India tells Starlink to stop offering satellite internet without a license:
SpaceX doesn't always get a warm reception when it expands Starlink. Reuters reports the Indian government has told Starlink to immediately stop "booking/rendering" satellite internet service in the country until it has a license to operate.
[...] Starlink is currently available in 21 countries in mostly public beta tests. However, SpaceX has a particularly strong incentive to serve India as soon as possible. India has a very large rural population (over 898 million, according to World Bank data). It's a prime market for satellite broadband, and the Starlink team hopes 80 percent of devices sold in India by late 2022 will serve rural areas. However, it's now clear India's government doesn't share that same enthusiasm.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @08:45AM
a lot of places block indian ips this just gets ahead of the race
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Monday November 29 2021, @12:05PM (2 children)
As a standard rule, most Indian IPs are blocked on my networks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @12:53PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:59PM
Blocking the Indian internet would put a huge damper on the Indian scammers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Monday November 29 2021, @01:06PM (2 children)
The authoritarian Modi regime running India doesn't want the proles to have internet access they can't control.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Monday November 29 2021, @03:45PM (1 child)
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'Rourke
(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Monday November 29 2021, @05:31PM
The legislators are being bought and sold to prevent the incumbent ISPs from having competition in the skies above their heads.
It is about a different kind of control.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 29 2021, @01:36PM (1 child)
It's India. The bureaucrats want their bakshish.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 30 2021, @06:27AM
India has cheap rockets too and their owners do have ways to influence their bureaucrats. I would go as far as to suggest they are better at it than Musk.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday November 29 2021, @01:46PM (4 children)
I can't find it just now, but someone already asked him what countries should do, who don't want their populace to have access to Starlink. His answer was that they should "shake their fists impotently at the sky".
More seriously: the only chance governments have, is to restrict the import and sale of the ground-based equipment. Otherwise, fsck'em.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @02:08PM (2 children)
The govt has options:
It is already likely technically illegal to import or use a ground terminal transmitter without permission. (Just like in the US, the FCC has control of what radio transmitters are permitted.)
As a physics exercise, how much RF power would be required to overload or even smoke a Starlink sat's uplink rx channel? (Or worse, the C&C path?)
The solution is to get the population to tell the govt to find a way to let is happen. (The farmers have demonstrated that the govt is not deaf to the population yet.)
What has Starlink done to build grassroots support. Is there some critical group of potential users signed up for service with a voice?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @02:32PM (1 child)
ISRO is space capable. If he pisses the Indians off enough they might lob a cargo of gravel into the appropriate orbit.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 29 2021, @04:05PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @07:18PM
That fists will reach the sky and knock one of those satellites into enough pieces to ruin your wet dream about musk.
Musk thinks rest of the world is wild wild west for rich white boys do whatever they want. He and his fans are sooner going to learn or suck Xis balls.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 29 2021, @02:26PM (2 children)
I have little idea how reasonable licensing requirements are. Has Musk's companies done their part to comply with the law(s)? Or, are they just playing Cowboys and Indians, doing whatever they like?
There are surely three sides or more to this story.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 29 2021, @07:39PM
I see what you did there. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday November 30 2021, @06:35AM
Given that Musk has the nerve to sell self driving cars in the US legal environment without authorization and the total impossibility to get anything in India on such a short order...
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @04:13PM
No, The Musky One just considers himself 'above' the law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @04:17PM (6 children)
*sigh* a countries internet and railway system is only profitable for a country, if it is build, developed and implemented by their own people.
if your shit only works because you buy it from another country, you don't have your own internet and railway and the (meager but valuable) profits go to the other country and you are the market for the other country ...
like 3rd world countries remaining addicted to oil with "local native subdealers" with acces to the overlords perks ...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 29 2021, @11:10PM (4 children)
Because why else would you have an internet and railway system except to make some profit for the right cronies?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @05:02AM (3 children)
Local ownership of local production intended for local consumption is always preferable for a national economy. Foreign ownership is always a net loss in that case. The difference here is that LEO satellites have an economy of scale that makes local ownership noncompetitive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:01PM (1 child)
next up, warlordistan is outsourcing the nations military to [redacted] 'cause it's cheaper ...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:53PM
Say like Germany outsourced a good portion of its military to NATO (particularly the US)? It certainly would be cheaper than a viable lone defense against the Eastern Bloc.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 30 2021, @01:50PM
Except when it isn't. See comparative advantage [wikipedia.org] for a class of reasons this isn't always true. And there's my corruption example where local ownership means local ownership by a crony.
Interesting how many of these unconditional statements are contradicted by the person who wrote them in a few more sentences. If your first statement was always true as asserted, then there would be no such difference to mention in this one! Is it really "always preferable" to have noncompetitive infrastructure as you describe here? Sounds like you don't think so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @04:59AM
Ground based services are inherently localized, which always favours local ownership, but LEO satellite services are inherently global, so they always favour globalization. Starlink only exists because rural areas, especially in poor countries, can't be served economically by ground based systems, so any large rural population is going to want in on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2021, @05:57PM
Have they fixed the thermal problems yet? Most places in India are quite warm. The places with air-conditioning probably already have reasonable access to the Internet.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/06/starlink-dish-overheats-in-arizona-sun-knocking-user-offline-for-7-hours/ [arstechnica.com]
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/2/india-severe-heatwave-northern-states-delhi [aljazeera.com]