Better coverage, but exploited for crime? Southeast Asia confronts Starlink internet dilemma

BANGKOK: It was Feb 20 when the first flights carrying Chinese nationals extracted from scamming compounds in the Myanmar border city of Myawaddy took to the sky.
Joint Thai-Chinese operations had been launched to disrupt criminal enterprises reportedly holding hundreds of thousands of people and generating billions of dollars.
They seemed effective; thousands of compound workers were released from captivity and streamed across the Thai border, close to the city of Mae Sot.
In the aftermath of the raids, Erin West found herself on the border observing what was unfolding. It was not the first time the self-proclaimed 'scam fighter' had been there.
But she was seeing for the first time what she had heard through message groups that included individuals identified as being inside the compounds across the river: That satellite internet provider Starlink was being used, its terminals smuggled into the borderlands by criminal actors.
In their hands, fast, reliable and unauthorised internet was now powering a spate of illicit activities.
Starlink, operated by American billionaire Elon Musk's space technology company SpaceX, works using a series of low-Earth orbit satellites to deliver signals, while cellular networks use on-ground infrastructure across different bandwidths to deliver internet coverage.
While its services are not authorised for use in Myanmar and illicit activities are not allowed under Starlink policies, criminal groups are able to use their illegal devices to access spillover internet bandwidth that Starlink provides to legitimate users in the broader region.
The Myanmar Internet Project estimated last year that more than 3,000 Starlink devices were active in the country and were the 'the only viable solution for instant internet', one of its analysts told Voice of America (VOA), given the multiple internet shutdowns by authorities there.
The Myanmar Internet Project is a collective of researchers and practitioners tracking digital developments in Myanmar.
The satellite internet is also being used by other groups like humanitarian organisations and rebel groups in conflict with the junta, it found.
During their operation, Thai authorities had attempted to throttle the criminal groups' activity by switching off electricity and telecom access. What West realised was that it no longer really mattered.
She was originally tipped off to Starlink's presence in the area through messages last year from someone identified as being inside a scamming compound.
'This person, over and over, kept saying, 'just get them to turn off the Starlink. If they turned off the Starlink, that would stop this whole problem',' she said.
The messages prompted her to write to the General Counsel of SpaceX last July in alarm.
West is a former deputy district attorney in California and the founder of Operation Shamrock, a movement dedicated to disrupting the global 'pig butchering' epidemic. Pig butchering refers to love-and-investment scams in which the scammers groom their victims over a period of time.
West said she did not receive a reply from SpaceX: 'I was hopeful. I was disappointed.'
She was not the only one to reach out to Musk's operation. Rangsiman Rome, a Thai opposition parliamentarian and chair of committee on national security and border issues also expressed concerns about the use of Starlink by criminal groups.
'We've been exposing scam centres in Southeast Asia and uncovered solid proof that cybercriminals in this region are exploiting Starlink for massive fraud,' he wrote on X, tagging Musk, in February.
'This is a serious issue with real-world consequences. We have been pushing for immediate actions from our government to cut electricity and internet to the compounds, but they have begun to utilise Starlink to access the internet instead. Could you look into this matter?'
Earlier this year, WIRED magazine also published findings that at least eight compounds, and hundreds of individual mobile phones, along the border were accessing Starlink.
'Starlink receivers are obvious. They're all over these buildings. We know that the compounds are reliant on that form of communication,' West said.
Other media investigations by Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal have also more broadly uncovered similar trends of Starlink being accessed illegally in multiple locations around the world, including in Africa, the Middle East and central Asia.
SpaceX did not respond to CNA's specific questions about these issues, including about its awareness of unauthorised access of its internet in Myanmar and what measures it was taking to prevent such action.
'If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorised party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,' the company posted on X last year.
TOP LEVEL MEETINGS
On the same day the repatriation flights were taking place from Northern Thailand, about 1,000 kilometres away, Musk's company representatives were making a pitch to formally expand their operations elsewhere in the region.
Cambodia's prime minister Hun Manet, alongside other national agencies, was meeting with Rebecca Hunter, the marketing director of SpaceX and Starlink, to discuss the expansion of satellite internet in the kingdom.
