SpaceX allegedly 'abused' its position to limit Starlink competition

© SpaceX

SpaceX, the space company of ;Elon Musk, is one of the very few companies in this industry that manages to offer positive accounting results. If all of this income is immediately reinvested in the firm, the latter has found its goose to the golden eggs: Starlink.

The satellite-connected internet subscription service brings in millions of dollars to the company every month. SpaceX depends on this money to continue to grow. In addition to launching satellites into low orbit to provide better connectivity, and even a direct satellite phone plan, these funds help finance the very expensive lunar and then Martian missions.

© SpaceX

Because the ambition of SpaceX, and its leader Elon Musk, is not specifically to make money with communications services. The multi-billionaire's dream is much more pragmatic. He wants to go to Mars. He repeats it regularly, SpaceX was built to make the human race an interplanetary species.< /p>

To run this huge machine, you need money. And Starlink is the perfect solution to this problem. The service brings in hundreds of wads of cash, facilitating SpaceX's development. So when companies like Kuiper and OneWeb tried to step on the company's toes, SpaceX called in its best lawyers to negotiate.

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SpaceX is abusing its position

According to the two plaintiffs, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, SpaceX allegedly forced Kuiper Constellations, Jeff Bezos' company, and OneWeb to open up and share their portion of the “spectrum”. In concrete terms, regulators (notably the FAA and the FCC in the United States) divide radio waves between the different companies that want to get involved in space communication.

Each company has certain frequencies and this prevents everyone from using the same ones, which could create interference. But in recent days, SpaceX has asked its two competitors, who have not yet launched satellites into orbit (or very few), to kindly share these frequencies with Starlink.

© ANIRUDH/Forest Katsch

According to the Wall Street Journal article, such a practice is a clear abuse of dominant position by SpaceX (article available in source). The company used its ability to send payloads into orbit to negotiate with its opponents. Kuiper and OneWeb do not currently have any rockets to send their satellites into low orbit. They must therefore go through SpaceX, which does not intend to let them settle in without taking its share in the process.

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