European Commission takes on SpaceX and Amazon with its own satellite internet system

The European Commission has approved plans for a €6 billion satellite internet system to compete with the likes of Amazon and SpaceX, despite previous objections from its internal watchdog. Brussels’ initiative to provide encrypted broadband coverage was twice rejected by the European Commission’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board. The board, which vets impact assessments for proposals put forward by the commission, believed the scheme would waste money and compete with commercial services. The Secured Connectivity regulation is the brainchild of Thierry Breton, the internal market commissioner, who wants the EU to build a third satellite system in lower earth orbit (LEO) for secured communications and access to the internet. The EU already has Galileo, a global navigation system, and Copernicus, which is used for earth observation. The signals from the new system would be encrypted and offered to Europe as well as Africa to give that continent an alternative to Chinese-built infrastructure. It would also provide a back-up in case of cyber attacks on broadband networks.