The roughly $8 billion acquisition of a satellite operator announced in the period carries an effect the press release doesn't highlight: every consolidation reduces the number of independent suppliers available.
The contradiction runs through the entire sector. The same companies qualifying alternative component suppliers and contracting multiple cloud providers operate in a market that concentrates every quarter.
In connectivity, that weighs more than in other layers. Anyone running distributed systems uses satellite links precisely where no terrestrial alternative exists, and in those regions fewer independent operators has no substitute.
The same pattern appeared at other layers through the year: manufacturers buying model execution technology companies, model vendors buying development tooling, and AI companies buying equity in their accelerator makers.
For buyers, the defence has to be exercised before consolidation rather than after: keep a qualified alternative while it still exists, because after the merger the choice disappears from the catalogue.