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.”

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    17 days ago

    Starlink is a ridiculous centralized solution to what should be solved by upgrading fiber networks.

    It’s a bandaid with limited usefulness after maybe a decade. Basically an exercise in generating space junk.

    • Womble@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      In a lot of cases I would agree with you, but laying fiber optic cable through the Amazon in order to connect remote settlements is not feasible, starlink really does have a good use case there.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        17 days ago

        And ocean communication.

        It’s amazingly clear none of these people have ever tried to use any of the existing Geostationary satellite data networks.

        They are slow as shit. Not just by modern standards, by any standards. HughesNet is one of the remaining satellite Internet providers.

        $50/mo gives you 50Mbps speeds, 100GB of “Priority Data”, whatever the fuck that is (probably your 50Mbps data, then it slows). And that price is only for a year, then it is $75/mo. They also love to tout a 30ms latency somehow, but that’s just a damned lie. Latency for a Geostationary satellite is around 500ms, or roughly the speed of light because that’s physics. So I have no idea where they think they’re getting 30ms, unless that’s only the additional latency they’re claiming AFTER it bounces off the satellite and reaches the ground to be routed to the internet on their end.

        • A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com
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          17 days ago

          Starlink is a constellation of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, not geostationary satellites. That means that the ground station (i.e. subscriber equipment) talks to one satellite as it comes into view, and over time that satellite moves across the sky, and they switch to another satellite. This means the latency is highly variable as the distance changes, but at its lowest is much lower than a geostationary satellite since it is far closer.

    • sczlbutt@lemmy.pubsub.fun
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      17 days ago

      Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about. Upgrading fiber networks brings access to extremely rural communities? Upgrade what? There is no fiber cross crossing Brazil you useful idiot

      • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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        17 days ago

        Upgrade what? There is no fiber cross crossing Brazil

        Congratulations on answering your own question. Now calm down.