The bid, expected to be announced on Wednesday, would allow Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper to bid for only the remaining third of the block’s 2GHz mobile satellite band.
The European Commission is set to reserve two-thirds of the bloc’s future mobile satellite services spectrum for European operators, with Starlink, Amazon’s Project Kuiper and other non-EU companies only able to bid for the remaining third, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the proposal.
Details are expected to be confirmed at a meeting of commissioners in Brussels on Wednesday, although the people warned that the structure could change before the official announcement.
The spectrum in question is the 2 GHz mobile satellite services (MSS) band, a 30 MHz frequency pair between 1980-2010 MHz and 2170-2200 MHz, which allows mobile devices and vehicles to communicate in areas where terrestrial mobile networks cannot reach. Current licenses issued to Inmarsat in 2009 (now Viasat) and Solaris (now EchoStar), expiring in May 2027.
Wednesday’s decision concerns the post-2027 allocation. EU member states, working through the Commission, supervise the group on a coordinated basis, which generally makes a single block reservation possible.
The two-thirds split is the most precise industrial policy tool the Commission has used in space to date. The reserved tranche will be awarded to EU-registered companies, with the UK and Norway also eligible to bid.
Depending on the share of Brussels-Europe, in practice there are operators behind it IRIS2A multi-orbit constellation of 290 satellites built by the SpaceRISE consortium. SES, Eutelsat and HispasatAirbus, Thales Alenia Space and OHB are among the contractors named.
The 12-year IRIS2 concession was signed in December 2024 at an estimated cost of €10.5 billion, of which around €6.5 billion is public funding. Public services should start operating in 2030.
The decision is part of a broader European push for what Brussels is calling “strategic autonomy” in space, underpinned by two distinct but reinforcing concerns. The first is dependence on Starlink, exacerbated by Elon Musk’s public threats to withdraw its service in Ukraine and his political alignment with Donald Trump’s second administration.
The second is a broader example of Europe’s border technology policy in 2026, where Brussels gradually restricts US access to strategically classified categories. cybersecurity AI tools to cloud sovereignty to chip manufacturing equipment. The 2 GHz reservation is the most specific signal that satellite communication is on the same list.
Starlink and Kuiper are not locked due to the proposed conditions. The remaining third of the pool will be open to non-EU bidders through standard competitive selection.
Already commercially based in the US, Starlink’s direct mobile service will benefit from European MSS spectrum to operate at scale across the continent. Kuiper, which is still in the constellation deployment phase, is positioning itself for a direct-to-device transition as a revenue stream later in the second half of the decade.
Current licensees Viasat and EchoStar sit in an awkward position. Both are listed in the US and under the proposed terms would drop to a third non-EU location, despite retaining spectrum today. Viasat has spent the last 18 months lobbying for an expansion of the existing S-band spectrum, which is mainly used to operate the European Aviation Network in partnership with Deutsche Telekom.
Whether incumbents can secure access to the European tranche through joint ventures or corporate restructuring is a question Wednesday’s announcement is unlikely to fully address.
The 2 GHz band is too narrow to support a Starlink-scale service on its own. What it provides is a tailored, tamper-proof, regulated tier of mobile carriers that wants direct-to-device traffic to continue.
Allocating two-thirds of this layer to European firms squeezes the addressable European market for Starlink and Kuiper to one-third. The deeper effect is structural rather than general: Brussels chooses to preferentially implement European D2D services, not to make American services impossible.
The Commission is expected to publish its official proposal on Wednesday afternoon Brussels time.
