Credit: © Whitestudio2015 / Getty Images via Canva.com Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone and Telefónica are in early talks to form a consortium that would bid for European satellite spectrum and offer calls, texts and data to ordinary phones from orbit, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The service would compete with Starlink on its home continent. Paula Doenecke, Gian Volpicelli and Clara Hernanz Lizarraga cited people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. No decision has been taken on the consortium or on whether it will bid, they said.
All four operators declined to comment to Bloomberg. TNW has not independently verified the report. The prize is a slice of the 2 GHz band that Brussels wants to reserve for a European-controlled operator. The four companies together serve most of the mobile customers in the EU’s largest markets.
If they bid as one, the reserved third of the band has an obvious winner before the auction opens. What the spectrum is The band in question is the 2 GHz mobile satellite services spectrum, a 30 MHz pairing that lets a handset keep a connection where no mast reaches. The current licences, held by Viasat and EchoStar since 2009, expire in May 2027. The European Commission proposed on 27 May to run a single EU-level selection for the next licences and to split the band in three.
One third would go to a company under majority European control. One third would go to sovereign government services, delivered through IRIS², the EU’s own constellation. The final third would be open to anyone, including SpaceX and Amazon. TNW reported the shape of the plan the day before the Commission adopted it.
The proposal still has to pass the European Parliament and the Council. The carriers are organising for an auction whose rules do not yet exist in law. Why the carriers want it Direct-to-device is the one satellite service that reaches a mass market without new hardware, and Starlink dominates it. SpaceX can already send texts, data and calls to unmodified phones from orbit, and it sells that capability through mobile operators, including Deutsche Telekom, Bloomberg noted.
What it cannot do in the EU is offer the service on its own, because it does not hold the spectrum. That is the leverage the consortium would be bidding for. An operator that holds the European third of the band decides whether Starlink is a supplier or a competitor in its market. Four operators holding it together decide that for most of the continent.
The awkward part is that two of the four already have American partners. Deutsche Telekom has an agreement with SpaceX to offer Starlink’s direct-to-device service. Vodafone owns half of a joint venture with AST SpaceMobile, the Texas company building its own phone-to-satellite network. Under the Commission’s proposal, that 50/50 structure would not qualify as European-controlled, and Vodafone would have to change it to bid, Bloomberg reported.
So the consortium is not four carriers versus America. It is four carriers deciding how much of America they want inside the tent. The sovereignty argument, and its gap Brussels has spent 2026 tilting the space market towards European firms. IRIS² went from plan to full deployment in August, with 348 satellites and a bill above €15bn.
The EU Space Act would put any operator serving EU users under prior authorisation. Washington has lobbied against it, and four American space companies pulled out of Macron’s Paris summit this week under White House pressure. The spectrum reservation is the sharpest of those tools, because spectrum is finite and a licence lasts years. Reserve a third for Europe and Starlink is capped at a third, whatever it builds.
The gap is the satellites. Reserving spectrum for a European operator does not create a European constellation. IRIS² will not enter service until 2029, will start with broadband rather than phones, and its direct-to-mobile capability is limited and comes through Hispasat, Bloomberg reported. A four-carrier consortium would win the right to use the band before it has anything to use it with.
Europe’s own direct-to-device candidates are small. Spain’s Sateliot is seeking €150m to beam 5G to phones. Eutelsat, the largest European operator, is still waiting for growth to return in 2027. Amazon, meanwhile, has asked the FCC for 5,105 satellites dedicated to phones.
The likeliest outcome is that a European consortium holds the spectrum and leases capacity from an American constellation until a European one exists. The competition question nobody has asked yet The four companies in the talks are the incumbents of Germany, France, Britain and Spain. A joint venture between them, holding an exclusive national-security-flavoured spectrum block, would be one of the largest telecoms combinations Europe has seen. Brussels has spent two decades blocking or conditioning far smaller carrier tie-ups.
The same Commission that wrote the sovereignty rule would have to clear the joint venture that exploits it. That is not a contradiction, but it is a choice, and the competition directorate has not yet had to make it. What to watch Three things. The first is the legislation.
Parliament and Council have to pass the 2 GHz regulation before May 2027, or the current licences lapse into a vacuum. The carriers are organising around a deadline the legislators have not yet committed to. The second is Vodafone. If it restructures the AST joint venture to qualify, the consortium is real.
If it does not, the consortium is three carriers and a problem. The third is who supplies the satellites. A European-controlled licensee flying on Starlink or AST capacity satisfies the letter of the rule. Whether it satisfies the reason for the rule is the argument Europe will be having in 2027.
