In a recent request filed with the FCC, Starlink asked to increase the size of its broadband satellite fleet to 100,000. This coincided with the FCC’s announcement that it wants to ease the process for approving new satellites, so I have to think the idea will sail through. There was one extraordinary statement in this filing that is the topic of today’s blog. SpaceX said it has the goal of handling the majority of the world’s Internet traffic. Elon Musk has always been one for huge hyperbole, so statements like this are not surprising. I want to examine a few reasons why that goal is ridiculous.

No carrier handles a large percentage of the world’s internet traffic today. According to statistics shown on Cloudflare Radar, the company with the biggest percentage of worldwide traffic today is Amazon, with 3.5% of all traffic. The companies that carry more than 2% of worldwide traffic include Cloudflare (2.2%), Comcast (2.5%), Amazon (2.4%), Microsoft (2.2%), Reliance/Jio (2.1%), and AT&T (2.1%). SpaceX is on the worldwide list at number 18 today, already carrying 0.7% of the world’s Internet traffic. SpaceX would have to grow by five times to catch Amazon. But that would still be a long way from carrying a majority of the world’s traffic, and it’s hard to imagine any carrier growing to carry even 10% of the world’s traffic.

Starlink has built an impressive ISP business by gaining 12 million broadband customers. Worldwide, there are over 6 billion Internet users, about 74% of the world’s population. If you assume an average of 2.5 people per household, Starlink today represents 0.5% of all residential Internet users. But residential broadband, as large as it is, is still only a fraction of the world’s Internet traffic. Again, according to Cloudflare, bots are currently making 56.8% of all web connections.

Starlink largely has a near-monopoly for satellite broadband today, but that’s going to change over the next five years. There are major plans by others to compete with Starlink, including Amazon, China’s Guowang, Shanghai’s Quinfan, Blue Origin’s TeraWave, and Eutelsat’s OneWeb. Competition will dilute Starlink’s share of the satellite market.

Love him or hate him, Elon Musk has aligned himself with politics, which is unusual for somebody operating a giant retail business. There are already many countries that ban Starlink, and this list could grow. Even in countries where Starlink is available, there are a lot of people who would never buy service from an Elon Musk-backed company.

I think the biggest reason is that there is a lot more risk associated with trusting your broadband to satellites. A massive 1,000-year solar flare could knock a lot of satellites out of commission. There is a real threat of a spreading cloud of space debris killing a lot of satellites, as predicted by the Kessler syndrome. There is a chance that satellites could be knocked out deliberately during a war or by a rogue nation.

Fiber networks face no similar worldwide threats. Large users of broadband are never going to trust their traffic to satellite. Don’t expect to see data centers, universities, governments, or large corporations favor satellite connections over fiber.

I have to admit that I like Elon Musk’s brashness, but his claims are always overboard. I think he has a better chance of establishing his colony on Mars than of capturing the majority of the world’s Internet traffic.