Starlink expands in the Ukraine, starts in Kazakhstan, but hits roadblock in Lebanon
Access to SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation to customers worldwide continues to expand.
First. Kazakhstan announced that Starlink is now available in that country, beginning today.
Next, the Ukraine government announced it is beginning beta testing of SpaceX’s direct-to-phone Starlink capability, with the product to launch to its citizens later this year.
With Starlink’s Direct to Cell system, Ukrainians will be able to send SMS messages in remote or hard-to-reach areas—such as in the mountains, during severe weather, or blackouts—without the need for expensive satellite equipment. The only requirements: a standard 4G smartphone with a SIM or eSIM card, and a clear view of the sky.
These actions by both Kazakhstan and the Ukraine underlines the negative consequences of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Its former Soviet provinces, now independent, have become much more willing to forge alliances and deals with western nations and companies, in order to better protect themselves from possible attack.
In Lebanon however things have not gone so well. SpaceX’s request to offer Starlink has met with opposition in that nation’s parliament.
Lebanon’s parliamentary Media and Communications Committee raised serious legal and procedural concerns over a proposed license for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service. Committee chair MP Ibrahim Mousawi and rapporteur MP Yassine Yassine said discussions with the telecom minister and officials from regulatory and oversight bodies revealed “major constitutional and legal violations.” These include bypassing Parliament’s authority to grant natural resource concessions, ignoring public procurement laws, sidelining the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, and failing to ensure data sovereignty.
The committee recommended against Starlink, demanding a new and expanded review of the proposal. I suspect these ministers are either upset because they didn’t get their own kickbacks in the deal, or are worried that giving Lebanese citizens Starlink — thus bypassing all government censorship — might threaten their hold on power.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Access to SpaceX’s Starlink internet constellation to customers worldwide continues to expand.
First. Kazakhstan announced that Starlink is now available in that country, beginning today.
Next, the Ukraine government announced it is beginning beta testing of SpaceX’s direct-to-phone Starlink capability, with the product to launch to its citizens later this year.
With Starlink’s Direct to Cell system, Ukrainians will be able to send SMS messages in remote or hard-to-reach areas—such as in the mountains, during severe weather, or blackouts—without the need for expensive satellite equipment. The only requirements: a standard 4G smartphone with a SIM or eSIM card, and a clear view of the sky.
These actions by both Kazakhstan and the Ukraine underlines the negative consequences of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Its former Soviet provinces, now independent, have become much more willing to forge alliances and deals with western nations and companies, in order to better protect themselves from possible attack.
In Lebanon however things have not gone so well. SpaceX’s request to offer Starlink has met with opposition in that nation’s parliament.
Lebanon’s parliamentary Media and Communications Committee raised serious legal and procedural concerns over a proposed license for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service. Committee chair MP Ibrahim Mousawi and rapporteur MP Yassine Yassine said discussions with the telecom minister and officials from regulatory and oversight bodies revealed “major constitutional and legal violations.” These include bypassing Parliament’s authority to grant natural resource concessions, ignoring public procurement laws, sidelining the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, and failing to ensure data sovereignty.
The committee recommended against Starlink, demanding a new and expanded review of the proposal. I suspect these ministers are either upset because they didn’t get their own kickbacks in the deal, or are worried that giving Lebanese citizens Starlink — thus bypassing all government censorship — might threaten their hold on power.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I would bet it is that the government loses control over censorship. Bet Canada tries to get rid of Starlink—- hey wait, the was something about Ontario—-
Phill O is correct. Starlink’s various services are, I think, becoming de facto badges of modernity and liberty for nations that allow their citizens access to them. If you want to assess whether a given nation is a reasonable place to live and do business look at its Freedom House index, its corruption ranking and whether or not Starlink is available.
Starlink access is also an economic competitive advantage for nations allowing it. Outside investors are able to site resource extraction facilities, manufacturing plants and other relevant infrastructure literally anywhere within the national borders of a nation having Starlink access and be sure that there will be no telecommunications difficulties associated with such siting decisions. Not so much in nations lacking access to Starlink.
Starlink availability in a nation will also greatly facilitate the near-future ability of both natives and outside investors to make use of other products of the Muskverse such as Tesla autonomous vehicles and Optimus autonomous robots – more economic competitive advantages versus the non-Starlink parts of the world.
Dick Eagleson, correct. The last 5 years have shown that the real plague on Earth is the Government Plague. It consumes resources, uses violence or the threat thereof to obtain them and kills people.
Lebanon is small enough that they could get away with fiber optics only.
As for political systems, size matters.
Take a tiny Shell-fare nation with a handful of oil sheiks so rich that, if you spread the wealth equally–everyone is still rich.
Right now what is bleeding them are architects :)
They could have funded powersats, but noooo.
I have heard rumblings that Saudi oil fields are gradually giving out.
Oh, if only the CONUS had their assets.
We do export fuels–which doesn’t sit well with me.
I thought the idea was for us to sit on our natural resources and drain the certain nation states of their last drop, so as to remove their influence over time.
Then we’d be in the driver’s seat.
There could be a different reason they frown upon Starlink–perhaps increasing precision of already precise military assets. Starlink is ubiquitous as it stands. It exists whether they want it or not.
People expect the kickbacks as part of “doing business” But if the powers that be lose the censorship and people find out how much the kickbacks cost them, the powers may lose their cash cow, so that is an existential threat to their power.
Mike Borgelt,
Statism is certainly a major problem, but where it is worst it tends to be derivative of more fundamental dysfunctions. In my view, the Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Marxism, tribalism and Islam. Where any one of these is regnant, statism is a problem. Where any pair of these is regnant, things are far worse. The combination of tribalism and Islam, for example, is why the Middle East, the Maghreb and large parts of sub-Saharan Africa are such ghastly places. The highest-priority project of the civilized world should be beating back all three of these plagues to the point of insignificance or – ideally – extinction.
Jeff Wright,
Fiber networks are only reasonable in cities. Fiber is too expensive to serve the boonies and is incapable of serving any mobile applications. This latter limitation is why, even in cities, there are applications where either terrestrial wireless or satellite service are required.
“Shell-fare” nations are fundamentally doomed. All are Islamic. The Islamic culture valorizes warfare, slavery and theft from infidels. So what we have are places where all the scutwork is done by slaves or imported guest workers who are barely a step up from being slaves. All of the work needed to build and operate the oil and gas industry that supplies the money plus all other skilled work is done by foreign-born contactors.
When the oil runs out – and it will run out – there will be no money to pay either the scutwork guest workers or the foreign-born skilled contractors. They will, consequently, depart, leaving only the slaves and their useless masters behind.
The infrastructure that keeps everyone alive will quickly break down. My guess is that most of the citizenry will quickly expire of thirst, once the water stops flowing, before they have a chance to perish from disease because the toilets also cease working when the water cuts out or of starvation because no one will any longer be able to pay for food.
The die-off will continue until the population is reduced to whatever the carrying capacity of the land, in a state of nature, is. That won’t be many. Prior to the oil era, most of the Middle East was barely-populated desert inhabited quite thinly only by roving bands of tribal barbarian nomads. That will be its future as well.
CONUS doesn’t need their assets, we have vastly more shale oil and gas reserves than the Middle East does oil and gas in conventional reservoirs. That’s why exporting products derived from shale reserves is not a problem. That business is, in any case, going to be temporary, at least at current levels. The world will substitute electricity for most liquid fuels in transport applications over the coming quarter century or so. Long-haul air and sea transport will probably be the last hold-outs.