[ursAxZA]

Ultimately it just becomes a question of where you want the choke point to live — in a state actor, or in a private operator.

Neither option is risk-free; the failure modes simply differ.

A government can shut you off for political reasons, a corporation can shut you off for contractual or geopolitical ones.

As long as the system assumes centralized stewardship for safety or reliability, someone will inevitably hold the switch — the only variable is who.

[dylan604]

> in a state actor, or in a private operator.

multiple satellite operators are coming on line. what are the odds all of them coordinate to shut down in one region invalidating using the other providers as fail over?

[ursAxZA]

I might be mistaken, but as far as I know there is currently no other LEO broadband provider that is meaningfully comparable at a global scale.

Starlink is often treated as the reference point not because it is perfect or fully resilient, but because there is no second network at a similar scale that could realistically serve as a failover today.

If we imagine a hypothetical future where three mature operators exist, then yes — absent coordinated political or geopolitical action, at least one network might remain online.

However, even that surviving operator would not necessarily provide full coverage of the affected region. Global redundancy is extremely hard in practice, because maintaining continuous, worldwide LEO coverage is not free — it requires massive capex and opex, ground stations, regulatory permissions, and local political approval.

True worldwide failover remains more of a theoretical construct than an operational reality.

[Hackbraten]

== Low Earth Orbit

[Thorrez]

What about failing over from LEO to geosynchronous? E.g. Viasat?

[dylan604]

Is anyone left doing network from GEO? Places like HughesNet were soooo slow that I can't imagine their users have not all switched to Starlink.

[Thorrez]

Viasat is still doing it.