Ukraine and Europe are in dire need of more redundant infrastructure when it comes to critical communications.
That is the lasting message from last week, when Ukraine’s forces lost connectivity to the US-controlled Starshield satellite service run on Starlink.
Starshield is used for critical airborne systems travelling at speeds of more than 160 km/h, and the speeds that Ukraine could access had suddenly dropped. According to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. this impacted Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russia’s Shahed drones, to carry out mid-range strikes, and to guide drones delivering food and water to civilians in impacted areas. Not having that functionality is dire, as a spate of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians showed.
There are still significant question marks over what actually happened, and what is happening now.
Connectivity appeared to get restored after about a day. However, neither Ukraine nor the US ever officially confirmed the downtime.
We also don’t know why it happened in the first place. Was it a technical fault, or did someone intentionally kill the switch? And who really controls that switch?
Some reports allege that Elon Musk, the powerful CEO of Starlink who has at times had the ear of the White House, was responsible. Ukraine’s former minister of defence, in fact, was so confident he was involved he publicly thanked him for restoring the connectivity. Musk denied responsibility.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he said. “Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”
Others believe it was the White House that made the call. In support of that is Trump’s recent adversarial stance on the subject of Ukraine and its ongoing fighting, coupled with his willingness now to bypass sanctions to make fuel deals with Russia. Throttling the satellite connection is one way, the thinking goes, to show Ukraine who it needs to keep happy.
And perhaps most importantly, there is the matter of the connectivity itself. Military sources close to Resilience Media have said that connectivity still cutting for any systems travelling at speeds of more than 160km/h.
And Starlink-related incidents continue to unfold. This week, arsonists attacked a data centre hosting Starlink in Lithuania. Officials attribute the act to Russia.
In all, the incident highlights not just how dependent Ukraine remains on other countries (and specifically the the US), but also that there is precious little it can do when those lifelines disappear.
Europe needs a sovereign alternative
The tech industry has long been looking for solutions that can complement or present an alternative to what Starlink has built, and investors have been increasingly willing to support founders building those literal moonshots.
There are some significant sums being allocated in national budgets for investing in space infrastructure for communications and national security.
Germany has said it plans to invest up to €35 billion into a wide range of space initiatives by 2030. The UK has also unveiled a new space strategy and said it wants to commit £7.8 billion (€9.1 billion) in the same period. Its focus is a satellite network for applications like surveillance and communications.
Established satellite players are putting their oars into the water. Shares in the European satellite operator Eutelsat jumped last week after news broke of the Starlink terminal restrictions. Eutelsat surged 23% in one day, the stock’s biggest one-day gain in sixteen months, according to Euronext. SES, a Luxembourg-based satellite comms firm, also saw some action when its shares jumped up by 2.6%.
Incumbent operators are also hoping to get into the game. Today, four major European mobile carriers confirmed that they had signed a letter of intent to prepare a joint bid for mobile satellite spectrum to build a new direct to device service.
The plan is not that cut and dry. This could potentially be a rival to Starlink, but Starlink is also a partner currently to a number of these companies even as it continues to expand its own services and bring prices down. Notably, Starlink is also bidding for the same spectrum.
And the reason many of these carriers already resell Starlink capacity is the other big challenge here. The consortium (if it’s not too early to call it that) may have plans for how to manage spectrum and backhaul closer to the ground, but it critically lacks its own satellite network to run the service above the earth. Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Orange and Vodafone — the four carriers teaming up in the LOI — were careful to note that the plans to not replace existing partnerships they individually already have with satellite providers.
They might have a customer lined up anyway. Zelenskyy has made a point of talking up the European plans even at their very early stage.
There are also a number of startups also entering the fray supported by large financiers wiling to underwrite their ambitions.
The Exploration Company is still a couple of years away from launching its reusable spacecraft to build its competitor to SpaceX, and in September, the company announced $450 million to fuel that journey. In the same month, the UK startup Open Cosmos raised €300 million to continue building out its satellite communications network.
At the time, CEO and co-founder Rafel Jorda Siquier was clear to tell us that this should not be seen as a “Starlink” competitor: no plans for the kind of blanket consumer coverage that Musk’s operator has been building out, but rather a network specifically to address critical communications needs.
“This is critical for resilience communications, for critical infrastructure and services,” he said last month.
Indeed, one potential scenario could be that, unlike the Starlink approach, Europe may not opt for a winner-take-all scenario — an option that could interest investors that have been spreading their bets with different technologies, but also builders to triangulate the solution. Radical’s high-flying aircraft may never be a like-for-like with the Starlink, but they could present an answer for particular connectivity gaps at lower costs than satellites might reach.
This could also potentially incorporate existing solutions like GOVSATCOM that are not currently complete enough to be full Starlink replacements but could provide critical connectivity to address a piece of that work.
“Europe needs sovereign, interoperable satellite communications and Earth observation capabilities that provide resilience, operational independence and assured access when it matters most,” said Siquier in a statement last week as the Starshield fiasco unfolded. “This is not about superseding international partners, but ensuring Europe has the capacity to act independently when required, as well as to work seamlessly with allied systems. These developments reinforce the urgency of calls across Europe and the UK to deliver highly assured satellite services under our own control.”
