Nitin Pai: A space monopoly would be bad for the world

How did such a situation come to pass? An extreme concentration of market power ought to have triggered alarms among competition regulators. 

They would have acted if a single firm controlled two-thirds of say, the telecom, banking or road transport markets in a single country. That one has come to dominate the orbital space around the entire planet is a marked failure of global governance.

The failure becomes all the more acute when Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and CEO, has been quite open about turning his market power into political influence. Indeed, his behaviour reminds us just why liberal democracies must have effective competition laws. 

Also read: Lack of internal demand hurting India’s fledgling space economy

Anti-trust regulations and competition watchdogs do not exist merely to protect consumers from monopolies and cartels. Rather, the deeper purpose of competition policy is to ensure that no single entity amasses so much economic power that it can capture policy and undermine democracy. 

Musk has used his control over his businesses to overrule Ukraine’s military decisions, and more recently, refused to comply with decisions of Brazil’s Supreme Court. 

His partisan use of X to promote his political preferences brings into the open what is mostly done behind closed doors. Every sovereign state should reflect on how we have arrived at this state of affairs.

Even if SpaceX was run by a team of faceless managers, the fact that it dominates the satellite market is a serious global concern. It is true that the company has become the biggest player in the satellite business through a commendable combination of entrepreneurship, innovation and visionary leadership. 

But it is also true that it did so on the back of the US government’s financial and policy support. American policymakers might believe that promoting a homegrown champion is in their national interest. Yet, a situation where a single company has captured such a big share of space infrastructure is not in anyone else’s.

Indeed, even American policymakers have begun to realize that it might not be in their own public interest. Last month, Jessica Rosenworcel, chairperson of the US Federal Communications Commission, worried that “We do have one player that’s got almost two-thirds of the satellites that are in space right now and has a very high portion of internet traffic," and that space should not be an exception to competition considerations. 

Also read: Satellite services to lead India to $13bn space economy by 2025

I am not sure how seriously the US government will pursue this line of thinking. Many wealthy tech industry figures are lobbying against regulation, and in any case, an issue of global interest should not be determined by US politics alone.

Part of the reason why SpaceX’s Starlink constellation has managed to put over 7,000 satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO) is because orbital slots are allocated on what is effectively a first-come first-serve basis. With its Falcon re-usable launch vehicle, the company is able to put hundreds of satellites in orbit each month. 

Starlink aims at an eventual constellation size of 42,000 LEO satellites providing global coverage and acquiring a dominant share of the world’s internet traffic. Other than being first to claim those slots, it pays nothing to use humanity’s shared resource. 

Chinese authorities have recognized the military strategic and political implications of it, and want to put 40,000 of their own satellites in orbit in the coming decade. 

Another constellation, including OneWeb in which Bharti Global is a shareholder, will have several thousand satellites. This is not competition in a real sense because billions of people will not have a choice.

Unlike LEO slots, the radio spectrum that satellites need to communicate with each other and with earth stations is assigned by an international body. The International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) radio regulations govern the allocation and assignment of spectrum and the rules of its use. 

Starlink is lobbying the FCC to get the ITU to change these rules to allow it to operate at higher power, arguing that this will improve coverage and connection speed. 

However, this comes at the cost of other users, especially geostationary satellites that occupy slots at much higher altitudes. Meanwhile, astrophysicists and astronomers have been upset about visible and radio-frequency pollution from LEO satellites. 

In other words, as much as LEO constellations provide valuable telecom connectivity, there are competing uses of space and radio spectrum that need wider global deliberation. The world should not allow itself to be railroaded by SpaceX, the Chinese government and other constellation operators.

Also read: Can Indian space startups wow Musk with indigenous tech?

India could help shape global rules for the use of space. We should use it to ensure that space remains humanity’s common resource. Space and telecom policy should come together to ensure that the market for satellite communication is competitive. 

One part of the answer to that is multiple homegrown constellations that can compete in this space. The other part is to remember what the East India Company did to us.