this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I think every larger nation deploying their own constellation would reduce people losing access due to political games.
If there's only one network with the same topology as Starlink, then the USA, China, or Russia will end up making a bunch of rules on everyone else just like Elon does today. Look how the USA abuses centralized internet infrastructure already. Multiple overlapping systems would be wastefully redundant, but reduces the risk of censorship.
We can't get along and can't have nice things.
You want a truly multinational organization responsible for it, nothing that can be controlled by a single nation, even one as (ex)influential as the us.
Something based on the UN perhaps.
Combine that with making internet access a human right, to stop denying connectivity outright.
Ideally then you could't enforce meaningful censorship, but more realistically you would route regions to their respective governments servers so they could censor as before on their territory.
That would not guarantee free access to the internet to everyone, but should be an acceptable compromise to basically all nations.
After that, other doubting nations could still pull their own constellation, nothing is stopping that.
I would love if the internet program was uncensored, but that probably needs personal circumvention same as now, if such a program wants any degree of success.
It sounds like we don't disagree that much, I just think other doubting nations is extremely likely.
Edit: but gosh darn that is nice to imagine. Everyone, everywhere, having free internet.
Yeah.
The maintenance of these conatellations is pricy, so perhaps if such an international program does prove itself trustworthy you'd see other national alternatives get retired.
I mean it's not like the US would do it anyway as things stand, more likely for such a program to get started independently and to end up outcompeting starlink down the line.