Tag Archives: SpaceX

SpaceX Wants to End Rural Subsidies

SpaceX has now told the FCC multiple times that the agency should begin the process of phasing down and eliminating all rural high-cost subsidies from the Universal Service Fund. The company filed comments asking for the end of subsidies in FCC Docket 26-96, which is looking at reforming the High-cost fund for an all IP Future, and in Docket 10-90 that was looking at Universal Service Fund reform. In both filings, SpaceX says that its proliferation of low-orbit satellites means that rural subsidies are obsolete and are no longer needed. The company characterizes anybody who disagrees with it as a “subsidy-dependent incumbent”. SpaceX goes on to argue that the money currently spent on rural subsidies should be redirected to programs that lower the cost of broadband for low-income families.

It’s an interesting policy question that raises more questions about satellite broadband than it does about the rural companies that are receiving broadband subsidies. For example, the CAF II subsidy is being provided by a number of rural ISPs who use the subsidy to justify building and maintaining rural fiber, similar to what was done with the FCC RDOF.

I think the SpaceX request raises multiple policy questions. First, is satellite really providing broadband? Earlier this decade the FCC declared that Starlink was not providing broadband when the agency canceled the $885 million award Starlink had won in the RDOF reverse auction. At the beginning of this year, Ookla said that only 45% of Starlink customers were meeting the FCC’s definition of broadband at 100/20 Mbps. But Starlink’s speeds have been slowly improving, and will be boosted over the next five years as the company replaces the current V2 satellites with the new V3 satellites that provide 10 times more download capacity and 22 times more upload capacity.

As I have argued many times, the FCC’s 100/20 Mbps standard is no longer a reasonable definition of broadband. Recent data from OpenVault showed that 43% of U.S. households now subscribe to speeds faster than 500 Mbps download and 70% of homes subscribe to speeds of 200 Mbps or faster. It’s hard to look at these statistics and think that 100 Mbps is still an adequate definition of a good download speed. However, the real issue for satellite broadband is the upload speed. A large percentage of the homes cited by Ookla as having fast download also get far faster upload speeds than 20 Mbps. Fiber overbuilders are mostly providing symmetrical data speeds, meaning gigabit upload speeds. Cable companies across the country are upgrading the upload path and are delivering speeds of 50-100 Mbps at a minimum, and in some networks, gigabit upload speeds. The whole country learned during the pandemic that 20 Mbps upload is not adequate to support more than one user at a time – something the FCC has steadily ignored.

Another issue raised by the SpaceX request is whether Starlink provides a good substitute for voice service. Much of rural America lives in areas with little or no cellular service. The companies that receive high-cost subsidies all must pledge to offer voice service so that rural residents have access to 911. SpaceX argues that anybody with a satellite broadband connection can buy VoIP. That’s a true statement, but it raises two more policy questions of availability and affordability.

The companies receiving high-cost funding agree to service every home and business in their footprint. It’s pretty clear that Starlink can’t make that claim. While the company won’t disclose the number of homes it can serve in any given geography, there are examples, like last year’s Burning Man, where Starlink got overwhelmed by too many customers in a rural area.

I think the most important factor is affordability. Starlink’s price of $130 per month is a lot higher than other rural broadband options. Companies that receive high-cost support sell broadband for a lot less than $130, but more importantly, will sell voice-only to customers who don’t want broadband. It’s not reasonable that a rural household that can only afford voice and not broadband should have to spend $130 per month for satellite service.

In my mind, Starlink has to offer a different set of products if they want to declare that they can match the benefits that companies that receive high-cost funding bring to customers.

  • Starlink needs faster upload speeds, which it probably will eventually get as it phases in the V3 satellites.
  • Starlink would have to be able to serve everybody in a geographic area if it wants to see the subsidies end in a given area. I can envision a regulatory test similar to the one that cable companies have used to get regulators to declare a market to be competitive. High-cost subsidies should only stop in an area where every customer in the area could be served by a satellite instead.
  • Finally, Starlink would have to be a lot cheaper. If SpaceX wants to see the rural high-cost subsidies ended, it should offer lower broadband prices in those markets, including a really low-cost connection for voice only.

Satellite Shorts September 2026

AST SpaceMobile is making progress with offering satellite cellular service. The  company launched three massive satellites in August, bringing the fleet to 13 satellites. These are much larger than ASTs original satellites or ones being used by other carriers. They are essentially floating central offices. The FCC also gave the company the go-ahead in August to begin testing its satellite-to-smartphone service. AT&T and Verizon have both inked deals with the company to be their satellite partner for cellular.

