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For many remote Arctic communities, Starlink is the obvious choice for satellite internet. But Greenland, wary of the US, is turning to European alternatives. Meanwhile, China and Russia’s military-industrial complexes are linking arms. In 2009, just when Facebook and Twitter were exploding in popularity and people were beginning to adopt smart phones, high-speed internet finally arrived in Greenland. Under the ice-choked Labrador Sea, a submarine cable slinked from Newfoundland, Canada to Nuuk. Greenlanders rapidly began purchasing internet subscriptions, and as email replaced snail mail, the number of postage stamps dropped by nearly 40%. Ever since then, the Government of Greenland has been trying to expand internet access, especially for the country’s more remote settlements, which rely on distant satellites and ground stations. The precarious nature of their internet was exposed earlier this spring when a gigantic power outage in Spain and Portugal interrupted service in Qaanaaq, Greenland’s northernmost town, and east Greenland. At first glance, this Iberian-Arctic connection may seem bizarre (though in the longue durée, who could forget the centuries of Basque whaling and cod fishing in the Arctic?). Yet since 2023, a satellite operated by Spanish telecommunications company Hispasat with the aim of overcoming the digital divide in the Amazon has provided internet to a handful of remote Greenlandic settlements far from submarine cables and microwave internet relay stations. The Amazonas Nexus satellite sits high above the Earth’s 61st western meridian, a line of longitude that runs all the way up from the humid Amazon Rainforest to icy Greenland. Its signals are relayed through the Maspalomas ground station on Gran Canaria, a Spanish island off the coast of West Africa built in the 1960s because it lay at nearly the exact same latitude as Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the Americans had built their space base. This enabled continuous tracking and communication with spacecraft like the Apollo lunar missions. _A map of the Amazonas Nexus internet satellite coverage_ , _which runs from Greenland through the Amazon_. Source: Hispasat/YouTube. Due to these Space Age and geographical flukes, Maspalomas – the station that was the first in the world to hear Neil Armstrong declare, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” – is the very facility that both narwhal hunters in Qaanaaq and caiman-hunting Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon rely on for internet. (Curiously, according to this article, barely anyone in Spain seems to know of the role their country played in relaying some of the most famous words ever uttered by a human being.) While the sun-kissed Canary Islands did not lose power like the rest of Spain and Portugal during the May blackout, communications were still disrupted. As a local newspaper reported, “The outage left thousands of users in the Arctic without phone, internet, and text messages, highlighting the strategic importance of the Canary Islands’ space complex.” _Who would have guessed that Qaanaaq’s internet comes from the Canary Islands?_ Photo: Felix König/Wikimedia Commons. ## Greenland shuns Starlink More and more, internet underpins day-to-day life, even in places where people still hunt for their food. It is little surprise, then, that the Government of Greenland is striving to improve satellite internet for the eight percent of the country that turns to outer space to get online. Yet there are constraints to how far it will go to expand service. This past October, Greenland decided to forego the obvious satellite internet provider for remote regions: Starlink, the company owned by Elon Musk. With close to 9,000 satellites, Starlink is the dominant purveyor of high-speed broadband internet from Low Earth Orbit, the zone of orbital space closest to Earth. Starlink is only a couple hundred kilometers above Earth, whereas Hispasat’s Amazonas Nexus sits 36,000 kilometers away in what is called geostationary orbit. While this distant vantage enables it to provide internet to practically an entire hemisphere, the signals take much longer to reach Earth. Starlink, with its 9,000 satellites working together to provide planetary coverage, is cheap, reliable, and downright fast. The breadth of its network means that the service can cover places that fiber optic struggles to reach, from the Arctic to Antarctica, the high seas, and the battlefields of Ukraine, and at speeds that geostationary satellites like Amazonas Nexus will never equal. The first Starlink satellites slotted into orbit on the backs of rockets belonging to their parent company, SpaceX, in 2019. Since then, many Arctic communities across Alaska, Canada, and the Nordic countries have subscribed to the service, with customers ranging from schools to individuals. The Government of Greenland, however, has banned Starlink since 2024, when approximately 10 users were discovered using the service. At the time, the prohibition was made to protect the licensed monopoly of the national telecommunications provider, Tusass. Capitalists might bristle at the word “monopoly.” But Greenland is not a place that invites significant economic competition. Since Tusass was founded as Tele-Post in 1879, few natural competitors have arisen to provide mail, telephone, and internet to the country’s scattered communities. Starlink, though, represents a threat. From space, it can overcome the vastness of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the countless fjords striating the coastline to stream internet at the entire island at rates starting around US$70 a month. Tusass charges approximately double. Starlink’s affordability and reliability therefore could challenge its monopoly – that is, if the Government of Greenland were to allow competition. ## Starlink: Coming soon, or never? Starlink’s website currently shows Greenland as “Coming Soon.” That status will likely remain indefinitely given that in early October, Tusass signed an agreement with Eutelsat OneWeb, a European company. Eutelsat is based in Paris, while OneWeb is based in London. Starlink, in contrast, is based in the US. CEO Elon Musk has generally aligned himself with American national security interests. