Written by Caleb Henry, 04FEB2025
First there was the September 2024 Brazil spat over unpaid fines by Elon Musk’s social media company, X, leading a court to freeze Starlink there. Then there was Italy’s battle over a potential Starlink contract in January that rattled the E.U. and led influential parliamentarian Christophe Grudler to call mere talks on the subject a “strategic mistake” by Italy. The latest was Canada’s threat to dissolve a $100 million Starlink deal to provide connectivity in Ontario in retaliation to President Trump’s 25% tariff on Canadian goods (averted only by an eleventh-hour pause on tariffs).
None of this business turmoil had anything to do with the quality, affordability or availability of Starlink. Rather, each was tied, partly or wholly, to Musk.
Starlink’s international business has only grown in importance over the past five years. Roughly two thirds of its consumer subscribers come from outside the U.S., and its fastest consumer adoption is in overseas markets. Starlink is now available in more than 100 countries and territories, but in a world where the operator is punished for the actions of its increasingly controversial founder, international growth is becoming more difficult. What’s more, the geopolitical links between Musk, Trump, Starlink and other countries have implications for other LEO networks. Quilty’s take is as follows:
Telesat Lightspeed: Positive
After struggling for years to secure funding, Lightspeed, backed by CAD$2.5B ($1.75B) of Canadian government loans, is destined to become Canada’s home team sovereign LEO constellation when it starts service in 2027. Roughly 10% of Starlink’s consumer subscribers are in Canada, meaning retaliatory tariffs have much to bite. OneWeb may also benefit in the near term, but only with enterprise and government customers, as the network is too capacity limited to support consumer internet. The Musk/Starlink dust-up could prompt potential customers to give Lightspeed’s enterprise-grade broadband network a second look.
Amazon Kuiper: Neutral
Kuiper is well positioned to compete with Starlink globally on cost and data speeds when it enters beta service this year. For prospective customers who view Musk as problematic (Taiwan, etc.), Kuiper is poised to offer services that appeal to consumers on affordability and enterprise/government customers on cloud-enabled resiliency. That said, Amazon Kuiper may get punished for Trump-era tariffs, should more retaliatory protectionist measures surface between the U.S. and other trading countries. Amazon’s willingness to invest in other countries ($6 billion in Mexico, for example) may offset this risk.
Eutelsat OneWeb: Positive
The European Union was slow to embrace OneWeb, which started as an American company in the early 2010s, was reborn as a British company in 2020, and became French by way of acquisition through Paris-based Eutelsat in 2023. Other satellite operators including Avanti, Intelsat and Viasat are already using OneWeb service as a counter to Starlink in markets like aviation and maritime. Trump's simmering threat of tariffs on the EU could further embolden Europe to back OneWeb (which is now part of the future IRIS2 multi-orbit EU network). If OneWeb can overcome its own challenges with expensive terminals and a slow gateway rollout, it could further benefit from being a western LEO system with less political baggage than its U.S. counterparts.