I had a coworker who grew up in Africa and was involved with ISPs there. He had some pretty important jobs in a couple countries.
His explanation why he came to the US to do what were lower level jobs was that in the places he worked it was all who you knew and if your given buddy who got you that job fell out of the good graces of those in power ... you were screwed forever.
He had enough of that, good guy, very capable, worked his way up again in the US.
Starlink is significantly more resistant to graft than terrestrial service.
For the most part SpaceX is playing nice with regulators, but if Zimbabwe's government tried to extort Starlink users, SpaceX could just open up service and Zimbabwe could do absolutely nothing to stop them.
It's a little more complicated than that. There are two international treaties at play here (that the US has ratified)... the Outer Space Treaty requires that countries regulate the actions in outer space of their citizens and companies, in compliance with the outer space treaty and other international treaties (cf. Article VI and Article III). The Convention of the International Telecommunications Union of 1997 (the last version the us has ratified) specifies that the US shall abide by the rules of the ITU, including in allocation of satellite spectrum (Article 6). The ITU allows countries to limit the use of spectrum in certain bands (including those used by starlink) within their borders.
So Zimbabwe actually can ban starlink. And if it ignores Zimbabwe... well Zimbabwe will complain to the ITU, and the ITU to the US. The US would be under obligation to regulate Starlink... with the minor exception of its not clear that the US has any agency that can, at least under current law.
Anyway, it would be a total mess if Elon did that (except in a country like Russia where the US wants him to do that)... and I have no idea what would happen.
No one would allow a business perceived to be US Owned to play games like that in Africa right now anyway. With the Chinese sitting right there ready to swoop in and help the affected nations problem solve.
We’re not as dumb in the US as the rest of the world seems to think.
The rest of the world only thinks the US is dumb because they rely upon us to make the kind of decisions that they don't want to have to make. It's easy to criticize without real skin in the game.
I mean Trump is an idiot... but umm... Berlusconi?
It is the case in Iran, India, China, South Africa, Russia, North Korea, Ghana, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Occupied Ukraine, Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, Myanmar, ... a hell of a lot more countries than people seem to realize in this thread.
Almost explains why Musk bought the US government.
I believe that easily totals up to that for more than half of the human population connecting to Starlink is illegal.
Problem in Africa is that the Chinese will sail in with their alternatives at the first sign of trouble. Right now, we can’t have games like that in Africa. We’re in an almost daily grind trying to counter Chinese influence as it is. The last thing we need is Elon sailing in torpedoing our efforts.
We need to be cognizant of the fact that we’re no longer the only game in town, and act accordingly when using power. Soft or hard.
Well if the point is that Zimbabwe starts playing games and corruption starlink can ignore them. Sure the Chinese could play Zimbabwe’s game, but then they’d likely be more expensive and worse quality by blocking things the government doesn’t like. If people can still access starlink why would they use the state sanctioned but crappy provider?
Because China isn't exactly famed for its corporations' market clearing prices being expensive, and most people would rather buy legal satcomms equipment (and VPN in, if they really need to access something the Zimbabwean government doesn't want them to see or the Chinese government cares about Africans seeing) than jump through hoops to get the equipment and subscription payments to the American service, bandwidth which Starlink has minimal motivation to give away cheaply anyway.
The Chinese don’t have sth similar right now, right? Also at this point tbh would prefer Chinese whatever over us/starlink. At least it will be more rational.
They've already started launching their own satellite internet constellation. It will likely be less capable once completed and take longer to complete, but they are aiming to have that capability.
Also, only using allocated spectrum. Starlink Direct-to-Cell requires partnership with mobile providers that hold that spectrum, like T-Mobile. Terrestrial network using those frequencies would probably swamp the signal from space. Legally, Starlink can't use those frequencies without permission from each country.
There's no way to put the smartphone genie back in the bottle and there's no way to visually differentiate satelote capable phones. It's going to be easy to smuggle them across borders.
India sees the ability for anyone to anonymously post things on the Internet as all kinds of stupid, and heavily regulates the access to the Internet so any in-country activity can be tracked back to an individual.
They could issue an order to local payment processors to block all payments to Starlink...like Brazil did. In this particular hypothetical, Zimbabwe would have more solid legal grounds for blocking payment than the Brazilian judge (TLDR: X didn't adhere to all of Brazil's regulations and refused to pay the resulting fines so a judge deemed Starlink a related company and blocked payments to Starlink until X complied.)
> (TLDR: X didn't adhere to all of Brazil's regulations and refused to pay the resulting fines so a judge deemed Starlink a related company and blocked payments to Starlink until X complied.)
IIRC, the judge didn't block payments to Starlink; instead, the judge told the banks to take the value of the fines from the Starlink bank accounts.
This happens all the time for many many businesses. Do you think all software vendors, small businesses that ship products have an in-country business entity? They just take online payments.
you better read history on colonization in Africa. letting foreign companies to have a grip on resources (data and propaganda channels in modern days) wont end well for host nations.
If you guys are so pro business why blocking TikTok and other Chinese firms?
Even now there's countries with a tax on unlimited internet on cell phones.