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Musk initially provided Starlink to Ukraine for free, though not over disputed territories like Crimea. When he threatened to pull the plug due to the high cost, the US Department of Defense stepped in and began paying Starlink $20 million a month to keep the service going. SpaceX has also created a new initiative, Starshield, which directly supports US military ambitions. Starshield leverages Starlink’s technology and SpaceX’s launch capacities to support US military customers with secured communications and information. In addition, Starshield provides target tracking, optical and radio reconnaissance, and early missile warning. All of this means that despite Musk’s volatility, Starlink is in deep with the US government – the very one whose current administration threatened to take over Greenland earlier this year. With internet being a critical infrastructure increasingly targeted by hybrid warfare, it is little wonder that the Government of Greenland refuses to partner with a company that it likely sees as colluding with the Trump administration. Similarly, the Government of Ontario “ripped up” a CAD$100 million contract with Starlink after Trump slapped tariffs on Canadian goods in February 2025. Once again, people living in remote communities – in this case in northern Ontario – were made to bear the brunt of international spats. Greenland is looking to Europe for infrastructure, whether that means Danish companies, which built its new airports (even though China was initially a contender, which the US blocked), or French and British companies promising to provide satellite internet. A Tusass press released quoted CEO Toke Binzer (who stepped down earlier this week to join state-owned seafood company Royal Greenland) as saying, “We have entered into a partnership with Eutelsat to best fulfill our promise of delivering better and faster internet to the population in satellite-covered areas. I am both relieved and pleased that, after long negotiations, we have finally landed such a strong agreement.” ## Greenland’s remote communities may lose out from Starlink ban The hope is that Tusass’ collaboration with Eutelsat OneWeb will improve internet speeds and affordability for Greenland’s most remote communities: places like Qaanaaq, Upernavik, and Kulusuk, which are grouped under “Zone 3” of Tusass’ service plan. Zone 1, the areas in which internet has been supplied by submarine cable since 2009, only includes Nuuk and Qaqortoq. These two major coastal settlements lie relatively close to the island’s southern tip and the many links criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean seafloor. Zone 2, which is home to the next largest settlements, such as Sisimiut and Ilulissat, receives internet by long-wave microwave links (explained in this excellent post published in June 2024 on techeconomyblog). Zone 3 is the area suffering the most from the digital divide. Approximately 15 years ago, for instance, a power outage in northwest Greenland left Qaanaaq without power for 14 days, and service could not easily be restored in winter. The town’s main concern was its inability to watch the Christmas mass on television. Today, with internet and telecommunications even more embedded in society, the outcry would no doubt be greater. It remains to be seen, however, whether Eutelsat OneWeb will be up to the task of providing internet at supercharged speeds. Generally, its service is regarded as more expensive and slower that Starlink. Even once OneWeb becomes available, many in Greenland’s more remote communities may wonder why they can’t have Starlink like their counterparts across half the Arctic. (Starlink refuses to provide its service in Russia.) Already, after the 2024 ban was instituted, one Greenlander publicly complained to the 375,000-member Starlink Facebook group: Ultimately, it seems that Starlink has been blocked and stymied in Greenland for two separate reasons: first, to defend Tusass’ monopoly, and second, to protect Greenland’s national security and critical infrastructure. Prohibitions and cooperation with a Starlink competitor will deter most would-be customers of Elon Musk. But a black market for terminals will very likely still arise, much as it has in other places where Starlink is nominally banned or unavailable, like Myanmar and Ethiopia. ## **The Russian-Chinese military-industrial complex tightens** While suspicion halts the spread of technology and infrastructure between the US and Greenland, China and Russia are tightening their relationship. Many Western observers question the level of trust between these two partners. But China has allegedly been providing intelligence, including satellite reconnaissance, to Russia to support its missile strikes on Ukraine. In contrast, in March, the US briefly halted the provisioning of military aid and intelligence to Ukraine, temporarily impeding its ability to carry out drone strikes. Then, as the Financial Times reported last week, Wang Dinghua, the owner of a major Chinese drone parts supplier, recently purchased a five percent stake in Rustakt, one of Russia’s leading drone manufactureres. This move, the article argues, attests to “a deepening relationship between Moscow and Beijing’s military-industrial complexes.” Rustakt produces the VT-40 “first-person-view drone,” which the Russian Armed Forces have widely employed during its war in Ukraine. Rustakt and other Russian companies import parts from China, such as brushless motors and electronics, for use in these small-scale weapons of war. Without these motors, according to _The Insider_ , “Russia’s entire drone industry would collapse.” But the trade goes on, enabling the production of hundreds of these inexpensive drones per day. Each one can carry ammunition for up to 30 kilometers. Distinctly, unlike in the outset of the war when drones were controlled by electronic signals, VT-40s are controlled by a fiber optic cable to protect them from electronic jamming. This workaround, however, has invited new counter-tactics. In May 2025, Ukrainian drones attacked a fiber optic factory in Saransk, Russia. But the fiber keeps spooling, and the drones keep attacking. _Screenshot from “Lamp of Knowledge”YouTube video._ Greenland may now have a new direct flight to the US from Nuuk to New York. But other connections with America are fraying as the Inuit-majority island looks to Europe for secure infrastructure, even if it comes at higher cost and slower speeds. Meanwhile, Russian drones made with parts sourced from Shenzhen are snarling Ukraine in spools of fiber optic cables, leaving a tangled web of violence in their wake. As one network comes undone in the Arctic, another strengthens in the east. Tags: Drones Greenland Starlink Tusass Ukraine Ukraine war War in Ukraine Categories: Military & Defense