More Countries Entering the Satellite Race. STC Group has partnered with Astranis to deploy a dedicated satellite to serve Saudi Arabia. The country wants to strengthen its communications capabilities independently of the other big satellite fleets. This has become a priority for Saudi Arabia, as a complement to its major investment in terrestrial fiber networks.

The Vietnamese aerospace company VinSpace has signed a contract with SpaceX to launch its first satellite into orbit. The country hopes to develop a space industry and deploy multiple satellites in the future.

Deorbit-as-a-Service. The U.S. Space Development Agency recently chose designs to consider from three companies that have business plans to launch satellites that will capture and deorbit dead satellites left in orbit. This is a nascent industry with challenges, because nobody has ever been able to snag a dead satellite. Some people in the industry describe most existing satellites as “ungrabbable”.

More Spectrum for Satellites. The FCC is scheduled to vote at the end of September on providing more than 1,000 MHz of spectrum in the 12 GHz and 42 GHz bands for high-speed satellite broadband. The spectrum could be used for home broadband, airplane and ship connectivity, and traffic-routing between satellites and earthstations. The FCC seems to be approving new spectrum for satellite uses at a much faster pace than it ever considered for other uses of spectrum.

Next-gen Starlink Satellites. In July, SpaceX launched twenty of the next-generation V3 satellites as a test of the satellites’ solar arrays and antennae. The satellites were allowed to deorbit soon after the test. The company currently has scheduled a launch on September 28 of the first operational V3 satellites. The launch has been delayed from the original goal of the first quarter of 2026. The satellites are much larger than the V2 satellites and require the Starship rocket to launch. Starlink says the new V3 provides 1 terabit of download and 160 gigabits of upload speeds, a huge improvement over the V2 satellites. The use of the Starship rocket will also increase launch capacity. In the past, the maximum number of V2 satellites per launch was 29, but with Starship, up to 60 V3 satellites can be launched at a time.

Europe Moves Forward with IRIS2. Europe is collectively launching hundreds of independent LEO and MEO satellites to create a European sovereign satellite network. All vendors for the project are European, with  Airbus, Aerospacelab, Thales Alenia Space, and OHB building the satellite constellation, and Eutelsat, SES, and Hispasat handling ground functions. IRIS2 is not intended as a competitor to Starlink for home broadband, but will be used to provide secure satellite connections for government, defense, and emergency purposes. This seems to be part of the larger movement for Europe to wean itself from American tech companies.

Connected Vehicles. Toyota and Iridium have done a demo, in conjunction with Deutsch Telekom IoT, to send voice messages to and from cars using the Iridium satellite network. This was the first test of the technology the company wants to use to provide connectivity for automotive, logistics, remote utilities, smart agriculture, emergency response and other IoT applications in areas that are out of the reach of cellular networks.

Danger of Space Collisions. Darren McKnight, a space debris expert at LeoLabs in California, said recently that we are already ripe for a major collision event in space. He says the biggest danger comes from the orbiting derelict rocket bodies that are still in orbit. These mostly sit at altitudes a little higher than LEO satellites, and a collision of rocket remains would rain debris down on all satellites below.

Starlink’s Other Network

The Benton Institute recently wrote an article that reminded me that Starlink is operating a second satellite network, separate from the one used to serve residential and business broadband customers. The company announced this network, which it dubs Starshield, at the end of 2022. Today, this network is now highlighted on the SpaceX website.

Starshield is touted as a military-grade network, which in layman’s terms means a separate network that doesn’t share any traffic with commercial customers. In the U.S., the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has launched several hundred Starshield satellites. This is the federal agency that has always operated military and spy satellites. The British Ministry of Defense is also said to be migrating to the Starshield platform. Other militaries around the world that use SpaceX, like the well-known use of Starlink in Ukraine to direct drone traffic, use the normal commercial Starlink satellite platform. Benton reports that Starshield and Starlink are not yet fully separate, and that a Starlink outage affects Starshield performance, but it’s likely that the company is working towards total independence.

SpaceX touts several benefits of Starshield. They can use whatever level of encryption of traffic required by a government customer. The satellites can also carry custom payloads, which likely means spy cameras or other devices. SpaceX also says it can integrate Starshield into other satellite networks.

