Amazon continued its ongoing spat with SpaceX this week, ripping into the Elon Musk-led company in its latest filings with federal authorities. In a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission, Amazon took issue with the conduct of SpaceX arguing that the space company and other companies led by Elon Musk believe that “rules are for other people.”
The two companies have been engaged in a dispute over Starlink during the last few months. Elon Musk has lamented growing lawsuits from Amazon against his company. In fact, in one Twitter post Musk said that “suing SpaceX was Bezos's full-time job.” Amazon, however, maintains that the concerns it has raised are purely business-related and went on to accuse Musk of making the tiff personal.
The e-commerce giant accused Musk of deflecting from the real issues on the table by using targeted attacks against Amazon and its affiliated companies. The e-commerce platform also noted that this pattern of behavior is not new.
Amazon accused companies run by Musk of dodging rules and fighting regulators at all turns when they are asked to comply with expected regulations. Pointing to reports by the Wall Street Journal detailing Elon Musk’s “war of regulation”, Amazon also accused the SpaceX CEO of being at the forefront of this type of behavior.
The dispute between Amazon and SpaceX is linked to plans by the space agency to expand its Starlink satellites into Gen2. Amazon is also planning to become a major player in space.
The bone of contention appears to be the proposals submitted by the two companies to expand satellite coverage. Amazon notes that it has submitted two proposals with the Federal Communications Commission on how to do this while Musk’s SpaceX has only submitted one.
The e-commerce giant is therefore calling on Musk and SpaceX to submit a second proposal to level the playing field. But there is no doubt SpaceX’s Starlink is way ahead. Amazon, through its subsidiary Kuiper Systems, is planning to follow SpaceX’s footsteps in creating a global interconnected internet network using thousands of satellites.
The aim is to provide fast speed internet to customers all over the world. The plan by Kuiper Systems right now is to deploy at least 3,236 satellites into orbit. But it is believed that it will take well over 10 years to do this. SpaceX’s Starlink, on the other hand, is already rolling. Even though the internet service is in the beta stage, it has managed to attract over 100,000 users in 14 countries.
As we speak, Starlink has also launched up to 1,740 satellites into space already. The Musk-led company is, however, planning a huge rollout of second-generation satellites that will see it deploy up to 30,000 satellites into space.
This will quite literally give SpaceX global domination of this market. But it seems Amazon will continue to fight for a piece of the pie. It’s not the first time Bezos is filing a lawsuit against SpaceX. Blue Origin, a space company founded by the Amazon billionaire, has also filed suits against NASA forwarding contracts to SpaceX in its “Boots on the Moon” program.
