Starlink Alternative from Europe: Telefónica, Telekom, Orange and Vodafone Pull Together

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Starlink Alternative from Europe: Telefónica, Telekom, Orange and Vodafone Pull Together.

Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Vodafone are pulling together. The four major European mobile network operators have signed a memorandum of understanding, according to information from the Financial Times, to jointly explore the establishment of satellite-to-mobile services across Europe. The industry wants to prevent Elon Musk's Starlink from dividing up the market alone. If the project succeeds, satellite internet in this country will soon have a serious European competitor.

Why Europe is now pushing for its own infrastructure

Starlink has, in the assessment of the four carriers, already largely brought low Earth orbit under its control. SpaceX is building the world's largest commercial satellite network there – and constantly expanding it. The problem from the European telecoms' perspective: If SpaceX secures the frequencies in orbit and sells its services directly to end customers, traditional network operators would lose their intermediary role between satellite and mobile customer. That is a business risk the corporations apparently no longer want to bear alone.

The 2 GHz frequency as the key to the project

According to the Financial Times and Heise Online, the four companies want to jointly bid for the bandwidth around 2 GHz. This frequency is currently used by the US companies Viasat and EchoStar, whose licenses expire next year. In May, the EU Commission had proposed reserving the band for European operators. Brussels is already preparing, according to Heise, the re-award for 2027 and is designing the licensing process so that European providers are preferred.

Ground stations instead of own satellites

Sounds like a multi-billion project in space, but it isn't: Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Vodafone are not planning, according to FT, to build their own satellites. Instead, they want to build the infrastructure on the ground – that is, ground stations – and team up with a not-yet-selected, already existing satellite provider. This significantly lowers entry costs – and explains why four corporations that are otherwise in competition with each other can agree on a common approach.

Political tailwind from Brussels and Paris

The project doesn't come out of nowhere. EU officials have, according to the Financial Times, expressly welcomed the initiative in private discussions, because it fits the European strategy of becoming less dependent on providers outside Europe for digital infrastructure. Politico reports that MEPs Angelika Winzig and Michał Kobosko have pushed for stricter rules for international competitors. France's President Emmanuel Macron had already called for a European satellite alliance at the Paris Space Conference. At Orange, Michaël Trabbia confirmed the ongoing talks: They want to offer the service to their own customers and will not accept a single dominant provider.

What this means for you

In the short term, nothing changes for you: A European satellite-to-mobile alternative won't become realistic until at least the 2027 award round, and until then many technical and economic questions remain open. In the long term, however, a European offering could reduce dependence on individual US providers and boost competition over tariffs and reception in rural areas. Until then, Starlink remains number one in Europe – with all the advantages and disadvantages that a quasi-monopoly brings.