BRUSSELS — Any European company that sells into the American market has just been told to treat a satellite spectrum rule as a threat to its own business. Andrew Puzder, Washington’s ambassador to the European Union, said in an interview released Sunday that European businesses “should be wary” of retaliation, which he called “devastating” given the size of the US market, according to Anadolu Agency.
The row concerns the 2 GHz band, the slice of radio spectrum that lets a phone talk to a satellite directly. The European Commission proposed on 27 May to replace the old licensing regime with one EU-level selection, part of the same sovereignty push as its Tech Sovereignty Package in June. The proposal still needs Parliament and Council.
The text is less of a wall than the warning suggests. By TEH’s arithmetic from the draft, the band is six paired blocks of 5 MHz, 30 MHz in all. Two go to a secure government system run by an EU-controlled operator. Of the four commercial blocks, the recitals prioritise European newcomers for two, leaving two open to any applicant, American or European. A foreign firm can therefore win at most 10 MHz, a third of the band, and Article 4 caps every commercial winner at that same figure.
Today the whole band sits with two incumbents. The proposal, as filed with the Council, records that two operators selected in 2009 each hold a 15 MHz paired block until May 2027, and its Article 20 extends the rights of Viasat and EchoStar by two years on request. The words Starlink, SpaceX and Amazon appear nowhere in it.
Euronews reported on 13 October that the proposal would reserve part of the band for European operators and a secure system linked to IRIS². Every commercial bidder, the draft says, must commit to serve all member states and at least 95 percent of each one’s population within five years of service starting, and to land EU traffic inside the Union. The secure system’s bidders are ranked on criteria that include “Union added value,” which partly rewards European industry in satellite design, construction and launch.
Puzder also asked whether Digital Markets Act enforcement is about competition or about fines on American tech firms, and said it would be “a lot easier if we were working with Europe instead of fighting Europe.” Anadolu reported that SpaceX, which runs Starlink, has criticised the plan and warned it could weaken connectivity in Ukraine.
That argument comes days after Kyiv said SpaceX capped speeds overnight, a Starlink speed limit in Ukraine that neither SpaceX nor the White House had explained when TEH reported it. Puzder, in Anadolu’s account, named no countermeasure, and the draft does not say what becomes of a prioritised block that no European newcomer claims.
