SpaceX is pushing the FCC to go after the European Union over concerns it’ll enact new regulations that threaten to block Starlink and other US satellite companies. 

“The Commission should not wait for the situation to deteriorate further but should act now to establish clear policies that discourage foreign administrations from adopting protectionist policies,” the company told the FCC in a letter last week. 

At issue is the EU’s proposed Space Act to regulate EU and non-EU satellite operators, including “giga-constellations” such as Starlink. Last month, FCC Chair Brendan Carr indicated that he views the proposed regulation as protectionist and warned that the commission could respond with “reciprocity” by blocking European satellite companies from the US market. 

However, SpaceX is urging the FCC to dial up the pressure by codifying the reciprocity threat into actual policy. “If the Commission takes no action until after the EU implements these protectionist policies, it will be left with little option but to impose reciprocal restrictions on EU-licensed satellite operators,” the company wrote in an 8-page letter. “By clarifying its market access policies now, the Commission may head off an escalating trade war before it occurs.”

(Credit: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

SpaceX is pushing for tit-for-tat rules, arguing that “the protectionist push in Europe is clear and strong,” and might provoke other foreign governments to enact similar policies. “The United States cannot afford to take this concerted effort lightly or to passively wait to see what happens.”

SpaceX has complained that the EU’s Space Act would “impose unnecessarily burdensome obligations,” which the company previously flagged as “incorrect, inflexible, or infeasible.” This appears to include how EU rules would require Starlink to limit satellite brightness to “at least 7 magnitude,” or what SpaceX says is a “technical infeasibility.” The draft rules also give the EU the power to conduct on-site inspections, noted Tim Belfall, a director at UK-based Starlink installer Westend WiFi. 

In its letter, SpaceX says it doesn’t want a trade war, only to “preserve” open-access policies for satellite operators. “The clear and growing threat of protectionist policies abroad illustrates that wishful thinking and naïve optimism alone will not achieve this outcome,” the letter adds. 

The company took the hardline approach while alleging that rival US satellite operator Viasat plans to “weaponize protectionist policies abroad against other US operators.” SpaceX even urged the FCC to sanction US satellite companies that “advocate for and benefit from protectionist policies” by treating them as foreign providers. 

“Viasat advances these anticompetitive scare tactics towards an obvious end: to market its own services as an alternative,” SpaceX adds. “Viasat peddles ‘state-of-the-art, low-cost GSO [geostationary] satellites’ that Viasat falsely claims ‘can deliver the same speeds and prices to users’ as LEO constellations, as well as state sovereign systems (for which Viasat offers turnkey solutions).”

Viasat didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But the company told the commission earlier this month that it’s important to distinguish protectionist policies from “legitimate substantive requirements” from foreign regulators.   

“For example, there are legitimate reasons why a WTO [World Trade Organization] member country might require satellite operators seeking to serve its market to meet orbital safety and sustainability requirements that have not been adopted in the United States (such as limits on aggregate collision risk),” Viasat said. “Certain US operators might not like those requirements, and might be unwilling or unable to comply with them, but that does not mean that those requirements are inherently unreasonable or discriminatory barriers to market access, or that the US should respond by abandoning the WTO presumption.” 

The FCC has been soliciting public comment on the topic as it considers new proposals focused on satellite market access reciprocity. The EU also released an updated draft of the Space Act, which some critics have slammed as being too vague or adding rules that could block US companies from complying.