Starlink gets approvals to operate in Saudi Arabia, Scotland, and Bangledesh
In the past two days SpaceX’s Starlink constellation for providing internet service globally has obtained approvals from three different countries, widening its use significantly worldwide.
First, Scotland has approved Starlink to begin a six-month trial whereby the constellation will provide internet access on trains operating “between Inverness and Thurso, Wick, Kyle of Lochalsh and Aberdeen.” If successful, the program will be expanded to provide service along other rural train lines in Scotland.
Next the Bangledesh government approved a 90-day waiver allowing Starlink to “supply bandwidth from outside the country.” Normally the regulations in that country require such services to be routed through “local gateways”, which likely refers to local communications companies. This waiver will allow SpaceX to offer Starlink in its normal manner, direct to the customer and outside any already established communications network.
Whether the waiver will be extended further is at present unknown, but I suspect it will be because of public pressure.
Finally, Elon Musk announced that Saudi Arabia has now approved Starlink for “aviation and maritime use” within the country.
All in all, SpaceX continues to vacuum up the world’s internet market simply because none of its competitors have made the effort to compete aggressively. They continue to cede territory to Starlink, without a fight.
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In the past two days SpaceX’s Starlink constellation for providing internet service globally has obtained approvals from three different countries, widening its use significantly worldwide.
First, Scotland has approved Starlink to begin a six-month trial whereby the constellation will provide internet access on trains operating “between Inverness and Thurso, Wick, Kyle of Lochalsh and Aberdeen.” If successful, the program will be expanded to provide service along other rural train lines in Scotland.
Next the Bangledesh government approved a 90-day waiver allowing Starlink to “supply bandwidth from outside the country.” Normally the regulations in that country require such services to be routed through “local gateways”, which likely refers to local communications companies. This waiver will allow SpaceX to offer Starlink in its normal manner, direct to the customer and outside any already established communications network.
Whether the waiver will be extended further is at present unknown, but I suspect it will be because of public pressure.
Finally, Elon Musk announced that Saudi Arabia has now approved Starlink for “aviation and maritime use” within the country.
All in all, SpaceX continues to vacuum up the world’s internet market simply because none of its competitors have made the effort to compete aggressively. They continue to cede territory to Starlink, without a fight.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Starlink works well and is an easy setup!
Related: AMERICA STRIDES THE WORLD
“Stride: “Walk with long, decisive steps in a specified direction: “He strode across the road” · “striding confidently toward the future”
Love him or despise him, and there are many who do both at the same time. That being said you must agree that there is no question that what he says, he does. Like it or not. And that is what separates a true strong, visionary leader from a common bought and sold everyday politician who lives in fear of their next election if they dared to un hesitantly do as they say on the campaign trail.
Trust them only by their actions and never by their words.
And you might not like the words he uses or his style, he sometimes gets to me to be honest. But you must agree that he has a very clear agenda regarding America, its interests, and he ruthlessly executes on it. And that is what “I” personally voted for in the 2024 presidential election.”
https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/america-strides-the-world
Phill O–
Feel free to elaborate on your experience!
Wayne,
We use it at our cottage (Central Ontario) in the summer. We have huge tall 100 year old trees all around us, and I was worried, but simply using the roof as a mounting point can see enough of the sky that we get great coverage.
6 people watching videos on Youtube, me working all day, and only one issue. In rain it was fine. However, when the rain came down so hard, the noise of it pounding on the cars/roofs drowned out my work calls, I would finally drop connections.
The DSL the local provider offers was 5Mbs down, .1 up, and really hard to work with. Starlink is night and day.
Amusingly, weekends, when the cottage country is busier, performance drops as everyone is ordering starlink. Still works fine, but bandwidth is restricted compared to the midweek when there is full performance.
Our area has about 2300 people year round. Cottage season, that jumps to 25,000. Locals are using the 1400 Mhz rural band, which we cannot do to trees in the way and is cheaper. Needs line of sight.
Phill O-
And the cost, and what problems you had with locating the receiver in your home (or outside).
And where do you live that you felt you needed it instead of the big companies?
How many times have you lost a connection, and for how long? Lost a connection because of a large storm system, or kept a connection when power went out to your local area?
Up/download speeds vs the biggies? Is it only internet, or +phone, + TV?
geoffc:
Very interesting, thank you!