Since nobody I know will even be using a government spy satellite, you might wonder why I am writing about Starshield. I’ve been wondering lately about Starlink’s claim that it is interested in providing backhaul to cell sites and bigger broadband connections to rural businesses. This has always puzzled me because, at the local network level, a satellite network is no different than any other network. If Starlink were to connect to a handful of cell sites in a given rural area, the bandwidth used for the cell sites would reduce the capacity available to residential customers. There is only so much bandwidth available in a localized satellite footprint.

We know this is true, because even today, there are stories of localized Starlink areas getting overwhelmed. There were reports during the Burning Man festival last year that nearby Starlink customers complained about loss of bandwidth when festival attendees brought along their Starlink Mini satellite dishes.

This makes me wonder if Starlink plans to have separate satellites just for backhaul. We know what that might look like. OneWeb, owned by Eutelsat, provides big bandwidth to European government locations and large businesses. The company currently has around 650 satellites in orbit to support bigger bandwidth users.

It wouldn’t be hard for Starlink to carve out satellites that specialize in large customers. The company currently has 11,100 satellites in orbit and should be close to its original approved constellation of 12,000 by the end of the year. The FCC has already given the company permission to grow the constellation to 15,000. And since SpaceX is never satisfied, it’s already asked the FCC for permission to double the constellation to almost 30,000 satellites. It doesn’t seem like it would be much of a challenge for Starlink to carve out 500 satellites from the large constellation to specialize in backhaul. This would not only open up new revenue opportunities but would also mean not diluting bandwidth delivered to its millions of residential customers. This is all pure speculation on my part, but its an idea that makes sense.

Broadband Shorts September 2026

The following are topics I found interesting, but which don’t warrant a full blog – although the first item might still be expanded.

NTIA Announces a New Round of BEAD Funding. In a surprise announcement, NTIA told state broadband offices it is going to allow them to hold a new round of infrastructure grant awards using some of the money from the leftover non-deployment funds. I remember at one point that the agency said that BEAD has effectively solved the rural broadband problem. But this announcement acknowledges that there are still locations that won’t have good broadband after BEAD has been fully implemented. Many of the locations that will likely be part of new awards are those that current grant awardees are walking away from. ISPs have been loudly complaining that the level of funding from the Benefit of the Bargain round of BEAD pushed the awards too low to make economic sense, particularly considering the current high rate of inflation related to telecom construction. States are still eagerly awaiting news of the disposition of the rest of the non-deployment funds, which at this point represent more than half of the funding for BEAD established by Congress.

AT&T Stops Reporting Copper Customers. In its latest quarterly report, AT&T stopped reporting on the number of copper customers still using DSL. The company is still reporting on legacy revenues, and the company said that the legacy segment revenues dropped by $570 million for the quarter compared to a year earlier. I think there are likely several reasons why the company made this change. First, they are in the midst of a major effort to walk away from copper technology across the country, and it’s likely that they don’t want to highlight the number of people who are being booted from DSL. I’ve seen estimates that they will have walked away from hundreds of copper wire centers by the end of this year. Also, by only reporting on gains in fiber and FWA customers, they are painting a more positive picture of growth, without acknowledging that a lot of the customers for those two technologies are changing technology due to discontinued copper. One annoyance of not reporting copper customers is that we no longer know how many total broadband customers the company is serving.

SpaceX Continues to Lobby Against the High-Cost Fund. On several occasions over the last few months, SpaceX has told the FCC that the $4.5 billion High-Cost program that is part of the Universal Service Fund has outlived its purpose and should be phased out. In two different filings at the FCC in August, the satellite company says that the High-Cost program should be discontinued and that the federal government is now subsidizing rural companies to compete with Starlink. That’s an interesting argument that says the federal government shouldn’t be using money to overbuild satellite. Rural telcos and cooperatives counter this argument, pointing out that Starlink has major capacity issues and can’t serve everybody in rural areas, while small ISPs are still willing to serve everybody. The FCC is reconsidering every aspect of the Universal Service Fund, and we should start hearing their intentions over the next quarter.

Texas Pause of BEAD Funding is Still in Effect. Under pressure from the legislature, the Texas Broadband Development Office put the BEAD grant process on hold. The newly seated Texas Comptroller Dan Huffines, who oversees the broadband office, ordered a comprehensive review and audit of the BEAD process. This effort was the result of several elected officials claiming that too many locations were awarded to satellite broadband, and that satellite companies are also getting significant payment upfront when they sign a BEAD contract. It’s possible that the freeze won’t be lifted until the legislature returns in January.

