, OneWeb's commercial and satellite operations will be entrusted to Bharti Global, while the sale will ultimately be decided by the UK government – meaning that the UK will have the right to decide which countries can use OneWeb's technology and services.
The UK's acquisition of OneWeb is not difficult to understand. On the one hand, the UK intends to make up for the fact that it may be excluded from the "Galileo" (the EU's satellite navigation system) after Brexit; on the other hand, as one of the world's space industry powers, the UK is clearly reluctant to hand over this important facility to the Silicon Valley tech giants, and OneWeb happens to be a British company (its headquarters in London). With the two in love, a transaction was completed.
"With access to a global satellite network, we will have the ability to provide broadband connectivity to millions of people around the world, many of whom are using the Internet for the first time; this deal will also provide us with an opportunity to further develop our advanced manufacturing technologies." After completing the acquisition of OneWeb, British Commerce Minister Alok Sharma said in a statement.
As one of the world's first satellite start-ups, OneWeb was once the darling of the capital markets, receiving billions of dollars in capital injections from giants such as SoftBank. It is worth mentioning that it has also proposed a huge launch demand of 48,000 satellites to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), exceeding Musk's 42,000 targets for Starlink.
Even if OneWeb goes bankrupt in 2020 due to cost and difficulty in commercialization, it still has its own technology precipitation and resource accumulation, but it needs to be improved in some aspects. Li Yuan, vice president of the domestic satellite startup "Nine Days MSI", mentioned OneWeb in an interview with the media, believing that the supply chain problem was a lesson from its previous bankruptcy.
"OneWeb needs to discuss with suppliers such as Airbus in the supply chain, the model is more traditional, and its cost will be much higher; while SpaceX uses a cross-supply chain or even a new supply chain, through a vertically integrated pure self-research model, effectively reducing the cost of rockets and satellites." Li Yuan said in an interview.
It is conceivable that OneWeb, which has received support from the British government, will be alleviated in the future in terms of funding, supply chain and other issues, and a wide layout will no longer be a dream; at the other end of the strait, the EU is also slowly moving forward under the guidance of the new plan. Looking beyond Europe, we can see many commercial space companies that have emerged in China in recent years - Galaxy Power, Micro-Nano Starry Sky, Star Exploration, etc.; in addition, Russia, South Korea, Rwanda and other countries have made moves in satellite networking plans. With the gradual acceleration of the layout of the "national team" for space projects, the ambition of SpaceX to become the only hegemon in the satellite field is probably also greatly reduced.