The Trump administration is warning Europe not to shut Starlink out of a key satellite-to-phone band. Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told the Financial Times in an interview released Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026 that European businesses "should be wary" of retaliation in the U.S. market, and that the consequences could be "very devastating," Anadolu Agency reports.

What the fight is about

The European Commission proposed on May 27, 2026 a new EU-level selection process for mobile satellite services in the harmonised 2 GHz band, IBTimes UK reports. Current licences expire in May 2027. The band is used for direct-to-device service, which lets ordinary smartphones connect to satellites. The plan could reserve much of it for European operators and limit access for American firms such as SpaceX and Amazon. It is not a blanket Starlink ban, and the final rules are not written yet.

SpaceX has criticized the proposal, warning it could hurt connectivity in Ukraine, where Starlink has carried civilian and military communications since Russia's full-scale invasion.

"You don't make European companies more competitive by making US companies less competitive," Puzder said. He added that Europe has a right to protect sensitive government information, and urged the two sides to work together on AI and quantum computing against China: "It'd be a lot easier if we were working with Europe instead of fighting Europe."

Europe's carriers line up a rival bid

On Monday, Oct. 19, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone signed a letter of intent to explore a joint bid for the spectrum, Bloomberg and The Verge report. The four would build ground infrastructure and monitoring in Europe but not their own satellites; a satellite partner is still to be chosen. Washington has not announced any specific retaliatory step.

Why Tesla and SpaceX investors care: Connectivity, which includes Starlink, brought in $4.3 billion of SpaceX's $7.8 billion second-quarter revenue, and phone-to-satellite service is a growth push after SpaceX agreed on Oct. 8 to buy 800 MHz spectrum from Grain Management for about $8 billion, per Reuters. SpaceX reports Q3 results today; see our SpaceX earnings preview and the Tesla-SpaceX merger talk.