We Need a Satellite Internet Governance, and the ITU Is Not It

There’s growing attention to the fight over who governs satellite internet. A piece in Tech Policy Press by Nunes and Teixeria flags how the push for stricter regulatory enforcement, geolocation mandates, terminal disablement, national authorizations, could end up entrenching the very incumbents they aim to constrain. It’s a sharp warning: rules designed to bring satellite operators in line may end up reinforcing consolidation, because only the biggest players can afford the compliance costs.

But there’s a deeper problem that the piece acknowledges but stops short of confronting head-on (because these days we are all about sovereignty) the forum in which this governance is happening, the ITU, is not fit for purpose.

I wrote about this in a piece a few years ago at Digital Medusa. The case of Iran’s complaint against Starlink is not just a technical dispute about terminals and spectrum. Iran also did not bring novel arguments to win the case. That case is a clear illustration of how an intergovernmental, closed-door body like the ITU can be leveraged by states to assert sovereign control over infrastructure and, in the process, fragment what should be a global, open communications network.

Let’s be clear: the ITU’s Radio Regulations Board made no effort to consider access to information, user rights, or the legitimacy of the state in question to deny connectivity to its people. It accepted the state’s framing of “unauthorized use” without interrogating the underlying human rights implications. And it did so in a process with no participation from civil society, no transparency, and no accountability.

The authors warn us that requiring satellite operators to geofence, block, or shut off terminals country by country will lead to two outcomes: (1) a regulatory framework that only a handful of massive operators can navigate, and (2) a more fragmented Internet where access depends on the state’s blessing. I agree, but we have to push this further. It’s not just about competition and scale. It’s about who decides.

Governance of global satellite infrastructure cannot be left to a body where only states have a voice, and where those voices include regimes with long records of censorship, shutdowns, and repression. Satellite internet, like DNS and other layers of infrastructure, has profound political and human rights consequences. The ITU is structured in a way that obscures those consequences. It treats governance as a purely technical matter of spectrum coordination, but it is not. When a government demands the right to block signals over its territory, it is not just managing radio frequencies. It is controlling information access.

We need a governance framework for satellite internet that:

Treats human rights safeguards as foundational, not optional

Involves affected users, civil society, technical experts, and underrepresented regions

Doesn’t reward incumbents simply because they’re best equipped to jump through sovereign hoops

That means moving away from treaty-based, state-centric institutions like the ITU as the default venue for resolving these disputes. Multistakeholder governance isn’t a feel-good alternative. It’s a necessity if we want a satellite internet that serves people, not just states or shareholders.

Satellite Internet holds real potential for expanding access, especially in places where terrestrial infrastructure is censored or broken. But it will only live up to that potential if we govern it in ways that reflect openness, rights, and legitimacy.

The ITU cannot deliver that on its own. It’s time we stopped pretending it could.