Connect with us

Technologies

Elon Musk blames Indian ‘oligarchs’ for stalling Starlink launch

Space X founder Elon Musk accused oligarchs in India of keeping Starlink out of the country to protect their monopoly over consumers.

SpaceX

The country’s telecom and internet service market is dominated by Reliance

“We are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people,” Musk said Wednesday stateside in a post on X, without naming his rivals. “You can guess who they are,” he said.

On Thursday, the Indian government said suggestions that its regulatory framework was unfair or discriminatory were “baseless and misconceived.”

Licenses have been granted to three global satellite communication services providers, the government said, without naming the companies, adding that every licensee was “required to demonstrate compliance with security conditions.” Starlink received the government license last year.

In a second post, Musk said Starlink in India would “enable high-speed, affordable internet connectivity for those who cannot afford current prices.” At present, Reliance Industries-owned Jio is the country’s largest telecom operator and has been widely credited for slashing high-speed mobile data costs in the country since the company’s launch a decade ago.

Starlink’s competition

In June, Jio Platforms announced plans to roll out low-orbit satellite communications in the country. Akash Ambani, the son of Mukesh, told shareholders that the company is partnering with leading global constellation providers to lease satellite capacity as it looks for a quick rollout of satellite connectivity.

SpaceX last year had announced deals with Jio and India’s second-largest telecom service provider, Bharti Airtel, to roll out Starlink internet services across India. There seems to have been little progress on that front, with Starlink yet to launch its service in the country.

CNBC has reached out to Airtel and Reliance Industries for comments.

There are 11,000 Starlink satellites currently in orbit that provide service to people in over 170 countries, Lauren Dreyer, SpaceX’s Vice President of Starlink business operations, said while speaking at India Mobile Congress on Wednesday.

Starlink works with government and private companies to close the digital divide by providing internet access to people in remote places, she said, adding that it has been “working for years” in India to do the same, and mentioned the company’s memorandum of understanding with Airtel and Reliance Jio.

Elon Musk’s satellite internet services company is also facing pushback from regulators in India over security concerns, which the company has denied. In June, Bloomberg reported that regulators in New Delhi had frozen approvals for Starlink over fears that its terminals could be used despite the service not being licensed.

The Indian government is concerned about a foreign player operating in a sensitive technology like satellite communications, and there are questions around how Starlink’s terminals will be “geofenced” and whether the data will be localized, said Neil Shah, a partner at Counterpoint Research.

Starlink is likely to get approval to launch around the time when Indian companies also develop their own satellite internet services, Shah said. If Starlink is launched without creating a “level playing field,” it will dominate satellite communications services in India, he added.

Technologies

Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets

This site is now part of
Versant
. By continuing to use this service, you agree to our
Terms
. You also acknowledge that our updated
Privacy Policy
applies, including to your existing data. For details on your data rights, click
here
. 

On this service, we and our vendors…

This site is now part of

Versant

. By continuing to use this service, you agree to our

Terms

. You also acknowledge that our updated

Privacy Policy

applies, including to your existing data. For details on your data rights, click

here

.

On this service, we and our vendors use cookies and other tools (“Cookies”) to store and access information on your device, such as device identifiers, IP address, and your browser type. You can access a list of all our potential

1030

vendors by selecting “IAB and Google Vendors,” although we may work with only a small selection of these on this service.

Your data may be used to save and communicate your privacy choices; ensure security, prevent fraud, and debug our products and services; personalize advertising and content; for advertising and content measurement; to conduct audience research and services development; so we can improve our services and develop new ones; to match and combine offline data with your online activity; and for social features.

We may share this data with select vendors with your consent.

Click “I Accept”, to consent to our use of these Cookies or “Reject All” to reject our use of these Cookies. Click “Manage Choices” to set your preferences.

If you previously made choices with respect to Versant’s use of Cookies on this browser and device, you will need to update them. You can adjust your choices any time through the “Cookie Preferences” link in the footer of relevant Versant sites or in-app settings.

Visit our

Cookie Notice

and

Privacy Policy

to learn more.

We will also use other Cookies that are essential or related to our services, including for security and fraud prevention.