Broadband Adoption to Drop? Several national witnesses told a Pennsylvania House committee in an August hearing that the State’s next big challenge with broadband will be keeping households connected. They warned that the changes in 2027 coming from the One Big Beautiful Bill, like another big increase in healthcare costs, are going to make it a lot harder for homes to afford a broadband connection. One witness estimated that 233,000 Pennsylvanians in the lowest income quintile are in danger of not being able to afford broadband.

Stock Buybacks Instead of Expansion. Elliott Investment Management has been pressuring Deutsche Telekom to pursue stock buybacks rather than pursue the major merger with T-Mobile. Elliott is a large hedge fund that is known for activism and putting pressure on companies it has an ownership share in to stress short-term returns over long-term strategies. The company is known for pushing through cost-cutting and similar actions at companies like Crown Castle, Southwest Airlines, and Salesforce. Customers of the big companies would rather see companies roll profits back into infrastructure, technology, and customer service rather than using profits to buy back stock to benefit stockholders.

Starlink’s Interesting Approach to Cellular

There was an announcement on SpaceX’s first-ever earnings call that got the attention of the wireless industry. SpaceX said on the call that StarLink would enter the terrestrial cellular business by building a large number of cell sites provisioned with satellite backhaul. The company would leverage the power of its next-generation V3 satellites along with an increasingly larger fleet of satellites to provide the backhaul to feed cell sites.

It’s impossible to know if the company is serious about this. Elon Musk has always made exaggerated claims of what he will be doing in the future, and many of his claims never came to fruition. On the same call, Elon also said that the company plans to build factories on the moon.

There are a number of obstacles that stand in the way of SpaceX pulling this off. First is the basic question of why anybody would wade into the U.S. cellular market that has become increasingly competitive. Starlink could probably only gain significant numbers of customers by lowering prices, and that brings into question how profitable this might be.

Cellular networks in cities have already boosted cellular data speeds to 300 Mbps or faster, so Starlink wouldn’t have any technological advantage. Perhaps the real goal of the company is not the U.S. market, but populous countries like Nigeria, which have inferior cellular networks and a population that relies on cellular much more than on landline broadband.

At least for now, Starlink doesn’t have enough spectrum to pull this off. They are acquiring 65 MHz of spectrum from EchoStar, which is not nearly enough to compete for terrestrial cellular service. However, after the recent IPO, the company is awash with cash and could buy more spectrum. In the OBBB, Congress mandated the FCC to find 800 MHz of midrange spectrum for auction, so there will be plenty of spectrum coming into play over the next decade.

Another big question for me is the overall bandwidth needed to feed a cellular network. Most cell sites today are fed with 5-10 Gigabit backbone connections. The new Starlink constellations will have a greatly increased amount of capacity, but the backhaul to hundreds of thousands of cell sites would have to eat into the overall capacity of the satellite constellation. SpaceX must be counting on being able to grow far past the current 15,000 satellites currently approved by the FCC, and in fact, they have requested to grow the constellation to 100,000 satellites. The increasing usage to support cellular would also mean the need for a lot more earth stations to feed the network.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle would be getting started. The three big carriers all have roaming agreements with each other, but they might decide not to make it easy for a new competitor to enter the market. Very few people would buy a cellular service that wouldn’t work when they travel to other parts of the country. There was speculation after SpaceX made this announcement that the real purpose was to pressure the big cellular companies into giving the company an MVNO deal (resold cellular) so it could combine terrestrial resold cellular with satellite cellular. That’s an interesting dilemma for the big cellular companies, because if SpaceX had an MVNO, it could then selectively build cell sites over time.

SpaceX will likely never stop surprising the market with big ideas that are outside of the box. While this one is certainly doable, it wouldn’t be easy unless one of the big cellular companies blinks and lets SpaceX into the cellular business through the backdoor of an MVNO. But you can never say that SpaceX wouldn’t do this even without that easy onramp.

