Starlink has been in the Brazilian crosshairs since the blocking of Musk’s social media firm X. Elon Musk’s satellite-based Internet service provider Starlink called back on Tuesday to say it would comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice’s order to block the billionaire businessman’s social media platform, X.
Last week, the Supreme Court ordered a nationwide ban on the platform after it failed to appoint a legal representative, following an order by top judge Alexandre de Moraes. The ruling was upheld by the panel of federal Supreme Court judges on Monday. He ordered the freezing of Starlink’s assets last week, possibly for use to pay fines owed by X that already exceeded $3 million (€2.7 million), because the two firms are part of the same economic group.
Starlink filed an appeal, its law firm Veirano told the Associated Press on Aug. 30 but hasn’t commented further in the days since. It had previously told the regulator unofficially that it would not comply unless de Moraes changed tack.
“Regardless of the unlawful treatment of Starlink in freezing our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” said the company statement. “We continue to pursue all avenues of legal and administrative appeals, as do others who believe that @alexandre’s recent order violates the Brazilian constitution.”
Had Starlink continued to thumb its nose at de Moraes by granting access, telecommunications regulator Anatel could have eventually seized equipment from Starlink’s 23 ground stations that ensure the quality of its internet service, Arthur Coimbra, an Anatel board member, said on a video call from his office in Brasilia.
Already some legal experts questioned de Moraes’ basis for freezing Starlink’s accounts since the latter’s parent company SpaceX was not integrated with X. Musk noted on X that the shareholder structure of both companies was different.
X clashed with de Moraes because of its resistance to blocking users of far-right activists accused of undermining Brazilian democracy and allies of former President Jair Bolsonaro-and said he wants an in-country legal representative so that Brazilian authorities can use leverage over the company by having someone to arrest.
And Musk has been posting relentlessly in recent days, lambasting de Moraes as a criminal. “This evil tyrant is disgraced of judges’ robes,” Musk wrote on X in a post accompanied by a photo of de Moraes some 17 hours before Starlink declared its decision to comply with the order.
The volte-face comes as a relief to those in Brazil who have grown dependent upon Starlink. The company has said it has more than 250,000 customers in the country, many of whom are in remote areas that otherwise would not have access to rapid internet.
It was for access to the internet in so many of these communities that Starlink replaced slow, unstable fixed antennae. Its plug-and-play facilities and quality links have transformed communication in some communities surpassing major Amazonian cities in terms of speed.
The Forest People Connection project started in 2022 with Musk-donated Starlink terminals, bringing them so far to 1,014 remote communities, including riverine and Indigenous peoples. The Yanomami are among them. Living in the most far-flung corner of Brazil’s rainforest, they faced a severe health crisis, while now they have Starlink-powered telemedicine consults and reliable means of communication for the emergency transport of patients.
Improved connectivity has also facilitated criminal activities, such as gold mining. While Brazil, with its vast territory and huge swaths of rural and forested areas, is a key growth market for Starlink, the presence isn’t yet as big as Musk led some to believe.
On Sunday, he reposted someone else’s post showing him meeting Bolsonaro back in 2022, and Musk said that the “duo” claimed to have struck a deal to bring Starlink into 19,000 schools. Musk bragged about the deal on X at the time. That never came to fruition. By March 2023, no contract between SpaceX and the communications ministry had been signed, and only three terminals had been installed in Amazon schools on a 12-month trial basis.
The press office for the ministry did not have an immediate response to an AP request on Tuesday seeking an update on those contracts. Brazil’s Education Ministry meanwhile told the AP it is up to states to decide whether to sign contracts with internet providers. According to Anatel, since January 2022, when it started operating in Brazil, Starlink has captured 0.5 percent of the internet market share, well below that of the country’s leading providers.
