Paraguay Lets Starlink Exceed the UN’s Satellite Power Limits
Telecoms
Key Facts
—The ruling. Paraguay’s regulator Conatel approved new conditions for Starlink on July 7.
—The claim. SpaceX says it unlocks eight times more capacity and speeds up to 1 Gbps.
—The mechanism. New frequency bands, known as E and W, plus higher permitted power density.
—The threshold. SpaceX says Paraguay is among the first in the region to allow operation above the power limits set by the UN’s telecoms agency.
—The base. Starlink has roughly 20,000 subscribers in Paraguay, licensed since October 2023.
—The context. Starlink halted new signups in seven Kenyan counties this month after hitting capacity.
The Starlink Paraguay announcement reads like a routine connectivity story about rural schools. What the regulator actually agreed to is a change in the rules that govern every satellite above the country.
SpaceX described it as a historic decision with generational impact. The company was not being modest, and it was not talking about schools.
What Conatel granted Starlink Paraguay
The national telecommunications commission, known as Conatel, approved the new conditions on Tuesday. Its president, Juan Carlos Duarte, said Starlink had asked for two things, new frequency bands and permission to raise its power.
The bands are E and W, very high frequencies used to link satellites to ground stations rather than to the dish on a roof. Duarte said these would let the company connect ground stations to data centres.
SpaceX’s vice-president for satellite policy, David Goldman, put the payoff at eight times the capacity and speeds reaching a gigabit a second. He added something more consequential.
Paraguay’s ministry and regulator, he said, are among the first in the region to authorise Starlink to operate above the power limits set by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency for telecoms.
Why an international power ceiling exists at all
This is the part worth slowing down for. The best-known of these ceilings sits in Article 22 of the international radio rules and governs how much energy a low-orbiting constellation may radiate.
The agency explains on its own technical support site that the limits protect the older satellites parked in high geostationary orbit from interference by the newer swarms below them.
Then comes the sentence that explains the whole industry. These hard limits let a constellation share frequencies without needing to coordinate individually with every geostationary network in the world.
The rules apply to a constellation as a whole, not to one satellite at a time. That is the point, because several craft can beam into the same patch of ground at once.
In other words the ceiling is not merely a technical nuisance. It is the bargain that lets thousands of satellites operate without negotiating with everybody else who owns a slice of sky.
Why Paraguay, and why now
Capacity, not coverage, is what constrains satellite internet today. Each satellite can serve only so many customers over a given patch of ground.
The proof arrived this month in Kenya, where Starlink stopped accepting new customers across seven counties because the network had filled up. Subscribers there had tripled in nine months and the answer was a waiting list.
Paraguay has about twenty thousand subscribers and a small, scattered rural population that fibre will never reach economically. Eight times the capacity is the difference between a niche product and a national network.
Paraguay’s state telephone company, meanwhile, has been suffering outages that knocked internet and telephony offline across several departments. The alternative arriving from orbit is not competing with a strong incumbent.
The politics fit neatly. President Santiago Peña licensed Starlink in October 2023, weeks into his term, and in June handed out sixteen hundred kits meant to connect more than fifty thousand students and teachers.
What a foreign investor should notice
Each of those kits must serve about thirty-one people, which tells you the programme is about classrooms rather than households. The commercial substance lies in Duarte’s remark about data centres.
Gateway bands and ground stations are the plumbing of a serious network, not a rural charity. Paraguay is positioning itself as the place where that plumbing gets installed first.
The country already has form here. A Japanese-funded space centre is being built outside the capital, and a Paraguayan-assembled nanosatellite is due to launch from California in October.
There is a wider fight behind all this. Whether those international power limits should be relaxed is precisely what the world’s radio conference will argue about when it convenes in Shanghai in 2027.
Paraguay did not wait for that debate. A country of roughly six million has handed one American constellation a precedent it will carry into the negotiating room.
What changed for Starlink Paraguay?
Conatel granted access to new frequency bands and higher power density, which SpaceX says multiplies capacity eightfold and allows speeds of up to a gigabit a second.
Are the ITU power limits binding?
They are treaty-based rules that protect geostationary satellites from interference, letting constellations share spectrum without coordinating with every operator worldwide.
How many users does Starlink have there?
About twenty thousand, in a country of roughly six million. The company has held a Paraguayan licence since October 2023 and launched commercially that December.
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