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Comment by mlindner | Hacker News Reader

The title is intellectually dishonest. Eutelsat is not in any way a rival to Starlink. They are not at all playing in the same league.

Starlink has over 7000 satellites. Eutelsat has several hundred they got from their purchase of OneWeb and isn't increasing them by much.

The reason why Eutelsat stock is increasing is because investors think that Europe is going to go nuts with "buy European" in the military space which would allow them to sell their services at inflated pricing as it's no longer a fair market between OneWeb and Starlink.

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> The reason why Eutelsat stock is increasing is because investors think that Europe is going to go nuts with "buy European" in the military space which would allow them to sell their services at inflated pricing as it's no longer a fair market between OneWeb and Starlink.

I cannot follow. Where did this happen? Isn't it the US that is not offering Starlink anymore? And did Eutelsat increase prices or did their competition change TOS? This is a form of victim blaming.

The US has not stopped providing Starlink in any way. This is entirely based around fear that the US government may suddenly stop supplying Ukraine with Starlink connectivity. Also Eutelsat is not a victim. My point is that they're capitalizing on Europe's fears.

(And there is no historic precedent for Starlink to stop serving anyone either as they have never done so in the past.)

There hasn't been any threats to stop providing Ukraine with Starlink either. (There was a single news media source claiming this, but it was denied by SpaceX, Musk, Zelensky and Ukrainian officials.)

> (And there is no historic precedent for Starlink to stop serving anyone either as they have never done so in the past.)

Hmm...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64579267

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-could-cut-ukraines-acces...

> This is entirely based around fear that the US government may suddenly stop supplying Ukraine with Starlink connectivity

And is that not a valid fear? Why is Elon/Starlink's denial of threats to cut off Ukraine more trustworthy than Reuter's reporting?

Isn't the US government capitalising on fear as we speak in the recent Tariff wars and such?

Starlink needs competition and I hope that will come.

Is that fear irrational? Let me state some facts:

1. Elon Musk is in full control of Starlink

2. Elon is politically aligned with Trump

3. Trump is pressuring Ukraine by taking away any US support. He paused military equipment delivery that was already approved, and now cut intelligence sharing.

It doesn't seem that far fetched that they would use cutting Starlink in these negotiations.

A counter argument could be that Elon still wants to get revenue for this (I think Poland is paying for it).

In my opinion, Starlink is a threat to European security, in an ever growing hostile US. Remember that Trump explicitly didn't exclude taking EU territory by force.

Even if Starlink isn't cut, they would most likely use it in their negotiations for Ukraine to "peacefully" surrender (partly) to Russia.

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