In Cambodia, more than 150,000 people were estimated by aid organisation USAID to be ensnared by the scamming industry. Industry observers say scamming compounds operate in plain sight and are also reliant on stable internet connections.
With purported compounds popping up in many remote parts of the country, West observed, the risk is high in her opinion that Starlink would also be used for nefarious purposes, just as it is in Myanmar.
'My concern is that existing infrastructure for cell service will likely be inadequate to support the need in these remote locations and Starlink will fit beautifully into (scammers') ability to transact this bad business,' she said.
While Starlink could deliver better internet for many communities, especially in remote areas underserved by existing network infrastructure, it could also create dependency on a foreign entity to provide an essential service, and if left unregulated, heighten the ability for criminals to have unfettered access to internet networks, experts said.
While governments currently can regulate and control traditional internet through infrastructure, content moderation and legal frameworks, Starlink's services present a different challenge.
Territorial jurisdictional control of satellites remains an area of contention and laws governing their use are underdeveloped.
The last major space treaty was signed in 1979, meaning SpaceX, a private actor, is operating in grey areas that governments may not have faced before when it comes to oversight.
Musk's control of the network raises concerns about whether access could be revoked, restricted, or manipulated based on shifting political or economic interests, Surachanee Sriyai, a Visiting Fellow with the Media, Technology and Society Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, wrote in a commentary for CNA.
If Cambodia was to grant a licence to allow Starlink to operate in its skies, it would become the fourth Southeast Asian nation to do so after the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.
And SpaceX has plans to further expand in the region.
In March, Vietnam approved a five-year pilot implementation of SpaceX's low orbit satellite technology, which could lead to a major future investment by Musk's company.
Thailand has not licensed Starlink but its National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission approved in January a six-month collaboration between SpaceX and Prince of Songkla University focused on disaster relief, telemedicine and learning applications.
Further afield in India, two major telecom operators - Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd and Bharti Airtel Ltd - have signed separate deals with SpaceX, but it is not yet legally allowed to operate.
THE PHILIPPINES' EARLY MOVER EXPERIENCE
While the Myanmar situation is particularly fraught given the ongoing civil war, more broadly throughout the region, governments are facing a choice: Whether to allow Starlink to set up operations.
The Philippines was the early mover in Southeast Asia.
Its National Telecommunications Commission granted Starlink the necessary licences in May 2022 and said the main reason was to provide cost-effective internet in villages underserved by telecommunication providers.
'The telcos were not incentivised to also serve the lightly populated areas. So, the rural areas have been left behind in terms of internet,' explained Wilson Chua, chief executive of Future Gen International, a data, analytics and business process outsourcing firm.
'Starlink is a game changer. You can set up anywhere, even at sea. When Starlink started to pop up, we saw growth like mushrooms.'
Chua set up Project Bass, a citizen advocacy group where volunteers use an app to record internet speed and coverage wherever they are. It has given an insight into the spread of Starlink in the past few years.
The project most recently detected close to 1,500 active Starlink devices across the Philippines, but Chua believes this is an underestimate.
He said he has been surprised by the number of users in the Metro Manila area, where internet service should be reliable. Users may be preparing for contingencies, he said.
'Either the building that they have does not provide them with sufficient bandwidth or these are people that are preparing for a disaster,' he said, adding that a major earthquake could disrupt the country's internet.
'As well, if you look at the undersea cables providing internet to the Philippines, you can count them in the palm of your hand. And Starlink is a way for us to be sort of prepared.'
Entrepreneurs are also finding cost efficiencies by setting up Starlink devices and distributing the bandwidth to multiple users or entire communities, he said.
The Philippine government has been monitoring the grey area that exists around such enterprises and a new Bill should soon make such competition legal. The country's senate passed the Konektadong Pinoy Act in February allowing smaller players to more easily enter the market and promote infrastructure sharing among providers.
'The government now recognises that (established telecom companies) did not deliver on infrastructure and so when COVID-19 came, education wasn't functioning, medical services weren't functioning,' Chua said.
CAUTION IN INDONESIA
Indonesia faces similar issues.
About a-fifth of the population in the vast archipelago lacks adequate internet access, according to the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association.
But while the Indonesian government welcomed Starlink to the country and granted business licences in May last year, analysts say it remains wary about allowing the company to fill the gaps.
