TECH NEWS – Not only Tesla commented on the situation created by US President Donald Trump, but also another company led by Elon Musk.

SpaceX also commented on Trump’s policy of imposing tariffs on US trading partners. While Tesla has advised the Trump administration on the high manufacturing costs it could face due to the tariffs, SpaceX, which relies on few imports for its satellite service, has taken the opposite position. There’s another difference: the Tesla letter was unsigned, while the SpaceX letter is signed. In it, the company cites unfavorable global regulations against Starlink’s satellite service and equipment.

SpaceX has informed the Trump administration about the obstacles its Starlink satellite internet service faces globally, saying it faces regulatory complications and trade barriers in almost every country where it operates, adding that these barriers are hampering U.S. leadership in space. It claims that its competitors are exploiting them to prevent it from providing better quality and lower cost service to customers seeking satellite Internet. Starlink uses the world’s largest satellite internet constellation, so it’s no surprise that it has a foothold in consumer and business satellite internet.

SpaceX says it must pay governments for access to wireless spectrum, pay import duties to import Starlink terminals into other countries, and negotiate spectrum sharing with domestic operators in certain countries. These conditions and requirements significantly and artificially increase the cost of operating in these countries. While there are no import duties on similar foreign products in the United States, import duties paid in a handful of countries add significantly to the cost of Starlink products in those countries.The fees and other costs can sometimes represent a large portion of Starlink’s total costs, which in turn affects its ability to grow market share and thus make Starlink unavailable to more users.

The company pointed out that one of the reasons for the struggle with high foreign costs is that the old regulation assumes that satellite services require the importation of a few terminals, rather than millions of terminals to be shipped around the world, and if fees are set on a per-terminal basis, rather than through a general license or other regulatory measure to account for the new design of non-geostationary satellite networks, the cost will be a barrier to extending the service to more customers.

That sounds a bit like Musk’s company doesn’t want competition.

Source: WCCFTech