Asia Times is reporting that China wants to dramatically boost the number of satellites in orbit while China Newsweek talks about a new enterprise, China Star Net, which will be formed and based in Shanghai.

China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a state-owned enterprise, outlined its plans to preliminarily finish the construction of the Xingyun project, an 80-satellite LEO narrowband Internet of Things constellation, by 2025. The group aims to launch 12 of its Xingyun 2-series satellites in 2021.

China Telecom, a Chinese state-owned telecommunication company, reportedly has an aggressive plan to place over 10,000 satellites in the orbit in the next five years.

“Space in the orbit is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and the onus will be on these latecomers to ensure their satellites will not collide with existing ones,” Xie Tao, CEO of Commsat, a Beijing-based private satellite Internet service provider and a contractor of China Telecom told Chinese media that China should quickly launch its 10,000 satellites so as to gain an advantage over other competitors.

“The low-Earth orbit is becoming increasingly crowded and the space land grab is on. Frequency and bandwidth resources are getting even more scarce as there is a rush by countries and private firms to file applications with the International Telecommunication Union for new frequencies,” said Tao. 

Other posts by Chris Forrester:

1. Bank: “Starlink 18 months ahead on D2D”
2. AST SpaceMobile trims satellite demand
3. Amazon’s Kuiper-1 launch brought forward
4. SES and Eutelsat possibly in line for C-band $bn bonus
5. Consultant: “European satellite mergers are failing”
6. Ligado attempts to unravel Inmarsat L-band agreement
7. SpaceX complains over South Africa investment rules
8. Vodafone, AST test video call game changer
9. Eutelsat shares hit all time low

Categories: Blogs, Broadband, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: China Telecom, spacex