Greenland Ditches Starlink for French Satellite Service
93 comments
·October 22, 2025sehansen
maelito
I think the title has to be read as "Greenland does not take the Starlink option despite it being the only internet satellite brand that the english speaking world talks about". Hence the "ditch". But you're right, it's a bad title.
CaptainOfCoit
Reality seems to be closer to: "After talks with Starlink and Eutelsat, Greenland went with Eutelsat because of trust and long-term cooperation". But with such title people wouldn't need to click the link to read the full article.
oldestofsports
But you can only read it that way after reading the whole article. It’s a known fact that a very high percentage of people read the title without clicking on it, therefpre this is pure misinformation spreading and should be removed.
philipallstar
This sort of thing does feel like endless bias. I know some people lean into it and love to read the worst case, criminal prosecutor version of events, but I find it really off-putting.
mrtksn
I think its newsworthy because the media cycle(social&traditional) since years framed Starlink as the only company providing such services and it turns out that you can actually use some other services. Well, actually can't realistically because those established alternatives were marketed towards B2B and that's why their equipment isn't affordable and very usable for the end user but still, its newsworthy that Starlink isn't eating their market straight away.
Also, what's cool about Starlink is that they have sort of vertical integration with SpaceX that allows them to constantly keep launching new satellites which allows them maintain lower orbit constellation that allows for cheaper end-user equipment and potentially better speeds. Also the constant recycling of satellites allow for ever going network improvement as the tech advances.
What's not cool about Starlink is that it is American and Elon Musk affiliated, which makes it national security risk for Europe and Greenland in particular. That is also part of the newsworthiness because if this becomes a trend Starlink may become unviable business for a market of just 300M people.
HWR_14
> if this becomes a trend Starlink may become unviable business for a market of just 300M people.
345M people. Of which, the real market is around 15M households. Everyone else already has wired broadband. I suppose some people will want an additional link for redundancy, but my understanding is that Starlink satellites would be oversubscribed if urban areas had significant adoption.
microtonal
The comments were most interesting for me, because I learned Eutelsat has over 600 satellites. As you mention, the media has framed Starlink as the only company providing good coverage. I never looked in more detail (I have fiber at home and great 5G coverage across the country I live in), so it was nice to learn that there is some competition. (Especially since the US has weaponized US services as of recently, like cutting off the e-mail services of the chief prosecutor of the ICC.)
simondotau
> I think its newsworthy
Nobody is arguing that it isn't newsworthy.
Copenjin
I see many of you focusing on the misuse of "ditches" while you should focus on the use of the word "trust" by those who signed the contract. Pretty sure it will not be the last time we see this kind of reasoning.
CaptainOfCoit
Was there a moment in time "trust" wasn't one of the biggest factors of the decision to sign or not sign a contract?
The only thing that has changed is who you can trust long-term, but I think trust has always been one of the top factors.
dotancohen
That established trust has always been the Goliath that SpaceX challenged. Boeing was the only trusted company for the Commercial Crew contract, ULA was the only trusted company for payload delivery, etc.
VagabundoP
There was an illusion you could trust certain countries, political institutions and, for some bizarre reason, certain billionaires-cum-oligarchs.
Recent upheavals and actions have really pushed people to question exactly who and what you can trust.
Also the recent focus on strategic elements with regard to globalisation also plays into these choices now - where it might have been dismissed a couple of years ago.
CaptainOfCoit
> There was an illusion you could trust certain countries, political institutions and, for some bizarre reason, certain billionaires-cum-oligarchs.
Granted you live in a neat place, those two first ones are still reasonable to trust in your day-to-day life, and in those same places the latter was never worshiped on the same level that happened in the US.
wateralien
Is the read-between-the-lines part here that Elon / SpaceX is too aligned with the USA government and their aspirations to take over Greenland to be trusted with their comms infra?
nolok
That's clearly what the author of that article want to say, but the truth is that Greenland has a centralized access (people go through the national provider to get access, and said provider uses others' solutions in the backend), while Starlink offer was for a direct to consumer system; they were simply not answering to the criterias requested.
CaptainOfCoit
I mean, I think that's obvious. Ukraine obviously wouldn't contract anything essential from Russia, same goes for Denmark/Greenland and the US. You don't threaten countries you want to do business with.
It's also not very "between the lines" at all, the article finishes with:
> Binzer said the company will keep an open mind for future partnerships, but the priority remains clear. Greenland’s communication systems must stay under Greenlandic control.
Sovereignty is more important than ever, and governments are catching up to this fact.
