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A Fight for “Space”: Elon Musk vs. China Over Satellite Internet Race

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By Vinu Chakravarthy

February 2, 2022
3:16 am
Los Angeles, CA

A new kind of fight is brewing between China and American entrepreneur Elon Musk. A battle to capture the “space,” literally. The winner will get to decide the future of the internet. Musk’s company Starlink, owned by his firm SpaceX, has a group of 1,700 satellites in the Low Earth Orbit. The firm provides internet in 24 nations that have allowed their service to operate using these satellites. Starlink is planning to add 30,000 more satellites to its arsenal in the future. The satellite internet market is expected to be worth $400 billion by 2040. Already Starlink has roughly added more than 1.5 lakh users globally. In a tweet, Elon Musk revealed that his company would soon double the internet speed to 300 Mb/s and reduce the latency to

A new kind of fight is brewing between China and American entrepreneur Elon Musk. A battle to capture the “space,” literally. The winner will get to decide the future of the internet.

Falcon 9 rocket launching 105 satellites into low earth orbit. (Phtoto:@SpaceX)

Musk’s company Starlink, owned by his firm SpaceX, has a group of 1,700 satellites in the Low Earth Orbit. The firm provides internet in 24 nations that have allowed their service to operate using these satellites. Starlink is planning to add 30,000 more satellites to its arsenal in the future.

The satellite internet market is expected to be worth $400 billion by 2040. Already Starlink has roughly added more than 1.5 lakh users globally. In a tweet, Elon Musk revealed that his company would soon double the internet speed to 300 Mb/s and reduce the latency to 20ms.

Satellite-based internet is not new. For many years now, customers have been using satellite-based internet, though they are stationed in far away orbits, more than 20,000 miles away. Because of the distance, the download speeds were terribly slow. And here is where Starlink proved to be a game-changer by stationing their satellites in the low earth orbit, just 100 to 1,000 miles away from earth, leading to better speeds.

Chinese challenge

However, the low earth orbit can hold only a specific number of satellites. So already, countries and competitors are complaining that Starlink is occupying too many satellite slots. Thus there is a race to launch as many satellites as possible and as early as possible. The latest entrant to this race is China.

Many State-sponsored start-ups in the Asian country are building thousands of microsatellites to challenge Musk’s internet company. Apart from commercial equations, the Chinese also feel that entering the satellite internet market is also helpful for their data security.

Also, allowing Musk to dominate the market would mean that his company will set the rules and others should follow. China wants to negate Starlink’s first-mover advantage by becoming a competitor soon.

Playing catch-up

Having a satellite-based internet has several advantages. It helps in automation in industries, self-driving of cars and other vehicles, and in general, is the next big step for any economy.

However, China has several hurdles in carrying out this process. First, it takes years to ramp up capabilities to build and launch thousands of satellites, which Starlink has already done. Secondly, it costs a fortune to carry out the process. Something that China has been struggling with recently.

The economy is slowing in China due to the impact of Covid-19, and spending millions now to launch satellites may prove futile. However, the Chinese government has decided that investing in infrastructure is the way to pull themselves out of the crisis. And expanding into the 5G market is also seen as a move to create more jobs and help arrest the slide in the economy.

Soon, we will see a flurry of rockets being launched into space by both Starlink and China. While it will be a lengthy battle, China is ready for the long haul, and so is Starlink.