⚠ Rights Granted Can Be ContestedModerate threat

Spectrum and orbital rights are a formidable moat precisely because regulators control them — which is also the vulnerability. What a regulator grants, a regulator can condition, share, or revisit, and Starlink's rivals are lobbying hard to loosen its grip: to force spectrum sharing, to cap the size of any one constellation, to open orbital shells to competitors. International coordination adds another layer of risk, as foreign governments weigh whether to let an American network dominate their skies at all. The first-mover claim is strong, but it is held at the pleasure of a patchwork of authorities, each of whom faces pressure to ensure the most valuable resource in orbit does not belong to one company forever — least of all one serving 10.3 million subscribers and counting¹.