Amazon trying to slow Starlink

[airborne spoon]

Summary

 Basically Amazon wants to have their space internet to have a fighting chance because they are so far behind spaceX. So they made a filimg with the FCC to slow/temp-hault spaceX's current starlink internet.

 

Quotes

Quote

 Amazon's Kuiper Systems subsidiary plans to eventually launch low Earth orbit satellites to compete against SpaceX's Starlink division. But while SpaceX is providing beta service to over 100,000 customers from over 1,700 satellites, Amazon has said it won't start launching any satellites until at least 2023

 

My thoughts

 This really pisses me off, a big corporation out here trying to hinder the operation of another company just because someone else thought of it first and now they won't be able to get a super monopoly on internet like they do for online shopping.

 

Sources

 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/spacex-slams-amazons-obstructionist-ploy-to-block-starlink-upgrade-plan/

[givingtnt]

Lol this is so dumb.
Bezos can't win with nasa because their bid failed, so he takes it out on them / SpaceX anywhere he can.

I hope/doubt it would pass, this seems like it's clearly just trying to cause damage as retaliation.
And it's not like the internet Starlink provides through SpaceX is a government bid like it was with NASA.. there's nothing they can do about that lol.

[ki8aras]

that sounds like an amazon thing to do so, what did you expect? fair play?

[HanZie82]

It's long since know Amazon is or has a sort of cancer in how it does things.

The extortion of its workers.

The undercutting of other vendors to take them out.

Now this.
They aren't done yet, but a re a good example of many other companies, that are able to hide their awfulness better.

[StDragon]

If you really want a good history lesion on the collusion between industry and Government, look no further than to the history of Margarine.

I should be surprised that I'm not surprised? 

[Athan Immortal]

31 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

Bezos can't win with nasa because their bid failed, so he takes it out on them / SpaceX anywhere he can.

It goes back further than that, he protests absolutely everything SpaceX does. Blue Origin protested over SpaceX getting Pad 39A, every step of the way they show themselves to be lobbyists rather than actually pushing forward and being the better product.

 

They haven't even been able to deliver the BE-4 engine to ULA yet. Meanwhile SpaceX made orbital rockets that can land themselves, strapped an experimental engine to a flying water tower, are building rocket engines in tents, and deploying a first of it's kind world wide internet satellite ISP.

[Quackers101]

you mean THAT amazon that owns SOO much of everything else?

This is above and beyond fair play, although there are various issues with starlink from Elons side and it being a global project and issue, this is not one of them.

Like how much of the internet does amazon already own and undercut others with their practices?

 

Not that amazon would not play fair in space either, much less than something from space X/Elon's side. From how they want their whole ecosystem to be used when gaining the space web market, that has just a certain amount of space to earth coverage and resources that can be used. to the political side of having the space on your side.

[wanderingfool2]

What says it best is the following quote from Bezos (Pretty confident that this was before SpaceX started making waves)

Quote

the rfp was released and then it was awarded to Grumman 6 months later.  Today there would be 3 protests and the losers would sue the federal government because they didn't win

...

the thing that slows things down is procurement

...

it's become the bigger bottleneck instead of technology

https://twitter.com/Siconik1/status/1425667154045771776?s=20 [The source]

 

The above alone is what is so disturbing that effectively he is using lawsuits as a weapon.  I know it's happening in other sectors, but the system really needs to change (where technology is being held back because of frivolous lawsuits).

 

1 hour ago, givingtnt said:

Lol this is so dumb.
Bezos can't win with nasa because their bid failed, so he takes it out on them / SpaceX anywhere he can.

I hope/doubt it would pass, this seems like it's clearly just trying to cause damage as retaliation.
And it's not like the internet Starlink provides through SpaceX is a government bid like it was with NASA.. there's nothing they can do about that lol.

I think a big point that could be made is that if SpaceX beats all competitors to market, they could essentially establish a monopoly on satellite internet...because the competitors would have to invest billions to catch up (and at a certain point...investing billions before even considering getting customers).  With that said, I really do hope that SpaceX is successful in Starlink because it really could be a game changer to a lot of people

[Quackers101]

49 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I think a big point that could be made is that if SpaceX beats all competitors to market, they could essentially establish a monopoly on satellite internet...because the competitors would have to invest billions to catch up

this is a global matter. Not something corporations should meddle with or have a say in.

Again, when so many objects are covering the earth you can't really do the same thing, although one could use different ranges but that will be another topic or issue. As they will at some point start to interfere, and starlink is still not fully completed with their saturation of satellites?

From planned and accepted 12,000 to future 42,000 satellites, currently closing towards 2,000?