Making a Run for our Picturesque Canadian Border
The Bridge at Sault Ste Marie
https://youtu.be/Xc9NOw1BN2I
4:05
“SpaceX continues to vacuum up the world’s internet market simply because none of its competitors have made the effort to compete aggressively. They continue to cede territory to Starlink, without a fight.”
It’s a pretty safe bet that that fight will eventually be initiated by the EDS infected Leftosphere and quietly supported by Space X’s competitors.
wayne,
Thanks for the link. Despite being a born-and-raised Yooper, I’ve never taken that full drive. I believe I-75 was there on the only occasion my family ever drove to Sault Ste. Marie, but the bridge was not there yet and we didn’t cross over into Canada via any other means. My only ever visit to Canada was to Montreal in 1967 for the Expo, but we combined that with some preliminary visits to relatives along the way and so took a route that stayed south of the border most of the way and the Soo was not on it.
Richard V Reese,
Leftist agitation against Elon Musk and all of his works has been ongoing since at least 2020 when he defied the California Covid Reich. It, of course, kicked up to flank speed when he bought Twitter and then to War Emergency Overdrive once he went all-in for Trump. The damage has been modest, at best, with most of the worst being bureaucratic and lawfare obstacles under the now-thankfully-over Biden regime. The apoplectic rage of the left against Musk continues unabated, but its real-world consequences diminish by the day. That applies to machinations by his “competitors” as well. Musk’s net worth is rapidly approaching its previous all-time high.
Robert Zimmerman,
Starlink has been available at the consumer level in Scotland for some time, I believe, as part of its general availability in the UK. This Scottish railroads deal seems to be for business-level mobile connectivity on trains. As railroads run on land, it is possible that the partially British-owned OneWeb might have been a competitor for this business. OneWeb isn’t a competitor for aviation or marine mobile service as its network was deliberately designed without inter-satellite links of any kind and depends on ground stations and terrestrial backhaul.
It’s unclear exactly what has been authorized for 90 days in Bangladesh. The linked article refers to “commercial” service so perhaps only business or government entities can access it. The reference to “local gateways” might refer to Bangladeshi ISPs but it might also refer to points from which the government can limit access to proscribed Internet content. Islamic countries tend to be almost as paranoid and censorious about the Internet as, say, the PRC. I doubt that consumer-level service has been authorized but I could be wrong.
Starlink service in The Kingdom also seems limited to business-level mobile aviation and marine applications. Not too surprising as Starlink is the only broadband vendor which can provide such service with decent bandwidth and low latency. And these are very lucrative business segments for Starlink. But I think consumer-level Starlink may well never be available in most of the Middle East. It’s an authoritarian backwater part of the world and seems determined to stay that way notwithstanding the odd bit of cosplay at modernity occasionally on offer.
We have the Starlink in Alberta at a cost of $147 CDN (=$105US at the current rate) with no outages. We are in Dogpound a very rural area. Power outages generally do not happen. The reciver is on the roof with a hip mount. We are at the bottom of the Dogpound coulee.
In the US, we use the mobile hotspot from our AT&T phones. The downlaods are much slower with greater latency. Cost is $195 US ($273 CDN) We are just north of Rodeo NM, a great place for astronomy. My buddy just on the AZ side of the border uses Starlink with the only outages are from power failures which do happen but rather infrequent except in monsoon season..
Dick–
Really up in the boonies….
Restless Viking
“Unmapped Route Across the Algoma Wilderness”
(North of Sault Ste Marie)
https://youtu.be/jdCnoY_G1Zs
33:25
Highway 129 in Ontario, from Thesselon to Chapleau.
wayne,
Yeah, that’s certifiable deep boonies country alright.
There are parts of the UP north and west of my hometown that bear a strong resemblance. Especially in the matter of “roads” that are unmarked on most maps. I don’t know what their origin was in Canada, but in the UP they all started out as railroad rights-of-way – many narrow-gauge – that were originally built in grid patterns to allow claiming of land on both sides of the tracks per some 19th century legislation passed to encourage railroad construction. Gaming of legislation goes back at least as far as legislation itself.
Once the land titles were in hand most of this track mileage was promptly abandoned and the rails salvaged. The ballast stone, ties and spikes were left there and one could readily find them when I was a kid. These old rights-of-way could generally be followed on foot as straight-as-a-string trails even given a fair amount of overgrowth.
Some of these rights-of-way became the basis of county road systems in some of the UP’s less-populated counties with gravel added occasionally when the potholes and ruts got too deep. A few were actually paved. I think Hwy 128 was one of these but I’m not certain.