Sporktacular
Either way, trunks will use a network that is not under sovereign control. So sovereignty here means access must exclusively be through the locally controlled monopoly. Foreign powers will still have the ability to shut down or manipulate traffic, which is hardly sovereignty at all.
chrisco255
You know the U.S. has operational military bases on Greenland soil and Denmark was a founding member of NATO and remains an active member, right?
The offer to buy Greenland from Denmark was never a threat. It was an offer. The U.S. has made similar territorial purchases in the past, including most famously from our oldest ally the French known as the Lousiana Purchase.
dxdm
> The offer to buy Greenland from Denmark was never a threat. It was an offer.
The highest ranking member of the US executive, in a publicly televised speech before Congress, said that "we're going to get Greenland one way or the other".
You can argue that's not a threat, but it would make you look silly IMO.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-the-full-text-of-...
azernik
An "offer" that included an explicit threat of military force if it wasn't accepted.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/04/world/greenland-annexatio...
CaptainOfCoit
> You know the U.S. has operational military bases on Greenland soil and Denmark was a founding member of NATO and remains an active member, right?
Bases as in multiple? Didn't they shut down all but one?
> was never a threat. It was an offer
Is this a joke? The president has literally said they're not ruling out military force to annex Greenland, in what world isn't that a threat? Especially when said to a military partner no less.
When the US purchased Lousiana from the French, did the bid also come with a "if you don't agree, we might take it by force" addendum?
subroutine
The modern news website: 15 sentences, 6 Shutterstock photos, 35 ads
CaptainOfCoit
Don't forget:
> This article is made and published by Anna Hartz, which may have used AI in the preparation
The editors don't even know for sure if the author used AI or not.
el_pollo_diablo
I would put the emphasis on a different word:
> This article is made and published by Anna Hartz, which may have used AI in the preparation
Which, not who. They're not even sure the author is human!
dotancohen
By using the word "which" instead of "who", the editors don't even know for sure if the author _is_ AI or not.
pell
That aspect I don’t find all that concerning. I just wish they had a page where they explain what AI preparation entails.
emsign
But they can't. That would require resources which they have outsourced to OpenAI. If they documented their workflow all "productivity" gains would be lost. The whole point of AI is to get away with cheap and dirty. sounding high quality and competent.
emsign
> may
They don't even specifically know for each article if their authors use LLMs or not. What a shitshow.
flowrange
It's as if they're trying to mimic a Twitter post thread, fearing that people won't have the attention span to read a regular article. This is the equivalent to jump cuts in videos.
onion2k
The news industry: "Google are killing us! Give us money!"
MaxL93
Well, it's a bit off-topic, but yes, Google is demonstrably killing the fabric of the Internet. Ever since they introduced the info box & knowledge graph, pretty much every change they've introduced is geared towards one goal: they don't want to just be a guide, they want to be the journey AND the destination. All the latest AI efforts are the apotheosis, the extreme logical conclusion of that. Surely I don't need to explain how this makes them extremely similar to a parasite killing its host, how this degrades the very ecosystem their foundations are built on?
andrepd
? Yes? That's exactly what's happening, google's and meta's algos dictate which sites get traffic which is why every website is slowly but surely turning into clickbait/reels.
system2
At least we don't see the ads.
nottorp
I haven't seen a cookie dialog that toxic in a while...
jampekka
It's indeed rare to see the fine-grained item toggles only nowadays. But at least they are all off by default (unless I fell into some sort of dark pattern and misunderstood).
Still quite clearly illegal though. Rejecting tracking should be as easy as accepting it.
sehansen
How so? It's two clicks to reject everything. There aren't even any "Legitimate Interest" shenanigans like Google Funding Choices has.
lqet
Click on "settings", and be surprised what "accept all" means.
Note: each of the tabs on the left has their own "vendors" you may grant access. In total, there are over 800 toggle switches.
nottorp
I clicked once and couldn't see the button to reject everything...
Might be because i'm on a 14" laptop and it didn't fit on screen.
t1E9mE7JTRjf
lol two clicks just to be able to do what you original were doing is terrible.
sehansen
Compared to your average site using the Google Funding Choices dialog where I just counted 11 clicks to reject everything. https://tvtropes.org/ is an example, if you dare.
cuu508
Tip: in uBlock Origin settings, enable "EasyList/uBO - Cookie Notices" filters.
sgt
I recently saw a full screen cookie dialog, like a full blown control panel with a dozen settings. Can't remember which site, but it literally took over the entire page.
jeroenhd
You don't understand! You can't write a dozen sentences that "may" have been generated by AI without selling your browsing history to 800 different companies!
lifestyleguru
A lot of useless choice right there.
fmajid
The new CEO of Eutelsat, Jean-François Fallacher, was previously the CEO of Orange France, the country’s incumbent telco, a much bigger company. He is a member of France’s senior civil service and this shows how seriously France and the EU are taking the strategic and sovereignty risks of depending on US-controlled infrastructure. Greenland, of course, is even more concerned due to Trump’s threats.
timpera
It's pretty cool to see competition from SpaceX ramping up. I didn't know that OneWeb already has 652 satellites in operation.
sp0ck
Calling them "competitor" is eufemism. Cheapest plan (Anchor) is $625/month for 40 GB, with 10/2 Mbps speeds.
