For most of the space age, “satellite internet” meant a single large spacecraft in geostationary orbit, a slow link, and a bill that only made sense if you had no other option. That world is gone. Thousands of small satellites now circle a few hundred kilometers up, and the question is no longer whether broadband from space works, but who controls it, what it costs, and who gets left out.
Orbital Uplink exists to track that shift, independently.
Why this blog
The satellite internet story is being told mostly by the companies building the constellations. That coverage is useful, but it is rarely neutral. Subscriber numbers get announced without context. Contract values get rounded up. “Coverage” maps blur the line between licensed, launched, and actually available.
We try to do something narrower and more honest: follow the industry closely, explain what is actually happening, and link to sources you can verify yourself.
What we cover
- The constellations — Starlink, Amazon’s Kuiper, Eutelsat OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, and the regional players in China and elsewhere.
- Direct-to-cell — the race to turn ordinary phones into satellite terminals, and whether the physics and economics hold up.
- The ground segment — user terminals, gateways, and the antenna technology that quietly decides cost and capacity.
- Spectrum and policy — ITU filings, national licensing, and the increasingly crowded fight over orbital and frequency rights.
- The economics — pricing, capacity, churn, and the hard question of which of these systems can actually pay for themselves.
How we work
We are independent and unofficial. We do not speak for any operator, and we have no commercial relationship with the companies we cover. When we state a figure — a subscriber count, a launch cadence, a spectrum grant — we cite where it came from. When something is uncertain, we say so rather than inventing a number.
Thanks for reading. The constellations are only getting bigger.