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The initiative comes as European policymakers face mounting pressure to establish greater control over communications infrastructure considered essential to national security, economic resilience and military operations.

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Europeโ€™s reliance on U.S. satellite services has become particularly sensitive following reported disruptions affecting satellite communications used by Ukraine. ...

European satellite operators, including Eutelsat and SES, are increasingly viewed as important participants in the continentโ€™s efforts to reduce its dependence on foreign communications networks.

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[โ€“] 35 points 6 days ago*

Slowly moves to fast-track

(Sorry, I am European, and support the EU, but speed is not our strong side)

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  • [โ€“] [S] 28 points 6 days ago (3 children)

    Switching between the systems would also require new terminals and supporting equipment, complicating efforts to replace existing services.

    This is what you get if you use proprietary stuff instead of Open Source.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)

    This is exactly what I've been thinking about the whole satellite internet constellations that are getting launched. If governments required interoperability and open access to any network of...say 10 or more satellites we wouldn't have 3 or 4 or 5 incompatible swarms of thousands of satellites crowding low earth orbit and threatening kessler syndrome. We could setup one global satellite internet solution and have competition on the ground for who your connection goes through while it all operates on shared infrastructure.

    And instead of taking an approach to actually help fix the problem the EU is just making it worse by encouraging yet another incompatible constellation of hundreds or thousands of satellites to make LEO even more crowded?!

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  • [โ€“] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

    Isn't eutelsats parent company partly Indian owned? But cool.

    Edit: ah yep, wiki says 17% owned by some Indian telecom, bharti.

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  • [โ€“] -4 points 6 days ago* (2 children)

    The American lead is vast. This seems like an opportunity for Bezos. He could get the EU to subsidize the Amazon satellite program by giving the EU full control of the system, while allowing Amazon traffic through, for free, in perpetuity.

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  • [โ€“] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 child)

    Is this sarcasm?

    How does this make things better?

    It hands a vital service over to an American company that can then strong-arm the UK/EU into other dubious decisions. This would absolutely be the worst solution due the US now controlling the EU satellite architecture.

    It's what currently got us here in the first place - the over reliance on the US.

    You realise Bezos is just as equally culpable as Musk in Trump's reign? He's on his kneels and sucked that mushroom just as much as Elon.

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