SpaceX Wants to Handle the World’s Broadband

In a recent request filed with the FCC, Starlink asked to increase the size of its broadband satellite fleet to 100,000. This coincided with the FCC’s announcement that it wants to ease the process for approving new satellites, so I have to think the idea will sail through. There was one extraordinary statement in this filing that is the topic of today’s blog. SpaceX said it has the goal of handling the majority of the world’s Internet traffic. Elon Musk has always been one for huge hyperbole, so statements like this are not surprising. I want to examine a few reasons why that goal is ridiculous. No carrier handles a large percentage of the world’s internet traffic today. According to statistics shown on Cloudflare Radar, the company with the biggest percentage of worldwide traffic today is Amazon, with 3.5% of all traffic. The companies that carry more than 2% of worldwide traffic include Cloudflare, Comcast, Amazon, Microsoft, Reliance/Jio, and AT&T. SpaceX is on the worldwide list at number 18 today, already carrying 0.7% of the world’s Internet traffic. SpaceX would have to grow by five times to catch Amazon. But that would still be a long way from carrying a majority of the world’s traffic, and it’s hard to imagine any carrier growing to carry even 10% of the world’s traffic.