Continue Reading

Technologies

Major League Baseball proposes shortening its regular season as it pushes for a salary cap

Major League Baseball proposed a return to a shorter 154-game regular season schedule as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap.

Major League Baseball proposed shortening its regular season to 154 games from 162 as it attempts to convince players to approve a salary cap in the league’s next collective bargaining agreement. The new shortened schedule would begin in 2029.

MLB’s CBA expires Dec. 1, after the conclusion of this season’s World Series. The most contentious issue is the introduction of a salary cap on players. MLB is the only major American sports league without a cap. The league has failed to convince the players’ union to adopt one in several previous CBA negotiations.

A 154-game season was used between 1904 and 1960, except for 1918 and 1919 when the schedule was abbreviated because of World War I. For the past 66 years, 162 regular season games has been the standard, though some seasons have been shortened.

Lopping off eight games “is good for player health, while also creating a new national broadcast window to showcase our most exciting teams and players,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement. “A shorter regular season unlocks making October even better for our fans — with fewer weekday afternoon games, a longer Division Series, and more opportunities to see the game’s best pitchers on the biggest stage.”

As part of the proposal, MLB wants to cement Monday as an exclusive broadcast window for one or two games to “increase national exposure for the sport.” The league could conceivably sell a package of Monday-only games to a streaming service looking to increase subscriber and advertising revenue. Every team not playing in the national game or games would have an off day.

Teams that play Monday would be off on Thursday, MLB said.

In addition to lowering the number of regular season games, MLB would extend the divisional round of the playoffs to seven games from five and would allow the higher-seeded teams in both the wild card round and in the divisional round to choose their lower-seeded opponent.

The Major League Baseball Players Association responded to the MLB’s proposed changes by claiming the league “once again made clear that all of its proposals are contingent on players’ agreement to a salary cap, a system that guts player rights and compensation, as well as its other anti-player proposals.”

An MLB spokesperson confirmed that Thursday’s proposed changes are contingent on adopting a cap – and a salary floor, which would force teams to spend a certain amount on players. Still, the MLBPA said it would review the proposed changes. “Players will weigh in on these proposals and we will respond at the bargaining table,” MLBPA said in a statement.

Continue Reading

Technologies

Hurricane Isaias disrupts U.S. oil production in Gulf of Mexico, threatens refineries

The hurricane could tighten a fuel market that is already facing big disruptions from the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Hurricane Isaias is disrupting U.S. crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and could limit about 2% of the country’s refining capacity, at a time when fuel markets are already tight around the world.

Isaias is churning toward Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and is expected to make landfall Friday night or early Saturday.

As of Thursday, oil companies had shut in about 1.3 million barrels per day, or roughly 63% of total U.S. production in the Gulf, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

The hurricane appeared to be veering away from the dense refining region in southern Louisiana near New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

But the storm could affect Chevron

“Of course, losing any refinery capacity when diesel supplies are at their lowest level for this time of year since the EIA began reporting in 1982 is not a good thing,” Lipow wrote in a Friday note, referring to the Energy Information Administration.

Chevron’s refinery at Pascagoula remains operational, spokesperson Ross Allen said Thursday. Vertex officials weren’t immediately available for comment about its Saraland refinery.

″The biggest risk to these two refineries are a loss of electricity or flooding damage,” Lipow wrote in a note Friday. If the refineries do shut down, it would take one to two weeks to restart them if they did not sustain damage, he said.

Refineries on the Gulf Coast are running at 95% of their capacity, so there is no slack in the system to make up for lost production, Lipow said.

Diesel prices have soared as the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East knock out refining capacity. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries forced Moscow to ban diesel exports. Iran and its Houthi allies have also attacked refineries in the Middle East.

U.S. refiners have stepped in to take advantage of wide profit margins to export diesel around the world, particularly to Europe.

In the past, fuel prices rose while crude prices fell during outages at Gulf refineries, said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners. That’s a result of those refineries not demanding crude and not producing fuel for consumers, Book told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday.

Lipow warned that tanker traffic will also be disrupted.

“Tankers will be delayed delivering crude oil to the refineries while other tankers are delayed loading gasoline, jet fuel and diesel out of the refineries,” the analyst said. “Florida will experience delays in receiving gasoline, jet fuel and diesel.”

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © Verum World Media