Europe's four biggest telcos team up to bid for the satellite airwaves at the centre of the EU's Starlink fight

What's the deal? Deutsche Telekom, Orange, TelefónicaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Vodafone signed a letter of intent on 19 October to explore a joint bid for Europe's mobile satellite services (MSS) spectrum. These are the 2GHz airwaves used to connect satellites directly to ordinary phones, and they will be reallocated next year. The four would build the ground network and the coordination and monitoring functions in Europe, and sell direct-to-device access wholesale to every mobile operator on "open and non-discriminatory" terms. They will not build their own constellation: the satellites would come from a partner that has not yet been chosen.

Why these airwaves matter: The current 2GHz licences, held by Viasat and EchoStar (whose rights are due to pass to SpaceX after its spectrum acquisition), expire in May 2027. The European Commission wants to reserve a third of the band for government and security use linked to the EU's IRIS² constellation, and much of the commercial remainder for European operators. That would leave non-EU players such as Starlink, Amazon Leo and AST SpaceMobile with a much smaller slice.

The bigger fight: Europe vs Starlink: The telcos' move comes a day after US ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told the Financial Times that Washington could hit back with "devastating" retaliation if Brussels goes ahead with the carve-up. SpaceX has argued that the plan would worsen service in Ukraine. By lining up the continent's biggest mobile groups behind one bid, the operators give the Commission a ready-made European applicant and make the sovereignty case harder to dismiss. The set-up mirrors the satellite joint venture that AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon launched in the US earlier this year.

Frenemies: The letter does not replace existing deals, and several of them are with the very rivals the plan is meant to hold off. Deutsche Telekom sells Starlink broadband to businesses and plans to offer Starlink's direct-to-phone service in 2028. Telefónica's UK joint venture Virgin Media O2 already runs a satellite-to-phone service over Starlink. Orange works with AST SpaceMobile, as does Vodafone through its Satellite Connect Europe joint venture.

What's confirmed and what isn't: The letter of intent and the planned set-up come from the four companies' joint statement. It is exploratory: no bid has been made, no satellite partner has been named and no financial terms have been disclosed. The EU allocation rules still have to make it through the legislative process under US pressure. Analysts' readings of the operators' motives are interpretation, not company statements.

Why it matters: "Behind the sovereignty dressing here is a very commercial concern," Ookla analyst Luke Kehoe told Light Reading. Europe's operators want to avoid "becoming effectively MVNOs for satellite coverage, selling somebody else's service on somebody else's terms." Whoever controls the 2GHz band will shape who owns the customer relationship as phones start connecting straight to satellites. Kehoe also warned that Brussels must make sure sovereignty does not become a licence to protect incumbents from competition.

Sources: Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and Vodafone joint statement (19 Oct 2026); Light Reading; Bloomberg; The Verge; Space Intel Report (all 19 Oct 2026); Financial Times (18 Oct 2026) on the US retaliation threat