Chinese rival to Starlink strikes deal to enter Brazil

China’s low Earth orbit satellite company SpaceSail, which aims to challenge Elon Musk’s Starlink, signed an agreement to enter the Brazilian market, the company said on Wednesday, during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Brasilia.

SpaceSail signed a memorandum with Brazilian state telecom Telebras to provide satellite communications and broadband Internet services to the Latin American country.

The accord is one of many during Xi’s meetings with Brazilian peer Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at the presidential residence, following a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Rio de Janeiro this week.

Low Earth orbit satellites usually operate at altitudes of 300 km to 2,000 km (186 to 1,240 miles) above the Earth’s surface, with the advantage of being cheaper and providing more efficient transmission than satellites at higher orbits.

SpaceX’s Starlink is a growing commercial broadband constellation that has over 6,000 satellites in space and is used by consumers, companies and government agencies.

The agreement, which marks the start of SpaceSail’s overseas business, comes soon after Brazil’s Supreme Court temporarily froze the bank accounts of Starlink in the country to force billionaire Elon Musk to pay fines in a dispute between the court and social media platform X, also owned by Musk.

“What we are working on is so that Brazilian society can have options of more than one company offering the service that is essential and fundamental for the population today, especially in remote areas,” Communications Minister Juscelino Filho told CNN Brasil.

China currently has 1,059 satellites in orbit, 492 of which are commercial satellites, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Chinese private and state-owned firms, including weapons makers, have started launching dozens of LEO satellites, vowing to catch up with Starlink by creating mega-constellations of thousands of satellites each.

“The satellite communication services provided by SpaceSail for Brazil will be realized on the basis of the Thousand Sails Constellation, a giant low-orbit satellite constellation adopting a full-frequency-band, multi-layer and multi-orbit design,” SpaceSail said in a statement.

Chinese researchers in the People’s Liberation Army have over the past two years studied the deployment of Starlink in the war in Ukraine and warned of the risks it poses to China if it finds itself in an armed conflict with the United States.

Starlink’s clients in Brazil include the armed forces.