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Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

> interesting to see SpaceX launching a direct competitor to Starlink.

Interesting, but entirely expected. They'd be investigated in a heartbeat if they didn't.

SpaceX is an american company that is subject to the Sherman act, which deals with domestic and interstate commerce. OneWeb is an international competitor based in UK that has no standing to make a complaint under the Sherman act.

No similar antitrust provision or treaty exists in international commerce; charges against a monopoly must be brought within a certain national jurisdiction, SpaceX does not have partners or subsidiaries that offer launch services outside the US.

I’m sure Oneweb will have a US subsidiary and offer service to US customers through it. They manufacture their satellites in the US. There’s no way they wouldn’t have standing.

But that subsidiary would need to build and operate a satellite constellation, not simply distribute internet services or act as a purchasing agent of a foreign competitor.

Stone Brewing does distribution for a lot of smaller local breweries

I'd like to think that cutthroat competition is not the only way of doing business

In the beer space, Sam Adams used both their massive purchasing power and stockpile to provide hops to small brewers during a shortage.

Funny, I think I recall someone at Stone citing that story, specifically as a model for their own corporate behavior, when I was on a tour of one of their breweries.

I don't think so. That's not anti-competive. Its like intel refusing to make amd chips on intel fabs. Perfectly logical

I think that only works when there is other capacity available. If Intel was suddenly the only fab available to western companies but they refused to fab AMD chips I suspect that would result in intervention.

Not so sure. AMD is always free to build a fab to make their own chips. It's perfectly reasonable to refuse to serve a direct competitor...or offer the service at a huge expense that would make it unreasonable for the competitor.

There is extensive legal precedent, and numerous outright laws in many jurisdictions restraining anticompetitive practices such as this.

'AMD is always free to build a fab to make their own chips.'

By that logic there us no limits on a monopoly abusing its power, after all you are always free to create your own water supply company, electric distribution company, etc.

I get what you're saying, but SpaceX is a bit more public/private than Intel, and likely the government would be upset and better fund competitors if SpaceX was monopolizing launch capabilities. Their strategy (at least for now, as I would understand it) is to be neutral for launching cargo/services/etc. - likely OneWeb is paying more to deploy than SpaceX pays itself internally for Starlink deployments as well.

You're saying that SpaceX, a privately owned company that has some contracts with different parts of the US gov't would find themselves in trouble with the government if they refused to launch satellites from a foreign owned company?

And you're saying that the government would go out of their way to fund alternatives to SpaceX because of this?

That seems a bit implausible.

"foreign-owned" in this case is still the UK i.e the closest ally we have today. So I don't think you'll see the same sort of American protectionism you might see with e.g a Chinese competitor.

Therefore... yeah, nothing's stopping the DoJ (guessing the FTC would make the referral?) from pushing an antitrust matter. But I certainly can't say for sure; I'm not a lawyer.

Where's the law that says that an American business must sell their product or service to a foreign company?

> Where's the law that says that an American business must sell their product or service to a foreign company?

As I understand it, it's covered by the various antitrust laws in the United States. And it's not so much a "foreign company" thing so much as it's an unfair advantage for any one company thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Again, not a lawyer. But my lay reading would say that it would feel comparable to the action the feds took against Microsoft for trying to stifle Netscape. But I'm sure there are far better analogues.

Foreign owned maybe, but the satellites are manufactured in the US. There are US commercial interests at stake in Oneweb, and the services it intends to offer to US clients too.

Under antitrust law, SpaceX would theoretically be made to split off StarLink from the launch business so that the launch business would have no incentive to prioritize StarLink over other sattelites.

In practice though, antitrust laws aren’t enforced very strictly and government contractors are treated leniently, so probably nothing would happen.

How?

SpaceX has no stranglehold over the market.

Presumably 'internally' Starlink is seen as a major recurring customer who has agreed to an exclusive purchase contract for better rates; and also to take on higher risk mission slots (like the 12th launch of rockets which are making new records for launches).

Is SpaceX a subsidiary of Starlink? Cause if not then it's not that logical to me...

Starlink is not a separate company, it's a product of SpaceX.

Intel doesn’t sell fab services, so it’s not an issue. However if you offer and advertise a service at a listed price (as SpaceX does), you can’t always refuse to provide that service to specific potential clients just because it serves your commercial interests. It very much depends on the specifics of the service and market competitive situation.

This is factually incorrect. Intel has in the past and is currently trying to sell and expand their foundry services. They just happen to have done a horrible job of it so far and have repeatedly lost foundry customers (like Achronix) as a result.

US DoD and NASA now have effectively SPOF reliance on SpaceX...they aren't going to be "investigated" for anything

I don't see why the government contracts would act as a shield for SpaceX. It's not like being forced to carry a competitor is going to make them unable to carry the government's rockets.

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