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Comment by aurizon | Hacker News Reader

Most African countries operate internet access via buddy/bribery cartels to tax the people highly and enrich the bribers. They hate Starlink's access to anyone who can import a starlink terminal and set it up and they seize them whenever they find them. If Starlink has a licensed path = they would want the lost bribes to be replaced by their fees. All in all = a huge drag on internet access in Africa. A few countries escape this - a precious few..

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It's more nuanced than that. African governments, like any other government, want to regulate and control access to all communications and related infrastucture. Governments for example would like a killswitch they can force Musk to push if need be.

Also ISPs are big businesses with telecom companies paying huge sums for licenses (3G,4G licensing etc). Starlink is seen as jumping to the front of the line with little to no similar license requirements (or bribes if you want to call them).

Yes, it does upset their apple cart = what he intended IMHO. The sale of spectrum in the USA/Canada also lards up costs under the guise of 'free market competition' LOL = why internet is USA/Canada is so expensive there compared to many places in Europe/Asia

Dosent every country sell spectrum for 4/5G telecom?

https://pts.se/en does it in Sweden.

Kind of how it has to be?

US spectrum auctions maximize for dollars in governor coffers instead of value to citizen.

The government could give the spectrum to telcos for free. AFAIK spectrum was free (with reasonable usage restrictions) in the US for a long time.

For 3G, instead of selling the spectrum the PTS in Sweden did a "beauty contest" and gave it away to the companies that promised the biggest buildout in the smallest amount of time.

Sounded like a great idea, the money that would go to a spectrum license would instead go to building out the network instead, but it was kind of a flop. Telia was left without a license and had to share licenses with Tele2 who didn't want to invest as much, and Orange got a license and immediately said "nevermind this is too expensive" and canceled their plans. And then everyone took 3 years longer than they promised in their proposals so it didn't even speed up the buildout.

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