 

something that means space x will hold a lot of global power and responsabilities. while its nice if they did not have a monopoly, but having someone like amazon or other super powers up there wouldn't be too great. in creating war for this space and wanting to own it, when it should be owned by those on earth. But I guess there are some regulations and laws behind this.

[givingtnt]

57 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

What says it best is the following quote from Bezos (Pretty confident that this was before SpaceX started making waves)

https://twitter.com/Siconik1/status/1425667154045771776?s=20 [The source]

 

The above alone is what is so disturbing that effectively he is using lawsuits as a weapon.  I know it's happening in other sectors, but the system really needs to change (where technology is being held back because of frivolous lawsuits).

 

I think a big point that could be made is that if SpaceX beats all competitors to market, they could essentially establish a monopoly on satellite internet...because the competitors would have to invest billions to catch up (and at a certain point...investing billions before even considering getting customers).  With that said, I really do hope that SpaceX is successful in Starlink because it really could be a game changer to a lot of people

It's not like they're blocking anyone from putting things in space. 
Or blocking anyone from making their own sat grid.

They came up with the idea, the plan, the work. If anyone wants to copy I don't see how they also have any rights to block the original.

[12345678]

2 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

It's long since know Amazon is or has a sort of cancer in how it does things.

The extortion of its workers.

The undercutting of other vendors to take them out.

Now this.
They aren't done yet, but a re a good example of many other companies, that are able to hide their awfulness better.

like any other corporation/rich dude (and not only, the difference is that they can pay tons of lawyers)

 

musk is no better

like claiming that there is no pandemic to keep manufacturing

putting in money and then claiming everything as it's own

pretending to care about the ambient then purposely avoiding regulations

[12345678]

1 hour ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The above alone is what is so disturbing that effectively he is using lawsuits as a weapon.  I know it's happening in other sectors, but the system really needs to change (where technology is being held back because of frivolous lawsuits).

nothing new it has always worked like that

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

It's not like they're blocking anyone from putting things in space. 
Or blocking anyone from making their own sat grid.

They came up with the idea, the plan, the work. If anyone wants to copy I don't see how they also have any rights to block the original.

If you are referring to my comment on SpaceX essentially getting a monopoly, it's about getting a market dominance that can't be competed against by other companies due to capital investments needed.

 

There has been 29 launches, which given the current prices SpaceX charges per flight would be $50m that would mean $1.4 billion to launch an equivalent amount of satellites (of course SpaceX can do it cheaper themselves because they own the rockets).  It's thought that the starlink sats cost around $0.25 million, at over 1000 of them to get the current coverage you are looking at $250 million.  So assuming just the cost to launch the satellites into orbit, it would take $1.65 billion initial investment.  There is also the overhead of all the ground facilities, and R&D required for it...plus you won't be able to sell it to customers likely for a few years after founding the company to get it to where Starlink is today.  If Starlink gets the coverage they are going for 30,000 sats...on the current market that would mean a cost of $7.5 billion in sats, and $43 billion in rocket launches.

 

Not saying I'm against Starlink being the majority player, as it means less satellites overall in LEO...but I am merely saying that if Starlink is successful in their deployments, they could essentially establish a monopoly on something no company could compete with (it would likely take government bodies intervening to create competition).

 

1 minute ago, 12345678 said:

nothing new it has always worked like that

Well back early on in the space development it really didn't work nearly like that.  There was a lot less red-tape in regards to this

[The Torrent]

What's a filimg?

[Quackers101]

5 minutes ago, The Torrent said:

What's a filimg?

maybe filling out or filing a complaint or something to sue them over.

[Franck]

3 hours ago, airborne spoon said:

 This really pisses me off, a big corporation out here trying to hinder the operation of another company just because someone else thought of it first and now they won't be able to get a super monopoly on internet like they do for online shopping.

I personally find this fair. Right now it's a super monopoly from Starlink with no competition whatsoever. In my opinion monopoly is bad no matter who it is. If you don't slow down the monopoly competitor might never be able to exist due to the monopoly growing too much and just engulfing everyone else.

[BabaGanuche]

3 hours ago, Franck said:

I personally find this fair. Right now it's a super monopoly from Starlink with no competition whatsoever. In my opinion monopoly is bad no matter who it is. If you don't slow down the monopoly competitor might never be able to exist due to the monopoly growing too much and just engulfing everyone else.

How is it a monopoly? So hugesnet and vianet do not count as satellite based ISPs? What about ground based ISPs?

[Arika]

3 hours ago, Franck said:

I personally find this fair. Right now it's a super monopoly from Starlink with no competition whatsoever.

https://isp.today/en/list-of-all-services/UNITED-STATES

 

are you serious?

