Chinese’s SpaceSail Rivals Musk’s Starlink to Dominate Satellite Internet

Reports says space is about to get more crowded for Elon Musk, following the expansion of a Chinese rival, SpaceSail.

The billionaire’s Starlink communications network is reportedly facing increasingly stiff challenges to its dominance of high-speed satellite internet, including from a Chinese state-backed rival and another service financed by Amazon.com (AMZN.O), founder Jeff Bezos.

According to the Kazakh embassy in Beijing, Shanghai-based SpaceSail signed an agreement to enter Brazil and announced it was in talks with over 30 countries in November last year. Two months later, it began work in Kazakhstan,
Reports also adds that Brasília is in separate talks with Bezos’s Project Kuiper internet service and Canada’s Telesat.

Since 2020, Starlink has launched more satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) – an altitude of less than – than all its competitors combined. Satellites operating at such low altitudes are known to transmit data effectively, availing high-speed internet for remote communities, seafaring vessels and militaries at war.