China faces a difficult task in its efforts to catch up with Elon Musk's SpaceX satellite service.
SpaceX's Starlink subsidiary already has nearly 7,000 operational satellites in orbit and serves about 5 million customers in more than 100 countries, according to SpaceX. The service aims to provide high-speed internet to customers in remote and deprived areas.
SpaceX hopes to expand its massive constellation to as many as 42,000 satellites. China aims to achieve a similar scale and hopes to acquire about 38,000 satellites through three low-Earth orbit internet projects, known as Qianfan, Guo Wang and Honghu-3.
Apart from Starlink, which is based in Europe Eutelsat OneWeb It also launched more than 630 Internet satellites into low Earth orbit. Amazon It also has plans for a large low-Earth orbit constellation, currently called Project Kuiper, consisting of more than 3,000 satellites, although the company has only launched two satellites. Typical satellites yet.
In light of so much competition, why does China care about pouring money and effort into such huge groups?
“Starlink has really shown that it can provide Internet access to individuals and citizens in the most remote corners and provide the ability for citizens to access the Internet and any websites and any applications they want,” said Steve Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Starlink Institute. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“For China, a big step has been to censor what citizens have access to,” Feldstein said. “And for them, they say: ‘Okay, this is a real threat.’ If Starlink can provide uncensored content to either our citizens or people from countries allied with us, that’s something that could really penetrate our censorship system and so we need to come up with an alternative.”
Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, agrees. “In some countries, China can see this as almost discriminatory. It's like: 'Okay, maybe we're not that quick to market, but hey, we'll heavily censor your internet if you want us to and we'll do it with a smile on our face.' “
Experts say that although Chinese Towers will not be the Internet provider of choice for places like the United States, Western Europe, Canada and other US allies, plenty of other regions could be open to Chinese service.
“There are two geographies in particular that would be attractive to a competitor like Starlink, specifically those made by China, including China itself,” said Juliana Suess, a fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “Russia, for example, but also Afghanistan and Syria are not yet covered by Starlink. There are also large parts of Africa that are not yet covered.”
“We have seen that 70% of the 4G infrastructure in Africa has already been built by Huawei,” Suez added. “So having a space perspective on that could lead to more progress there.”
Aside from being a tool for geopolitical influence, having a satellite internet constellation is increasingly becoming a national security necessity, especially when terrestrial internet infrastructure is disrupted during war.
“When it comes to the difference Starlink technology has played on the battlefield in Ukraine, one of the big leaps we've seen has been the emergence of drone warfare and the connected battlefield,” Feldstein said. “Having satellite-based weapons is something that is seen as a critical military advantage. And so I think China sees all of that and says investing in this is critical to our national security goals.”
a witness video To learn more about why China is building such huge clusters and the challenges the country will face.
