China Begins Preparations to Compete with Starlink

China launched the Smart Dragon-3 (SD-3) rocket from the sea on 11 April to send a test satellite to a predetermined orbit. This launch forms part of efforts to develop satellite internet technology, which has recently become a arena of global competition. The rocket lifted off at 19:32 Beijing time from the offshore waters of Yangjiang, Guangdong Province, and the mission was carried out by the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, as reported by Chinese media outlet Xinhua. The satellite carried is said to support testing of satellite-based communication technology. This step comes amid growing attention to satellite internet, including the dominance of services like Starlink owned by SpaceX, the space company of conglomerate Elon Musk. Several recent tests also demonstrate this ambition. In a separate experiment, Chinese researchers successfully demonstrated a high-speed laser connection from a geostationary satellite, which is said to surpass Starlink’s performance in certain conditions. In a trial conducted at the Lijiang Observatory in southwest China in March, a signal was sent from a satellite at an altitude of around 36,000 km to Earth using a low-power laser of only 2 watts. Despite the great distance, the system is claimed to achieve a downlink speed of up to 1 Gbps, about five times faster than Starlink in the comparison used in the study. This success is inseparable from the technical approach used at the ground receiving station. The system combines adaptive optics and multi-channel processing to overcome atmospheric distortion, which has long been a major challenge in optical communication from high orbits. As a result, the usable signal rate increased significantly, showing improvements not only in speed but also in reliability. This experiment is considered important because it was conducted from a geostationary orbit, which has a much greater distance compared to the low Earth orbit where Starlink satellites operate. This means the transmission challenges are heavier, especially as the signal passes through Earth’s atmosphere, as summarised by KompasTekno from Daily Galaxy. Nevertheless, the technology being tested still focuses on large-scale receiver systems, not consumer devices. This indicates that initial development may be directed towards backbone network needs or high-capacity data transmission. With the latest test satellite launch and advances in optical communication technology, China is showing its seriousness in developing satellite internet. Although it is not yet clear when this service will be widely available, these steps show a direction that has the potential to compete with players who arrived earlier, such as Starlink.