SpaceX President tells Brazil to 'stop harassing Starlink'

09/06/2024 12:26 PM

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell asked Brazil to stop its harassment of the company’s high-speed internet service known as Starlink after the country froze its financial accounts and threatened to end its ability to be an ISP.

Tensions between Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alex de Moraes and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have been rising for weeks.

Things truly took a turn when the government froze the company’s bank accounts, SpaceX, and Musk’s social media platform X felt sanctions from Moraes.

X is now illegal to access in Brazil, and although Starlink and virtual private networks (VPN) are available, these are illegal loopholes and could cost over $8,900 in fines for daily use.

Brazil’s decision to freeze Starlink’s finances also prompted a response from the FCC, as its commissioner, Brendan Carr, wrote a scathing letter to Brazil’s Telecommunication Agency, known as ANATEL, calling their actions “unlawful” and a “failure to respect universal and basic tenets of transparency, fair notice, and due process.”

FCC Commissioner sends scathing letter to Brazil following X and Starlink sanctions

Now, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell is also requesting that Brazil stop what she feels are unnecessary sanctions on Starlink.

Starlink aims to bring internet to rural areas, so freezing the bank accounts and threatening to take away its license to operate as an ISP would also hurt Brazilian people, not just the company.

This was one of my favorite days at work, bringing @Starlink's high-speed internet to a school in the Amazon and meeting (and getting hugs from) these extraordinary students.

This picture shows just a few of the hundreds of thousands of amazing Brazilian people whom we are… pic.twitter.com/p6ySSLta6t

— Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell) September 5, 2024

Ultimately, tensions need to be relieved between the two sides. Starlink is bringing so many people in Brazil access to the internet, and the government’s move to interfere with its operations impacts its citizens more than it does Starlink or SpaceX.

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