How China Is Challenging Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellite Service

In early December, China launched its third batch of low Earth orbit, or LEO, internet satellites for a constellation called Qianfan, or "Thousand Sails" as it's also known. The project aims to rival SpaceX's Starlink and will be made up of 15,000 satellites. You're seeing just the very beginnings of China's bid to do something that would be competitive with Starlink.

Another project, Guo Wang, has plans to put in place a 13,000 satellites. A third Chinese project aimed at providing global satellite internet from space is Honghu-3, which would be made up of 10,000 satellites. It has yet to launch any of them into space.

There has been a marked increase in the amount of investment into satellite systems in China, really starting from beginning of 2021. This investment comes at the heels of Starlink's massive success, and the opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in Starlink's service. Not the whole world has yet connected by Starlink.

There's still a couple of blind spots, so to speak, partly because countries do not want to participate and give Starlink to its inhabitants, especially if we're thinking about, you know, the free and independent internet that Starlink gives access to. We can definitely see how actors like Russia or China might not want that. So there's definitely still space for another actor or another provider to come in specifically with those needs in mind.

Although China leads the world with the highest number of internet users, the country also has the second-highest unconnected population in the world, after India. In terms of China's broader plan for rivaling the U. S.

, I would say as a science and technology power, they view space as an emerging technological frontier, one where the projection of power will be incredibly important. And you can see the money that they're already investing in other aspects of their space program. So, for example, recently, they landed a probe for the first time on the far side of the moon and brought back soil samples.

They have a goal to land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and to even potentially establish a lunar base in the south pole of the moon by 2035. So clearly, they take seriously the geopolitical implications of being able to rival the U. S.

when it comes to space. Catching up to Starlink will be a tall order for China, meant to offer high-speed internet to customers in remote and underserved areas. Starlink already has nearly 7,000 operational satellites in orbit and serves around 5 million customers in over 100 countries, according to SpaceX.

SpaceX hopes to eventually expand its megaconstellation to as many as 42,000 satellites. China is aiming for a similar scale between Gou Wang, Qianfan and Honghu- 3, China hopes to eventually have around 38,000 satellites zooming around the planet. Development of these projects is closely linked with the Chinese government, though China has been increasingly opening its space projects to the private sector.

Guo Wang, which is a fully state backed, 100% state owned enterprise constellation, the operating company for Guo Wang, China Satellite Networks Limited, that was established about three and a half years ago. Again, fully state owned company under the direct control of the State Council. Thousand Sails, also called Qianfan, which is Thousand Sails in Chinese.

It's a largely government controlled enterprise. I mean, the Shanghai government is the largest shareholder through an investment corporation. And then there's the Chinese Academy of Sciences that has a lot of presence in Shanghai in the context of building satellites.

And so they're a big shareholder as well. And then the last second tier constellation, let's say this Honghu constellation being developed by Hongqing Technology, is a sort of sister company of LandSpace, which is a reasonably well established Chinese launch company. This project also comes as a side effect, let's say, of this opening up of the constellation space to more private involvements, which again started to occur about a year ago.

Like most companies in China, it's always a little bit opaque, exactly what the financing looks like. But what we do know from these companies is that they're state backed. And so they likely have significant amounts of money coming from the Chinese government to support their efforts.

In 2023, China ranked second in terms of government investment in space, with the government pouring over $14 billion into the nation's space activities. The only country that spent more last year was the U. S.

, which allocated over $73 billion to space activities. But while funding may not be a challenge for building out China's internet constellations, getting these satellites into space may be. China is trying to make up the ground and put in place thousands of satellites.

It requires reusable rockets that can actually launch those in a cost efficient way. Right now, my understanding is that China is lagging considerably when it comes to mastering reusable rocket technology, something that SpaceX has been able to do very successfully. Will China have enough rockets to let Guo Wang launch 10,000 satellites by 2030?

Definitely not. But will they have enough for them to launch a thousand? I would say so.

There is still a bottleneck of launch in China, but it seems the constellation operators have themselves recognized this, and you have kind of supply side tendencies of a bunch of commercial launch companies that may, in a year or two, start to ramp up their launch cadence. Increasing its launch capacity is crucial for China, as the country faces a time crunch for getting its satellites into orbit. Any satellite constellation has to be approved by the ITU.

That's the International Telecommunications Union. Guo Wang has received the licenses that they need by the ITU. But also these licenses do come with deadlines.

So China will need to launch the first satellites using all of the frequencies they plan to employ by 2027, and launch 10% of the total number of satellites by September 2029. When it comes to low Earth orbit satellite internet. China is playing catch up.

Aside from Starlink, European-based Eutelsat OneWeb has also launched over 630 low Earth orbit internet satellites. Amazon too, has plans for a large LEO constellation called Project Kuiper. It will be made up of over 3,000 satellites, though the company has only launched two prototype satellites so far.

So the question becomes, with so much competition, why would China even bother pouring money and effort into such mega-constellations? Starlink has really shown that it is able to bring internet access to individuals and citizens in remote corners, and provide an ability for citizens to access the internet in whatever websites, whatever apps they would like. And I think we know with the Great Firewall that for China, a big push has been to censor what citizens can access.

And so for them they say, well, this presents a real threat. If Starlink can provide uncensored content either to our citizens or to individuals of countries that are allied with us. That is something that could really pierce through our censorship regime.

And so we need to come up with an alternative. In certain countries, China could see this as almost like a differentiator. It's like, "well, yes, we're not as quick to market, but hey, we will censor the heck out of your internet if you'd like us to, and we'll do it with a smile on our faces.

" Experts say that while Chinese constellations will likely not be the choice internet provider for places like the U. S. , Western Europe, Canada and other U.

