Data Analysis with reporting
Under What Licence Is Starlink Operating?
Starlink has operated in Bolivia since February under a six-month experimental licence that expired in August. The ministry itself said operation cannot continue without a definitive licence. There is no public record that one was granted. And the regulation that does exist asks for orbital parameters and nothing about data.
By Violeta Ayala — Tecnóloga
Two days
If you sign up for Starlink in Bolivia, the company collects information about you. That happens with any internet service and there is nothing odd about it. What changed this year is what it can do with that information.
Bolivia authorised the service in December. Starlink began operating on February 2. Two days earlier, the company changed its privacy policy to allow customer data to be used in training artificial intelligence.
Reuters reviewed a version of that policy archived in November and it said nothing about artificial intelligence. The change was made with no announcement, no email and no notice inside the app. Users who were paying attention spotted it.
SpaceX did not respond to Reuters' request for comment. Bolivia has no personal data protection law, so nobody here was required to review any of this before authorising the service.
Three dates in a row
Tap each date.
Dates from the text of Supreme Decree 5509, from the Ministry of Public Works, Services and Housing, and from Reuters coverage of late January 2026.
Dates from the decree text, the ATT resolution, the Ministry of Public Works, Services and Housing, and coverage by Reuters, ANF, Erbol, Red Uno and eju.tv between December 2025 and June 2026.
What it collects
Starlink's privacy policy is public and lists what the company collects. The list is longer than you would imagine when signing up for internet.
Where you are. Your card. Your contact details. Your IP address. Audio and video. The files you share. Plus one last category worth reading twice.
What it collects about you
Tap each item to see what it means.
Categories listed in Starlink's global privacy policy, reported by Reuters in January 2026.
Inferences are the part a lawyer underlines. The policy says it verbatim: inferences we may make from other personal information we collect.
An inference is not something you handed over. It is a conclusion they drew about you. From knowing where you live, what time you connect, for how long and from which device comes a profile you never declared and cannot correct, because you do not know it exists.
The policy does not say which of all that data is used to train artificial intelligence. It says it can be used, and leaves it there.
After the criticism, Starlink specified on its help pages that it would not include browsing records or the pages you visit, and that it would work mainly with technical performance and account-level data. That is a reasonable clarification and worth taking into account. It also came after the change, not before, and it sits on a help page rather than in the text of the policy.
The way out
Nobody asks whether you agree. It comes agreed to from the factory, and if you do not want it you have to go and switch it off yourself.
How to opt out, step by step
Route verified in September 2026, per company documentation and coverage of the case.
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- Log in to your Starlink account from a browser. The option is not in the phone app.
- Complete the two-factor verification.
- Go to Settings.
- Tap Edit Profile.
- Find the box that reads Share personal data with Starlink's trusted collaborators to train AI models.
- Uncheck it and save the changes.
Enterprise customers are excluded automatically, without doing anything. Government accounts are also not used for AI training. Residential users stay in unless they complete these six steps.
The change was not communicated by email or notification. Attentive users spotted it.
Now think about who this decree says it wants to connect. Someone in a rural community whose only device is a phone, going online for the first time.
That person needs a desktop browser, two-factor verification, enough English, and to know the box exists. Six steps that are not in the app they do have. For practical purposes, the way out is not available to the user the decree describes.
Why it changed
The change did not happen for no reason. It coincides with talks about a merger between SpaceX and xAI, Elon Musk's other company, the one that makes the chatbot Grok.
If that merger happens, xAI would receive something worth far more than money for training models: the data of more than nine million Starlink users worldwide. That is what a policy change like this is for.
There is a detail of the Bolivian arrangement worth keeping in mind. Minister Zamora reported in February that Entel, the state company, was negotiating with Starlink to act as a reseller of the service, working as integrator, distributor and customer support.
If that arrangement goes ahead, the state company would be the visible face of the service to the Bolivian user, without owning the privacy policy that user accepts.
Privacy and consumer rights organisations warned that using personal data to train artificial intelligence raises the risk of surveillance and opens new avenues of exposure.
To be clear: this piece does not say Starlink is watching anyone or has broken any rule in Bolivia. It describes a policy the company itself published and the exact moment it changed it.
What Bolivia can do
In a country with a data protection law, several of these questions would carry a mandatory answer. What the legal basis is for processing that data. Whether consent by default is valid or must be express. Where it is stored. Whether it can be transferred to a third party to train models. What happens if there is a breach.
In Bolivia none of those questions carries a mandatory answer, because there is no rule governing them and no authority overseeing them.
The regulation already exists. The ATT approved it on January 22, 2026 through resolution ATT-DJ-RAR-TL LP 87/2026, and it is called the Regulation for Granting Experimental Frequency Use Licences for low earth orbit satellite networks.
What it requires is technical: a description of the satellite network, orbital parameters, requested frequency bands, transmission speeds, and international coordination with the International Telecommunication Union to avoid interference. All of that is necessary and rightly asked for. None of it concerns users' data.
Specialists consulted by El Deber the day after the decree was issued warned of exactly this: gaps in oversight, data handling and privacy protection. One put it as an open question, whether the Bolivian state has the capacity to oversee these services.