Satellite News August 2026

Starlink’s Capacity Growing. An analysis by MoffettNathanson estimated a huge increase in potential capacity based upon a migration to the new V3 rockets. The analysis said that the current capacity with the V2 satellites is between 8 and 16 customers per square mile, which limits the overall penetration to 2% – 3% of U.S. households, even when the current 15,000-satellite constellation is completed. The new V3 satellites should bring a lot of additional capacity, including the opportunity to sell broadband in denser population areas. MoffettNathanson estimates the overall capacity, assuming that two-thirds of satellites are upgraded to V3 by 2030, is between 24% – 35% of households, or the capacity to serve 35 million to 50 million potential subscribers. This increase is fully dependent on the company being able to regularly launch the new Starship rocket, which will only be able to carry 60 V3 satellites per launch. SpaceX successfully launched a Starship rocket on July 27 that carried twenty V3 rockets into space. This was a test, and the satellites were allowed to quickly deorbit.

Satellites Monitoring Wildfires. Satellites have been used to view the progress of wildfires, but to a limited degree of effectiveness. Existing satellites don’t notice fires until they have spread to several acres, and they typically only transmit a picture of a wildfire every twelve hours. The nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance has launched three satellites that are the beginning of a fifty-satellite constellation to detect and track wildfires in real time. The full constellation won’t be in place until 2030. The satellites are sensitive and will be able to see a fire as small as a 5-meter square. When fully deployed, the satellites will be able to give an update on a fire every twenty minutes.

A Big Drop in Satellite BEAD Locations. There is a significant drop in the number of eligible locations for the BEAD grant awards made to Starlink and Amazon Leo. The NTIA analysis compared the location of BEAD awards to the new FCC mapping fabric. The new mapping identified 50,578 BEAD locations that are no longer considered as mapping points, meaning they are probably buildings like barns and sheds. The analysis showed 262,053 locations that are now considered to be served by broadband of at least 100/20 Mbps. Finally, there are 61,512 locations that would be excluded if NTIA accepts broadband provided by unlicensed spectrum to qualify as served. Altogether, these reductions could reduce the amount awarded to Starlink and Amazon LEO by at least $354 million. Note that these same kinds of reductions are also being made to fiber and other technology awards as NTIA continues to nibble away at the total BEAD dollars being awarded.

 Texas Broadband Office Facing a BEAD Audit. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows called for an audit of the Texas Broadband Development Office (BDO). The audit is coming from industry allegations that BDO too heavily favored satellite broadband over fiber and other technologies. The BDO recently put the entire BEAD grant program in the state on hold, seemingly due to this issue. Even if the accusations are proven to be true, it seems highly unlikely that NTIA would allow for higher dollar awards if the State wanted to re-award canceled satellite locations to a more expensive technology.

SpaceX Rocket Hit the Moon. The discarded upper portion of a rocket launched in January 2025 by SpaceX crashed into the moon on August 5 at a speed of 5,400 per hour, creating a 60-foot-wide crater. The original launch was to deliver a moon lander.

Data Centers in Space. Early this year, SpaceX announced plans to put one million satellites in space to create a huge AI data center. Since then, additional applications for AI satellites have been filed with the FCC, including 88,000 satellites by StarCloud, 51,600 satellites by Blue Origin, and 20,000 by Cowboy Space. These are just the U.S. companies, and there are discussions around the world of creating orbiting data centers.

SpaceConnect Association Launched. In an inevitable move, the companies in the space business created a trade association that will propose and lobby worldwide for regulations that will “enable innovation, investment, and expanded connectivity through next-generation satellite networks”. The inaugural Board consists of Chair, Ashleigh de la Torre, Vice President of Public Policy at Amazon; Secretary, Michael Schwartz, Senior Vice President, Corporate and Business at Telesat; and Treasurer, Barbee Ponder IV, General Counsel and Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Globalstar

SpaceX Wants to Handle the World’s Broadband

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.

Satellite News June 2026

FCC Approves AST SpaceMobile Constellation. The FCC approved an application from AST SpaceMobile to launch an additional 248 low-orbit satellites to deliver mobile service using 700 MHz and 800 MHz spectrum. These is a premium spectrum for this use since it carries further and penetrates clouds and storms better than higher frequencies. A year ago, the FCC gave the company permission to test direct-to-device connectivity using Band 14 spectrum, which is 700 MHz spectrum that had previously been reserved for public safety and first responder emergency use.

AT&T is Looking for Multiple Partners for D2D. AT&T Chairman and CEO John Stankey said recently that the company is looking at additional partners other than its current partnership with AST SpaceMobile for offering direct-to-device cellular services. He noted that SpaceX should have better capacity after it purchased spectrum from EchoStar. He also noted that Amazon will be a player when it completes the acquisition of Globalstar in 2027. Stankey noted that he is not interested in helping the D2D satellite companies disrupt the terrestrial satellite business, and that he believes that D2D is an alternate service that makes the most sense where cell networks don’t reach.

