Web pages load at a crawling pace. Video streams glitch and freeze. Outside Bolivia’s biggest cities, the nearest Internet signal is sometimes hours away over treacherous mountain roads.
So when Elon Musk’s Starlink offered Bolivia fast, affordable Internet beamed from space, many expected the Andean nation of 12 millions to celebrate. Instead, Bolivia said no thanks.
Starlink, the satellite Internet service from Musk’s private space company, SpaceX, has made remarkable strides in South America, spreading to almost every country and bringing high-speed Internet to the region’s most far-flung corners.
But Starlink’s advance has been stymied by Bolivia, which refused to give it an operating licence last year, with experts and officials citing worries over its unchecked dominance everywhere it has set up shop, instead choosing to rely on the country’s aging Chinese satellite.
The decision to reject Starlink has puzzled and angered people in Bolivia, where Internet speeds are the slowest in South America and hundreds of thousands remain offline. Without Internet, people often struggle to get access to jobs.
But in keeping Starlink out, Bolivia has joined other nations that have begun to raise alarm about SpaceX and the political influence Musk can exert through his control of a telecommunications network used by governments, militaries and people across the world.