A regulation that asks for orbital parameters and asks nothing about data handling answers that question in an uncomfortable way.
Starlink's licence is experimental and lasts six months. It began on February 2, 2026, so it expired around August 2.
The Ministry of Public Works itself put it in these words when the service started: at the end of the half-year the operator cannot continue operating without obtaining a definitive licence, and continuity is only possible by obtaining the corresponding authorisations.
By mid-May there were around 40,000 active installations in the country, per official figures. That is forty thousand homes, schools and businesses connected to a service whose licence expired two and a half months later.
As this piece closed we found no public record that a definitive licence had been granted, nor of the regulation that would govern that kind of licence. The regulation that does exist covers experimental licences.
From that comes the simplest question in this whole piece, and we are asking it in public: under what licence is Starlink operating in Bolivia today.
A renewal, or the granting of the definitive licence, is also the exact moment to set conditions on data. What is collected from Bolivian users, where it is stored, under which jurisdiction, whether it is transferred to train models, and whether consent will remain by default or become express. None of that requires a new law. It requires writing it into the licence.
The four documents
Four documents would settle this, all of them sit on a desk somewhere in the state, and any person can request them in writing.
The full text of the experimental licence granted to Starlink. The resolution granting the definitive licence, if it was granted, or the one extending the experimental one. The regulation applicable to definitive licences for low earth orbit satellite networks. And the ATT's position on the handling of Bolivian users' data by foreign satellite operators.
Connecting those who are not connected is good policy. Doing it without asking what happens to that person's data leaves the most expensive part of the deal to whoever is least able to negotiate it.
The dish arrives in the yard. The privacy policy was written in another country, it changed two days earlier, and the box to opt out is in English, in a browser, behind a two-factor verification.
Sources
- Reuters, January 30 and 31, 2026, reporting by David Jeans and Joey Roulette, carried by MarketScreener: the change to Starlink's privacy policy allowing customer data to be used in AI training; the review of a version archived in November with no reference to AI training; SpaceX's failure to respond to a request for comment; the list of data collected, including location, credit card, contact details, IP addresses and communications data comprising audio and visual information, data in shared files and inferences; talks on a merger between SpaceX and xAI; and the figures of more than nine thousand satellites and over nine million users.
- Starlink help centre, privacy policy: automatic exclusion of Enterprise customers from data sharing for AI training, non-use of government account data for that purpose, and the update on data sharing with external partners.
- Cryptopolitan, February 1, 2026: the manual process established to refuse data sharing, requiring browser login, two-factor verification, the Settings section, Edit Profile and the box reading Share personal data with Starlink's trusted collaborators to train AI models; the absence of the option from the mobile app; and the January 31, 2026 help page update specifying that individual browsing records and destination addresses would not be included in training material.
- Infobae, February 6, 2026, and MuyComputer coverage from January 2026: concern among customers and digital rights experts, the default-on nature of the sharing, and the absence of any announcement or notification to users about the change.
- Text of Supreme Decree 5509, of December 22, 2025, and Ministry of Public Works, Services and Housing, February 2026: the start of Starlink operations on February 2 under a six-month experimental licence granted by the ATT, and the complementary character of the service relative to local operators.
- Regulatory Administrative Resolution ATT-DJ-RAR-TL LP 87/2026, signed by executive director Carlos Alberto Agreda Lema: approval of the Regulation for Granting Experimental Frequency Use Licences for low earth orbit satellite networks. And La Razón, January 22, 2026, on the legal and technical documentation that regulation requires: description of the satellite network, orbital parameters, requested frequency bands, transmission speeds and international coordination with the International Telecommunication Union.
- EFE and swissinfo, February 3, 2026: statements by ATT director Carlos Agreda on the transitional six-month experimental licence, and the ministry's clarification that at the end of the half-year the operator cannot continue operating without obtaining a definitive licence and that continuity is only possible through the corresponding authorisations.
- Agencia de Noticias Fides, February 3, 2026: monthly cost of the service in Bolivia of between 410 and 1,100 bolivianos.
- Erbol, February 2026: statements by public works minister Mauricio Zamora on Entel's negotiations to act as a reseller of the service.
- eju.tv, June 2026: around 40,000 installations of the service recorded between February and mid-May, per official figures.
- Red Uno, February 2026: applications to enter the Bolivian market filed by Amazon's Kuiper project and by Hispasat.
- El Deber, December 25, 2025: warnings from specialists about regulatory gaps in oversight, data handling and user privacy protection given the absence of a personal data protection law in Bolivia.
This piece describes a privacy policy published by the company itself and the chronology of its modification. It does not claim that Starlink has surveilled Bolivian users, that it has broken any rule in Bolivia, or that a merger between SpaceX and xAI has been completed. The configuration routes correspond to the documentation and coverage available in September 2026 and may change. The content of the experimental licence granted by the ATT is not public and this piece does not claim that it does or does not contain clauses on data handling. As this edition closed no public record was found of a definitive licence being granted or of the experimental one being extended; this piece does not claim that Starlink is operating without authorisation, and raises the question as public information pending an answer. The text of the licence, the status of its renewal and the ATT's position on the handling of Bolivian users' data by foreign satellite operators are public information that has not been published and that any person may request.
