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SpaceX Seeks Approval For Up To 1M Earth Stations for Its Satellite Service (geekwire.com)
SpaceX just filed a new earth-station license application with America's Federal Communications Commisions, seeking blanket approval "for up to a million earth stations" for customers of their Starlink satellite internet service, reports GeekWire:
Those satellites have already received clearance from the FCC, and SpaceX plans to launch the first elements of the initial 4,425-satellite constellation this year, using Falcon 9 rockets.... Eventually, SpaceX wants to build up the network to take in as many as 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit...
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
To add some math about the amount of available space - the Earth has a surface area of 510 million square kilometers. Give each satellite a comfortable 25x25km block (625km^2) area in its orbit, and each plane can hold over 800,000 satellites. Add in that in the LEO orbits these satellites are in will bring any debris or broken satellites down in 10 years or so, and things will be fine.
Nothing stopping other companies from setting up their own satellite networks, well unless SpaceX starts refusing to launch satellites for other networks, and other launch providers can't match the SpaceX price. Anyways though, there will still be competition from other land based internet services; for that matter, Starlink could actually end up improving those ground based networks - many cell phone providers will be very interested in using Starlink to provide the backhaul on their 5G cell phone towers, for example.