Eutelsat says U.S. demand holds as SpaceX urges tighter satellite rules

Eutelsat is betting that Washington’s appetite for satellite redundancy will outlast SpaceX’s latest push to make the market harder for foreign competitors. Jean-Francois Fallacher, the company’s chief executive, said U.S. businesses and the Pentagon still want alternative capacity, even as SpaceX asks regulators to tighten access for operators from countries that restrict American firms.

The fight has shifted into the regulatory arena. SpaceX filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission on April 16 urging the agency to restrict market access for foreign satellite operators whose home governments block or disadvantage U.S. companies. The FCC’s Space Bureau and Office of International Affairs had already opened a reciprocity proceeding on March 2, asking for comment on international satellite-service regulation and saying the record could inform future FCC action on market access.

That makes the dispute more than a commercial grudge match between Elon Musk’s Starlink and Eutelsat, the French- and British-backed operator that is widely viewed as Starlink’s main European rival. It is becoming a test of whether satellite communications will be governed by open competition or by a more explicitly reciprocal model, with Brussels and Washington each weighing rules that could reshape who gets to serve government and enterprise customers across the Atlantic.

Fallacher said the U.S. market still matters. “We have appetite in the U.S,” he said, adding that “American companies are lobbying for less regulation.” He argued that European space law is moving in the right direction and said businesses and the U.S. Department of Defense want alternative satellite services for reliability and redundancy. In a market where a network outage can disrupt military links or enterprise connectivity, that backup value is a strategic asset, not a luxury.

Eutelsat has had setbacks in U.S. government business. The company previously saw a slowdown in some Pentagon contract renewals amid broader spending cuts, and a May 2025 report said it had disclosed a sizable U.S. government contract that was not renewed and that its Defense Department renewal rate fell below 50% in that quarter. Even so, Eutelsat continues to supply satellite services to the Pentagon through a proxy company, and Fallacher said U.S. demand has not waned.

The broader backdrop is Europe’s push for greater satellite autonomy. Reuters has reported that Eutelsat’s government and commercial revenue has benefited from home-grown European demand, and in September 2025 the company was seeking additional European backing to help challenge Starlink. With the FCC also moving ahead on direct-to-device spectrum policy, the message from Washington is clear: satellite infrastructure is becoming a strategic communications market, and supplier diversity is turning into a policy question with long-term geopolitical stakes.