It is currently unclear how many Starlink devices are operational in Indonesia and the company's initial investment was modest at US$1.8 million.
Still, with Musk in attendance, Starlink launched with fanfare in Bali with a project to connect medical centres to fast internet service. In at least one centre though, the service was disabled shortly after due to an apparent unstable connection.
There is pressure from traditional telecom companies on the government to ensure the playing field is even after decades of investing in an infrastructure network that could be made redundant by Musk's satellites, said Karl Gading Sayudha, an analyst who focuses on defence, security and international relations at Kiroyan Partners, a Jakarta-based consulting firm.
'These telecommunication providers have invested billions of rupiah. So they are questioning the government's effort and government's responsibility to make sure that this will be a fair game,' he said.
'They are asking for the government to regulate this before it goes too far.'
The Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association urged the government in the middle of last year to freeze Starlink's licence, because it had 'the potential to disrupt the sustainability and independence of the local ISP industry', said its chairman, Muhammad Arif Angg.
Telkom, Indonesia's state-owned telecom giant, and the Indonesian Telecommunications Providers Association have also called for a level playing field in terms of regulations.
Starlink 'may appear aggressive' to these companies, causing them to feel insecure about how Starlink might expand, said Darynaufal Mulyaman, a lecturer at the International Relations Study Programme at Universitas Kristen Indonesia.
'Because on paper, it's a really unbalanced competition,' he said, noting that Starlink has minimal local staffing and does not contribute to Indonesia's territorial network infrastructure.
The cost of Starlink remains high, however, and this is an obstacle to widespread adoption. Its residential package starts at 750,000 rupiah (US$45) per month, putting it only within the grasp of higher income earners. That is about double the cost of a local operator, not including installation costs.
But as has occurred in other countries, the Starlink price could quickly drop as more users sign up.
It also has plans sometime this year to offer mobile plans, which if permitted, would put the company in direct competition with other telecom providers for a lucrative market of hundreds of millions of customers.
Its prices are far cheaper than other satellite internet providers, which prompted complaints from the Indonesia Satellite Association, which labelled Starlink's offers 'predatory'. The country's anti-monopoly watchdog ruled last year that they were promotional, not unfair.
Analysts said that the government was cautious about enacting regulations that could allow Starlink to spread quickly, which might pose risks to its control of information and raise the chances of scrutiny directed towards its policies or performance.
'Right now, I see that the government is trying to limit those things, because they see that social media is quite powerful,' Sayudha said.
Indonesia has bold plans to become a global leader in the digital space under its Golden Indonesia 2045 Vision. That includes equitable digital infrastructure.
It presents a 'dilemma' in its policy priorities for internet access, Darynaufal said.
'You need the internet to give education, to give services to the people, the bureaucracy and everything. So we need better access,' he said.
'But on the other hand, (it) also can cause problems for the government, like the raising of activist voices from the grassroots level.'
RULES NEEDED TO MITIGATE RISKS
Governments will also have to manage the security and other risks that come with greater reliance on satellite internet providers.
Experts raised concerns about the rising prominence of technology companies and their close ties to authorities. A case in point is Musk's close relationship with the Trump administration, Sayudha said.
He cited how Musk had suggested that he could stop Starlink's operations in Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops use Starlink extensively for battlefield communications and Musk wrote on the social media platform X in March that the Ukrainian army's 'entire front line would collapse if I turned it off".
It sparked a clash with Poland's foreign minister, who said Poland pays for Ukraine's Starlink terminals.
Musk later wrote: "To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals."
For countries facing disasters, conflict or economic challenges, the power dynamic is further stacked towards technology companies with services to offer, according to Allison Pytlak, senior fellow and director of the Cyber Program at the Stimson Center, a non-profit think tank.
Countries without robust oversight or systems could find themselves overly dependent on a provider like Starlink, heightening the risk of the misuse of the technology, she said.
She argued that it should raise more questions about, and oversight of, the roles and responsibilities of internet service providers and other tech firms.
'These tech companies, they're private actors, but they're kind of sitting at the table with governments because they're providing services that governments normally would provide,' she said.
'It's obvious we're more and more dependent on all of these things. So, they should have a seat at the table, but we haven't quite worked out what the rules of the road are for them.'

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