UK Launches D2D Service. The UK became the first country in Europe where a cellular company is offering D2D service for smartphones that is integrated into normal cellular service without the need for a special phone or a separate app. Virgin Media O2 uses the Starlink constellation and licensed 1800 MHz spectrum to offer an add-on service. Virgin customers can add satellite cellular service for £3 per month or can get the service for free with premium cellular packages. The initial service offers messaging and data, and works automatically in areas where Virgin doesn’t have good cell coverage.

This action in the UK is prompting the European Union to accelerate its effort to finalize spectrum for D2D service. The EU’s current spectrum plans include using 2 GHz spectrum, which is prized by LEO satellite companies, but Starlink and Amazon Leo are worried about current EU plans to allocate most of this spectrum to European satellite companies.

SpaceX IPO. In preparation for the SpaceX IPO on Nasdaq, the company announced that it had $13 billion in losses since the beginning of 2023. In 2025, the company had almost $18.7 billion in revenue but had an overall loss of $4.9 billion. The recent losses were driven by xAI, the company’s artificial intelligence venture that was founded in 2023.

The SpaceX IPO (SPCX) sold 556 million shares at a price of $135 on June 12. On the day when trading opened, the price started at $150 per share and closed at $160.95 at the end of the first trading session. The stock climbed to as much as $216 per share before ending around $190 per share yesterday.

Blue Origin Disaster. Amazon’s space ventures suffered a setback when the heavy-duty New Glenn rocket exploded on the launch pad in late May at the Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This will likely slow the launch of Amazon Leo, as this rocket was scheduled to carry 48 satellites into space. This also probably delays the company’s planned moon mission. The FCC had recently granted Amazon a requested delay in meeting the dates for activating the broadband satellite constellation.

100 Million Starlink Subscribers? New Street Research predicted that Starlink could reach 100 million subscribers by 2034. The prediction is based on the increasing number of satellites in the Starlink constellation and the technical improvements that will be introduced with the next generation of V3 satellites. For Starlink to reach that many subscribers will likely require the company to compete in urban or suburban areas with lower prices.

Satellite Update April 2026

There is so much news and activity in the satellite sector that I find myself gathering a pile of news items each month. Here are some of the highlights from April.

Amazon Entering Direct-to-Device Market. Amazon announced it has signed an agreement to buy Globalstar for $10.8 billion. Globalstar is one of the early leaders in developing technology for providing direct-to-device services to smartphones and other devices. Globalstar currently has about two dozen satellites in orbit.

Jeff Bezos Enters the Space Data Center Race. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin has applied to the FCC to launch a data center in space. The application asks for approval to launch 51,600 satellites that would constitute a huge AI data center. The company argues that a data center in space will complement terrestrial data centers and will give the U.S. the edge in machine learning, autonomous systems, and predictive analytics. The satellites would be placed between 300 and 1,100 miles above Earth, with most of them higher than broadband satellites. This announcement follows a proposal from SpaceX and Elon Musk to put a million data center satellites in space.

Growing Feud Between SpaceX and Amazon Leo. We’re seeing a budding regulatory rivalry between the two American broadband satellite companies. It seems that both SpaceX and Amazon Leo file comments about anything filed by its rival at the FCC. Earlier this month, SpaceX filed comments at the FCC complaining that Amazon Leo is violating the FCC’s orbital space debris mitigation plans. SpaceX claims that Amazon Leo placed several satellites 90 kilometers higher than authorized by the FCC. In a similar complaint, Amazon LEO accused SpaceX of placing satellites too low into its authorized space. Both companies have made negative comments on the other’s plans to create a satellite-based AI data center in space.

Will Starlink Honor BEAD? A group of House Democrats sent a letter to the NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth that raises concerns that SpaceX might not meet its BEAD obligations. The letter was prompted by letters sent by SpaceX to various state broadband offices that said the company doesn’t want to comply with various BEAD reporting requirements. The legislators fear that Starlink will walk away from BEAD, leaving locations with no broadband alternative (although these customers can buy satellite broadband regardless of the BEAD grants).

Failed Satellite Launch. A Blue Origin rocket failed to place a satellite for AST Space Mobile into the proper orbit, and the satellite had to be de-orbited. It was expected that insurance would be used to recover the cost of the lost satellite.