S. allies, plenty of other regions could be open to a Chinese internet provider. There's a couple of geographic areas in particular that might be attractive for a Starlink like competitor, specifically one made by China, including China itself, Russia, for example.

But also Afghanistan and Syria are not yet covered by Starlink. And there's also large parts of Africa that aren't yet covered. We've seen that 70% of 4G infrastructures in the continent of Africa are already built by Huawei.

So having a space based perspective to that might further build inroads roads there. They view the provision of technological infrastructure as an important means of preserving and spreading their influence. It's a way to kind of get a lock in effect, where countries that are swing states or countries that are kind of near allies end up buying Chinese technology, relying on Chinese goods in order to build that out.

And then as you upgrade to new networks to 6G and so forth, you're already locked into a Chinese ecosystem. Over time, that not only brings in a significant amount of revenue to Chinese firms and to the Chinese state, but it also allows for a greater degree of political influence. China has already signed at least 46 agreements with 19 countries and regions to promote global space-cooperation, but Chinese/U.

S. partnerships are more complicated. Under the Wolf Amendment, which was enacted in 2011, Congress prohibits NASA from using federal funds to engage bilaterally with China on space co-operation due to national security concerns.

This includes not allowing China to be part of the International Space Station. But aside from being a tool for geopolitical influence, having a proprietary satellite internet constellation is increasingly becoming a national security necessity, especially when ground internet infrastructure is crippled during war. When it comes to the difference that Starlink technology has played in the Ukraine battlefield, one of the big leaps we've seen has been the emergence of drone warfare and the connected battlefield, in the sense that sensors are everywhere, and being able to see with transparency what your enemy is doing, and then to coordinate different weapons to respond back.

All of that is dependent upon internet connectivity. Having satellite based weaponry is something that's viewed as a crucial military advantage. And so I think China sees all that and says investing in this is absolutely critical for our national security goals.

While the utility of low Earth orbit satellite systems is undeniable in the realm of national security and geopolitical influence, they could also play a significant role in the development of future technologies. Take the number of businesses that were spurred by satellites, providing global positioning, navigation and timing services for example. In 2020, China launched the final satellite for its Beidou satellite system, which is a direct rival to the U.

S. Global Navigation Satellite system known as GPS. When the U.

S. was first deploying the GPS system, no one could have imagined Uber or some other ride hailing or food delivery or all the various services that today we just take for granted that this is all enabled by satellite navigation. And with this low Earth orbit communication satellites, you could have things like very low latency communication for high frequency trading, for example, you want to send a signal from Singapore to London and over the Earth it takes 12 milliseconds.

And if you go through space, it could take eight milliseconds. Although a few milliseconds may seem minuscule in the world of high-frequency trading, even one millisecond can impact profitability. Autonomous vehicles and augmented and virtual reality are other technologies that would benefit from low latency communication.

From a Chinese perspective. They can afford the risk of launching this and having it not really work out that well from a commercial perspective. But if they don't launch it, then if, say, some incredible next generation autonomous driving or something like that are enabled by having this really low latency communication, it puts them at a disadvantage.

But as the number of low Earth satellites in orbit continues to increase, all operators will face some tough challenges, including a very crowded orbital field and proliferation of space debris. The worst-case scenario, known as the Kessler syndrome, posits that when two objects collide in space, they generate a domino effect of more and more debris to the point that certain orbits will become unusable. Unlike geostationary satellites, which circle Earth above the equator and appear to be fixed above a specific point on Earth, the orbits of low Earth satellites can be much more diverse.

For this reason, the exact physical space that Leo satellites occupy is not determined by a regulating body like it is for geostationary satellites. The big concern that we have effectively, is that we don't really have anything that governs low Earth orbit, so we've got the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU, and that gives us our frequency slots for lower Earth orbit. But it doesn't dictate the actual physical space that you can inhabit in lower Earth orbit.

At the moment, really, there's no real, you know, rules of the road for lower Earth orbit. Without these "rules of the road", every company is responsible for safeguarding their own satellites from collisions and getting out of the way should any such threat appear. If you're operating a constellation, you will have your computers calculating where you're going and any potential collisions, what we call conjunction analysis.

And it might be that your algorithm tells you in 12 hours we are going to potentially collide with another constellation. At the moment, there is no real mechanism to sort of record this and sort of figure out who needs to move, because obviously none of the operators want to move because it costs them fuel. And ultimately the amount of fuel is what dictates your satellite's life.

Scientists have also brought up concerns about how the disposal of these low Earth orbit satellites, many of which are designed to last about five years on average, will affect the Earth. Another concern about the sort of overcrowding of low Earth orbit, or also what happens at the end of a satellite's life, which is typically in low Earth orbit. They were simply sort of be dragged back down towards the atmosphere and they would simply burn up.

But because a lot of satellites these days are built out of aluminum, we don't really know what it does to the atmosphere. If it actually harms it, perhaps thins it. Finally, scientists are concerned about satellites interfering with space observation.

Still, with as many as 58,000 satellites expected to be launched by 2030, according to one government estimate, the growth of LEO constellations is unlikely to slow down, and some experts say the United States needs to brace for more competition. When it comes to the space race with China. I think China will catch up.

I don't think that means that China will exceed or go beyond the United States. I think we will continue to innovate here, but I don't think we can continue to rely upon the fact that China remains so far behind in this area. I think they have the resources.

I think they have the motivation to catch up to the United States, and most likely we'll see them do that over the next decade. It's something the U. S.

government is already hedging against. China is putting up their own version of Starlink and Kuiper right now. And think about the geopolitical implications of China being able to provide high-speed internet all across the world, pairing it with Belt and Road, their own content moderation filters.

So we should want America's innovators, Kuiper, Starlink, to have all the support they need to succeed, and that's what I'm going to try to do with the FCC.