Greenland decision was political not technical to pay x5 more for x10 slower service.
kitd
How do you know Greenland are paying consumer prices?
kotaKat
And terminal costs will be through the roof in comparison.
Who else out there is making full-on beamforming capable satellite terminals under $1k? Kymeta's over $20k+ for a single dish.
People may hate the company and the man behind it but there's something special about being able to grab specialized satcoms hardware for like $300 at Best Buy.
10 years ago a BGAN terminal ran me $5000+ and a 384k connection several thousand bucks a month. Now you can get ~512k for $5 a month in Standby Mode on a $300 dish.
saubeidl
There's no terminal costs. Eutelsat uses bog-standard 5G.
The company and the man behind it cost $300 more per terminal.
imron
How did they launch their satellites?
sehansen
From a quick skim of their Wikipedia page[0]: basically anything they could get their hands on. Arianes 1 through 5, Atlas II and III, Delta IV, Proton, Zenit, Long March 3, Falcon 9.
saubeidl
I've long been of the opinion that launchers are more or less commodities, the interesting stuff is what you shoot up.
N-Krause
Seems like they partnered with SpaceX.
https://www.ipinternational.net/oneweb-and-spacex-a-surprisi...
WJW
Not false, but they also partnered with every other launch provider under the sun.
null
razakel
ISRO have done a couple of launches.
DonHopkins
I'm just worried the British will start orbiting satellites in the opposite direction as the rest of the world, for the same reason they drive on the left side of the road. ;)
2rsf
Somewhat related to that, but Israel is launching satellites in the opposite direction than the rest of the world when they launch from their shores, this is so the launch is done over the Mediterranean sea and not their neighbors.
lifeisstillgood
Even more tangential - one of the “disaster” scenarios is a satellite collision - either East/West vs West/East or East/West vs North/South. The debris then would act as shrapnel taking out more and more satellites.
There is an assumption that such a loss would be a prelude to a major attack - but cock up is always more likely.
yard2010
How did we get to a time when clicking back in the browser makes a website show a bunch of cancer inducing apps including a picture of Putin? I didn't even read the article after being greeted by an unremovable ad, trying to escape this dystopic nightmare by going back.
oldestofsports
Fake news title
rob74
> Tusass had also been in talks with Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, but chose to continue working with Eutelsat.
"Ditches" sounds like they were already using Starlink, but abandoned it in favor of Eutelsat's system. The text clarifies that they only decided to (continue to) use Eutelsat, and Starlink was just another option considered.
> Binzer said it was not about which company was better, but about trust and long-term cooperation.
Well, who can blame them? After Trump repeatedly expressed "interest" in owning Greenland (fortunately he seems to have moved on to other pet projects in the meantime), and with Musk being one of Trump's closest allies, it would be a bit naive to trust Starlink...
etiennebausson
Yeah, as a french citizen I am happy to see Eutelsat get a new contract, but saying Starlink was ditched is poor journalism.
Don't know the publication, but it seems to be a Danish publishing in English.
Tempest1981
Ditches -> Declines / Refuses / Rejects / Turns Down / Avoids
roschdal
Oui madam
ta1243
Starlink is run by a company based in a country which has threatened to invade Greenland, with a CEO who is aligned with the leadership of that country.
Sporktacular
The sentiment is understandable. But jamming the satellite trunks to another country during an invasion would not be difficult for the US. It's not clear how choosing a French provider will prevent that.
sofixa
> CEO who is aligned with the leadership of that country
Don't forget a guy who is so aligned with the leadership of that country that he paid to be a part of it, was kind of a government minister, and of course went on live national TV to perform a Nazi salute at an official event.
That's a pretty damn editorialized title[0] given that Tusass signed an extended deal with their original provider. To me the chosen title implies that Tusass had chosen Starlink and then decided to stop using them. Starlink did submit a tender offer, but losing to an established competitor isn't super newsworthy.
0: No shade thrown at the submitter, as this is the title used by the site.