Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
That’s a brave move. Brazil could just confiscate all star links in the country. Or shoot down the satellites.
Uh… And how would they do that?
It’s not like starlink publishes a list of all their customers, and you can’t simply pick up the signal.
And shooting down satellites in a geospatial orbit? Good luck.
They aren’t that high up. That’s how they provide better service than Hughesnet. And yes shooting down a satellite has been possible for decades. People put them up there, they can take them down a lot easier, much smaller payload and the tech/math has been solved since the 1950’s.
As far as banning starlink and confiscating receivers? The same way a country bans and confiscates anything.
There’s also the possibility of compounding fines for violating the broadcast ban after they place it. This isn’t Iran, Brazil has access to the banking network to go get that money.
And there’s the real answer. I don’t think anyone is paying for their Starlink account with a wad of cash in a back alley. They will probably give people some number of days to close their accounts and sending notices to banks and credit cards to not accept payments for Starlink from Brazilian accounts or some other means of interfering with payments. Things will likely escalate from there with fines not dissimilar to those with Twitter and other methods to deter people from using the services illegally. There may well be some political elements, as well, but I’m not sure how important Brazil is to America to make that happen.
You can use planes to scan for signals. Due to the wider band of the starlink units they could be detected by plane. Of course they can also be spotted on the ground.
Geospatial? Heh, try again. They are not in Geosynchronous (the word you were grasping for) orbits. Really they are low enough they could be destroyed easier than most. The only problem is there are so many of them.
Simple legislation baring unlicensed satellite transmitters could effectively make starlink illegal without a license. A prohibitively costly fee would create a situation that would kill the company in Brazil.