The European Union has never spoken so much about space sovereignty, and the proposal to reserve part of satellite frequencies for European operators marks a change in doctrine. Long focused on access to space, Europe now seeks to control the orbital infrastructure that will carry communications, data and a growing part of the digital economy.
SpaceX’s reaction shows that the issue goes far beyond a question of radio spectrum. Behind the battle over the 2 GHz band is a clash over control of the future global digital highways.
When the European Commission proposed in the spring to reserve part of this frequency band for European satellite operators, the measure appeared to be one regulatory adjustment among others. A few weeks later, SpaceX officially denounced the project to European authorities, believing that it risked slowing down the development of direct satellite services to smartphones and creating interference likely to affect certain critical services.
The intensity of the American reaction reveals the importance of the subject, because behind the technical debate on frequencies a new reality is emerging: space is becoming an essential layer of the global digital economy, and Europe no longer wants to depend exclusively on foreign players to exploit it.
Starlink transformed the satellite into strategic infrastructure
Until recently, space power was measured by the capacity to launch rockets, place satellites in orbit or conduct scientific missions.
With several thousand satellites in low orbit and millions of users spread across dozens of countries, SpaceX has demonstrated that a constellation can become a global digital infrastructure. The satellite is no longer just a communication or observation tool. It becomes a network.
This development took on a particular dimension with the war in Ukraine. When terrestrial infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, Starlink ensured continuity of service that few players were capable of offering. Military, government and civilian communications have relied in part on a network controlled by a private American company.
The event constituted an electric shock in several European capitals, for the first time, a digital infrastructure essential to the functioning of a European state in times of war depended directly on the decisions of a foreign company.
The subject then became eminently policy.
A dependency reminiscent of the cloud
This awareness comes at a time when the European Union is already trying to reduce several dependencies considered strategic.
The debate on semiconductors led to the Chips Act, while that on the cloud fueled discussions around sovereign infrastructures. Artificial intelligence today raises the same questions regarding models, computing centers and data.
Space now joins this list, and for Brussels, the question is not whether SpaceX is a reliable partner today, but whether Europe wants its future critical infrastructures to rely primarily on players whose decision centers are in Washington or California.
This question becomes all the more important as satellite constellations are no longer used solely to provide connectivity in isolated areas. They now carry industrial data, government communications, defense applications, emergency services and tomorrow part of the exchanges between connected objects, autonomous vehicles and distributed artificial intelligence systems.
As this orbital layer grows in importance, dependence becomes a de facto subject of sovereignty.
The battle for frequencies masks an industrial battle
The current controversy officially concerns the 2 GHz band; this frequency is particularly strategic for the development of so-called direct-to-device services, which allow a smartphone to communicate directly with a satellite without going through a traditional terrestrial infrastructure.
For manufacturers in the sector, this is one of the most promising markets of the next decade; the ability to directly connect billions of terminals to satellite constellations could reshape part of the global telecommunications market.
Europe knows that it cannot reproduce in a few years the lead accumulated by SpaceX, and wants to act on access to the European market.
The logic is comparable to that observed in semiconductors or in certain energy industrial policies. It is not only a question of protecting existing players, but of creating the conditions allowing future European champions to emerge.
This approach is precisely what SpaceX criticizes when it believes that the European proposal favors the country of origin of operators rather than economic or technical considerations.
For the Commission, it is on the contrary a legitimate instrument of industrial sovereignty.
Behind this battle looms IRIS²
The debate on frequencies cannot be understood independently of European space ambitions.
The European Union launched the IRIS² program with the objective of having a constellation capable of providing secure communications to Member States, administrations, critical operators and businesses. This project aims to ensure sovereign capacity in a domain that has become strategic.
But to exist sustainably, a European constellation will have to rely on a solid industrial ecosystem, on competitive operators and on a sufficiently attractive market to justify the necessary investments.
The decisions taken today on frequencies directly contribute to the construction of this environment.
The battle over the 2 GHz band is probably only the first visible episode of this transformation. Washington’s response cannot be long in coming and could put in place reciprocal measures if Europe excessively favors its own operators. A new front in the battle for sovereignty is opening in spacetech.
