Extra-Terrestrial Broadband: Negotiating the Seams of Starlink Satellite Internet Infrastructure

Innumerable attempts have been made to design new systems to remedy existing infrastructural inequities between rural and more urban, well-connected centers. Starlink, SpaceX's low-earth-orbit satellite Internet constellation (satcon), positions itself as the solution to issues of digital inequity, explicitly targeting rural, remote, and underserved communities with its plug-and-play design and minimal equipment. SpaceX espouses Starlink's capabilities, asserting it can provide geographically unbound, seamless Internet anywhere in the world thereby closing the ‘Digital Divide’. In this paper, I use the language of ‘seams’ to examine how the materiality of Starlink shapes its users’ experiences of the Internet. I identify three specific seams that emerge across Starlink's infrastructure demonstrating that, contrary to SpaceX's rhetoric of unbound connectivity, Internet connectivity remains a highly localized and situated experience. I propose that more attention be paid to the emergent seams of low-earth-orbit satellite infrastructure and the opportunities these present to develop more locally attuned technologies given the forthcoming deployment of multiple satcons.