Musk, Bezos, Both Cry To Trump’s FCC In Bid To Dominate Satellite Broadband

from the dominating-the-skies dept

Elon Musk is desperate to dominate the Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband market. So is Jeff Bezos. And now the two billionaires are engaged in proxy fights at Trump’s FCC over who’ll get the honor.

Amazon’s LEO offering, Project Leo, is significantly behind Musk’s Starlink, and has been rushing to build out its LEO satellite constellation. To slow down their pace, Musk’s Starlink has started complaining to the FCC, insisting that Amazon violated orbital debris requirements by launching satellites into orbital altitudes that are too high, increasing the risks to other satellites and spacecraft.

Amazon has responded by basically saying Musk’s Starlink is lying to slow the arrival of a competitor to market:

“SpaceX only objected to the launch parameters after moving its Starlink satellites into nearby altitudes, Amazon said. Changing the altitude of a recent Leo launch would have delayed it by months, according to Amazon. Both Amazon and SpaceX have accused each other of using Federal Communications Commission proceedings to delay the other’s satellite launches at various times over the years.”

Hoping to avoid harming “free market innovation,” it took years for the FCC to finally recently implement some bare bones “space junk” LEO collision guidance, though enforcement has been sporadic, and I’m doubtful two billionaire Trump donors will ever see much in the way of accountability.

Both billionaires are hoping to leverage their ongoing support of Trump to their own benefit. Both have already had significant success on that front; Musk and Bezos convinced the Trump administration to redirect billions in infrastructure bill subsidies (earmarked for reliable, faster fiber) over to their LEO satellite broadband businesses for service they already planned to deploy.

I’m not inclined to believe either billionaire or their companies. Nor am I inclined to believe that FCC boss Brendan Carr has the integrity or competence to manage this dispute or to protect the public longer term. Starlink has recently seen several satellites blow up in orbit and has been very murky about the reasons for it. Tens of thousands more LEO satellites are slated for launch in the next few years.

The grand irony is that the mad dash toward LEO satellite broadband doesn’t really deliver on the promise of significantly better broadband. LEO satellite connectivity is great for folks who have no other option, but the technology comes with a long list of caveats.

The resulting networks will be too congested to truly scale or provide real competition for local telecom monopolies. The resulting services are also routinely too expensive for the folks who currently can’t afford access. Then there’s the problem of LEO satellite launches harming astronomy research and the ozone layer, issues I suspect won’t be a priority for Bezos, Musk, or Carr.

I’d expect to see much more orbital (and terrestrial consumer) chaos in the years to come, given absolutely none of these folks tend to think too deeply about the public interest.

Filed Under: brendan carr, elon musk, fcc, jeff bezos, leo, leo satellites

Companies: amazon, project leo, spacex, starlink