Amazon Leo to Launch Service in Mid-2026? The company said earlier this month that it is still planning to begin offering broadband service by mid-2026. That seems like an extraordinary claim since the company still had around 240 satellites in orbit as of the date of this blog. By comparison, Starlink had almost 900 satellites in service when it began beta tests with customers. At the time, the beta test customers described noticeable gaps in coverage between satellites. What’s most interesting about the announcement is that Amazon has asked the FCC for a two-year delay in meeting the full deployment obligation for its first constellation of over 3,200 satellites.

Environmental Protesters. Residents who live close to SpaceX’s Starbase launch site recently protested during a meeting centered on SpaceX’s planned IPO. The residents of the area complained about the repeated vibrations and pollution caused by regular rocket launches, along with concern about possible fires set in the arid South Texas landscape.

Denied Spectrum Sharing. The FCC recently denied requests from multiple satellite companies that wanted to share in spectrum bands already being used by other entities. As an example of the rejection, SpaceX had asked to share in the 1.5 GHz, 1.6/2.4 GHz, and 2 GHz bands. Other satellite companies had asked to share other spectrum bands. The FCC rejection said these requests were premature and that the agency needs to revise the way it allocates spectrum to accommodate direct-to-device service.

Starlink Flexing Its Market Power

In a short period of time, Starlink has taken three actions that demonstrates the company’s growing market power. The companies market power will be strengthened with the impending merger between SpaceX and Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI. Analysts have estimated the combined companies could garner a market value over $1 trillion.

The first move from Starlink came on January 15 when the company updated its user Privacy Policy. The revised terms say that, unless a customer opts out, Starlink can use user data “to train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models”, and that user data could be shared with third-party collaborators without providing more details to customers.

This should be disturbing to customers, because this doesn’t just mean sharing details of emails. In today’s broadband world, it could mean sharing video images, voice prints, and the giant amount of private information that an ISP can learn about its customers if it is looking.

Starlink’s second big move came when it sent a document to State Broadband Offices where Starlink is a tentative winner of BEAD grants. Starlink asked that LEO providers be excused from many of the BEAD obligations that will apply to other grant winners. The Starlink communication included a veiled threat that the company could pull out of BEAD if SBOs don’t meet its suggested terms.

Among the suggested changes, Starlink payments would not be linked to adding subscribers, and it would get 50% of BEAD funding up front and the rest over a specified schedule. Starlink would not have to provide financial reporting or provide any documentation about how it spends the grant funding. Starlink wants to be excused from speed test requirements since it can’t guarantee that subscribers have installed the satellite receiver properly. Starlink also wants to be excused from insurance and labor requirements.

On January 30, SpaceX asked the FCC for the ability to launch 1 million new satellites to create a giant orbital data center for AI. These satellites would be placed between 310 and 1,240 miles above Earth, in narrow 30-mile bands that would leave room to deconflict with other companies with similar goals. SpaceX says the giant satellite constellation is needed as the first step for humanity to become a Kardashev II-level civilization that fully harnesses the Sun’s power, while also providing enough AI capacity to serve billions of people. FYI, a Kardashev II-level civilization is one that fully harnesses the total energy output from its parent star. SpaceX says putting data centers in space is the most efficient way to meet the growing energy demands of AI data centers.

The constellation would use laser communications between satellites and would communicate back to Earth using Starlink’s current broadband constellation.  SpaceX says it could launch the data center satellites at a rapid pace using its new Starship launch vehicle.

Announcing these three things within a month shows a company that is feeling emboldened enough by market power to act as it wishes. If a terrestrial ISP openly said it will use customer data to train AI, it would risk being shunned in the market, but Starlink operates in many places where there are no other competitive options. I wonder how safe Starlink customers will feel about their data even if they opt out of sharing it with Starlink.

It’s going to be interesting to see how State Broadband Offices react to the Starlink demand for easier BEAD terms. Many of the SBOs didn’t want to make big awards to LEO satellite providers, and were coerced by  NTIA to do so with the Benefit of the Bargain rules. It’s not unimaginable that some States will outright reject Starlink’s request, which could lead to some interesting fights between States and NTIA.

The request to launch 1 million satellites could be a stunt to boost interest in the upcoming IPO and merger. Or it could be real. This FCC clearly favors satellite technology, but even for them, a request to launch 1 million satellites has to be an extreme request.