There was a time when GPS failed to work for your longest desert road trip and streaming a good movie on the mountains was just wishful thinking. Now, Elon Musk hangs like a Santa from the satellite harvesting town, beaming the internet all across space as if it were Wi-Fi confetti, and Jordan just had a sprinkle over it as well.
Satellite Internet company Starlink by Elon Musk has switched on its low-latency, high-speed service farther into the Middle East in Jordan. The announcement went out on Starlink’s social media platforms. As Starlink is already operational in Oman, Qatar, and Yemen, Jordan is the latest country to be added to the growing list of regional nations that are now online with the service.
Regional tech firms reacted quickly to this milestone. Jimmy Grewal, Managing Director of UAE-based marine systems integrator company Elcome, stated,
“Congratulations to the licensing team and SpaceX for making progress here. Which country will be next?”
Middle East Grows
Starlink’s operations into Jordan follows closely on the heels of its regulatory clearance in Oman and sets the stage for further initiations across the Gulf. The company further lists Kuwait and Bahrain in its map of service availability to follow this year, while Saudi Arabia and UAE remain under “pending regulatory review”.
As proof of a regulatory grip, UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) website, published a document this month. It confirmed that Starlink had been granted a 10-year license in 2024, limited to “maritime satellite internet services”.
LEO Satellites and Regional Connectivity
The traditional satellites orbit at distances from 20,000 km to 35,000 km above the Earth. On the other hand, Starlink’s low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites operate at around 550 km from the Earth. This allows them to offer faster internet speed, with significantly reduced latency.
This technology enables access to the Internet even where traditional broadband or 5G infrastructure is entirely absent or unreliable. It includes some remotely located rural regions, conflict zones, and places undergoing infrastructure collapse. According to Starlink,
more than 3 million users from over 100 countries and territories are now connected to its low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites network by lightweight antennae devices.
These antennae devices weigh less than 3kg, which can easily be installed and are able to withstand difficult environmental conditions.
Market to Observe
According to Morgan Stanley analysts,
the remote satellite broadband market is gaining speeds toward $400 billion by the year 2040. This represents approximately 40% of a $1 trillion market forecast for the entire space industry.
Starlink currently has the largest constellation of over 7,000 LEO satellites, but the competition is getting tougher as they are not alone in the market. Recently, Amazon’s Project Kuiper deployed its first batch of 27 satellites, signaling the start of a new rivalry in satellite internet.
More than just a higher-speed internet service, Starlink’s quiet but steady expansion in the Middle East signals an underlying change in global connectivity norms. Starlink continues expanding in the Gulf, highlighting the necessity for quick, available internet. Yet, it also heightens the stakes on how the Gulf and the world becomes connected from above. In many remote and rural areas, infrastructure is still insufficient, satellite communication offers a real substitute, with no cables to cross. With the introduction of Amazon’s Project Kuiper into the ring, this is no longer a race for who connects first, it’s all about who connects best.