 

There's even 18 OTHER satellite providers other than starlink (in just the US)

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

https://isp.today/en/list-of-all-services/UNITED-STATES

 

are you serious?

 

There's even 18 OTHER satellite providers other than starlink.

And that's just in US. I counted 20 in AUS, 14 in China, etc.

[Arika]

2 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

And that's just in US. I counted 20 in AUS, 14 in China, etc.

oh absolutely, there is so many satellite services, i only used US numbers since Amazon are crying to the FCC

[IkeaGnome]

4 minutes ago, Arika S said:

oh absolutely, there is so many satellite services, i only used US numbers since Amazon are crying to the FCC

Agreed. I went international though since this is an international service, same as Amazon. If Amazon is going to scream monopoly, there better not be any other viable options anywhere in the world. I was just holding them to a little bit higher of a standard.

[Arika]

4 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

Agreed. I went international though since this is an international service, same as Amazon. If Amazon is going to scream monopoly, there better not be any other viable options anywhere in the world. I was just holding them to a little bit higher of a standard.

It's quite ironic,

 

Amazon are complaining that starlink is too good and they wont be able to compete.

 

pretty sure this is the same thing that people have been saying about Amazon for years

[Quackers101]

30 minutes ago, Arika S said:

are you serious?

There's even 18 OTHER satellite providers other than starlink.

depends on what we are talking about, low earth and high speed/low latency big scale satellite operations.

Also the polution this generates and this is very different than certain other satellite projects and scale.

While there are other lower to earth orbit, none to the scale of this.

 

Some other videos can show the scale of this and the difficulties around this sort of project, which should be a COOP thing not a SOLO thing or matter, which can be an issue when space X/the US tries to own this network that nobody else have. which again concerns global matters and a "monopoly" shouldn't be bad for this kind of network if not they open this up for everyone else in a joint operation. (of course space X want to have a return of investment).

 

But like people say, amazon is not the one or should not be the focus point, which such a lawsuit or suing will focus on.

This is bigger than amazon itself and SHOULD NOT have a say in about a monopoly for their own monopoly.

Like how the rulings are behind TSMC and other chip manufacturers.

 

not the best video, but does bring up some issues.

Something Scott Manley and others on youtube are very good around physics or subjects about space.

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Quackers101

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

https://isp.today/en/list-of-all-services/UNITED-STATES

 

are you serious?

 

There's even 18 OTHER satellite providers other than starlink (in just the US)

The important distinction is the types of satellites.  A lot of them are deep space satellite internet (really high latency, due to travel time)..high coverage horrible ping.  The LEO ones, are low coverage, but low latency.

 

Effectively, if SpaceX can get to the number of satellites they are wanting to, they will effectively hold a monopoly on satellite internet (not saying that it's a bad thing though...because if that happens, then the governments could step in and force a certain profit margin for the services)...just saying though that if the trend continues, SpaceX could get a monopoly type of hold on it.

 

8 hours ago, Franck said:

I personally find this fair. Right now it's a super monopoly from Starlink with no competition whatsoever. In my opinion monopoly is bad no matter who it is. If you don't slow down the monopoly competitor might never be able to exist due to the monopoly growing too much and just engulfing everyone else.

I would disagree.  Right now, Starlink is far ahead of it's competitors but the solution should never be to slow down a company to let others catch up.  Under that kind of mentality, we would still be stuck sending astronauts to the ISS on Russian spacecrafts.

 

The lawsuits are what is slowing down the technology..as it stands though, Starlink isn't a monopoly yet.

 

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

Amazon are complaining that starlink is too good and they wont be able to compete.

Actually, their complaint (very slightly valid) is that SpaceX is requesting 2 sections of space essentially being reserved.  With that said, one is a backup location in the event Starship isn't able to deliver satellites.  Some of the previous complaints also being slightly valid that they were starting to encroach on Amazon's allotted space for the experimental constellation.

 

With that said, I hate the move of suing, especially given that they aren't anywhere near ready yet to launch...and especially given you have Bezos who came out and talked about how this kind of move is what stifles current processes (the bottleneck being lawsuits)

[asquirrel]

Anyone see the theory floating around on Reddit that Citadel Capital ((one of)the major hedge fund behind the whole Gamestonk thing) is actually a puppet that Bezos uses to short-sell Amazon competitors out of existence whenever Amazon wants to expand into a new market space? The DD on it requires enough tin-foil to wrap the moon, but the base theory...I gotta say, given how fast Bezos is chucking out lawsuits to stop anyone trying to compete with him, it kinda sorta makes sense. Quacks like a duck, shits like a duck, looks like a duck, lays duck eggs...