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.”
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.