Kymeta Calls Musk’s Starlink Ukraine Actions ‘Egregious’

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UPDATE Rivals of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications are gaining attention from the Pentagon as Musk draws criticism for Starlink’s unavailability in contested areas like Ukraine. Musk threatened to cut off financial support for Starlink service in Ukraine, an essential communications tool to combat Russia’s invasion. Then he appeared to do an about face, Inside Towers reported. 

The Defense Department, meanwhile, confirmed it’s looking for other satellite companies to do business with. One competitor to Starlink is Kymeta, a Bill Gates-funded company that has both donated and sold its technology to Ukraine. Kymeta’s chief development officer Bill Marks told Bloomberg Musk’s threats to cut off service in Ukraine and limit availability in contested areas like Crimea were “egregious.”

Starlink did not respond to requests for comment.

Kymeta President and co-CEO Walter Berger said Gates’ continued interest in the company is due to the technology’s future role in “democratizing connectivity” and support of larger initiatives like fixing rural broadband silos. The U.S. military expected to see this kind of technology in 2027, Marks added. “It’s disrupted them and they’re trying to figure out ‘How do you field that five years before we expected to see it?’,” he said. “And then you have commanders who are going, ‘I don’t care what you expected, I want them now.’”

Kymeta currently works with the DoD and is in talks with other NATO countries about its antennas that have held up in various ground conflicts over the last two years, according to Marks. The company is positioning itself as a better and more reliable satcom provider than Starlink, a message aimed at the Pentagon.

“The reason the U.S. military likes our technology is that if you were an adversary and you do something to compromise one of the satellites, our antenna will switch to another satellite. And it does it all within less than a second,” Marks told Bloomberg. “The soldiers would’ve never lost connectivity.”

The military agencies that Kymeta has spoken with want flexibility, redundancy, and security. Marks tells them that Kymeta is modular—it can communicate with LEO orbit and GEO orbit satellites as well as cellular networks. He makes a point of noting Starlink works as a single network system. “The biggest difference between our terminals and the Starlink terminals, besides the fact that we would never shut them off, is our terminals work on the move,” Marks said.

Kymeta also supports maritime and industrial vehicles used by FEMA and firefighters battling wildfires. The company announced a broadband partnership with OneWeb’s LEO satellite network that’s set to launch in early 2023, Inside Towers reported.

By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief

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