On 20 April 2026, SpaceX vice president for satellite policy David Goldman travelled to Canberra to tell the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications that his company might withdraw from Australia's satellite-to-mobile market if the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) proceeds with auctioning the 2 GHz mobile satellite services (MSS) band. The hearing was part of the inquiry into the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025, which the Senate referred to the committee on 5 March 2026 and which reported on 14 May 2026.
Goldman framed the threat in absolutist terms. A competitive auction, he said, would be "an unprecedented move that would contradict how it treats all other satellite spectrum." Telstra and TPG Telecom — the two carriers with the strongest interest in domestic spectrum — pushed back at the same hearing and asked the government to proceed.
The right policy answer is neither Goldman's veto nor a vanilla mobile-network-operator auction. It is a competitive allocation with satellite-specific conditions built into the licence terms.
Steelman the auction
Begin with why ACMA's instincts to use a market-based allocation are defensible. Telstra is currently the only Australian mobile network operator licensed to use any 2 GHz frequencies, and it is also Starlink's exclusive Australian Direct-to-Cell partner — the partnership launched commercial satellite text messaging on 7 June 2025 and is the basis for the only operating satellite-to-mobile service in the country. If ACMA assigned the remaining 2 GHz capacity to Telstra administratively, or to any incumbent on first-mover grounds, the consumer-welfare outcome would be one MNO-satellite tie-up controlling the entire mobile-satellite layer of the Australian network.
TPG made this point directly: it does not currently hold terrestrial 2 GHz frequencies and cannot offer a Starlink-style direct-to-device service competitively against Telstra without spectrum access. A competitive process, conducted under transparent rules, is the standard pro-competition tool to prevent that capture. Telstra itself told the committee "we are not seeking to exclude satellite network operators or any MNO from accessing the 2 GHz band" and said it had no preference between auction and administrative allocation. The Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation Bill that triggered the hearings would require carriers to deliver voice and SMS coverage across roughly five million square kilometres and 37,000 kilometres of road — a target that becomes much harder to meet on time if one operator controls the satellite layer.
Steelman SpaceX
Goldman is not wrong that 2 GHz is different. The band — 1980–2005 MHz uplink and 2170–2195 MHz downlink — is internationally harmonised under ITU Radio Regulations as a mobile satellite service allocation. Satellite operators including Viasat (which acquired Inmarsat) hold international rights in the band on the assumption that national regulators would administer it as a satellite resource, consistent with how other MSS bands are treated globally. SpaceX's complaint, stripped of the withdrawal bluster, is that allowing terrestrial MNOs to bid for a satellite-harmonised band risks two real harms: warehousing (spectrum used primarily as terrestrial fallback rather than satellite uplink) and balkanisation (national auctions producing inconsistent rules that erode the cross-border satellite economics the harmonisation was meant to enable).
"We're begging to provide service in Australia," Goldman told the committee, "and what we're being told is we may not give you the necessary frequencies to do it." That is overblown — ACMA has not refused SpaceX access; it has proposed a competitive allocation process — but the international-treatment point is legitimate and should shape licence design.
What an evidence-based allocation looks like
The pro-innovation path is to run the auction and make the licences fit the service. Three conditions in particular would resolve most of SpaceX's substantive objections without surrendering competitive allocation:
- Satellite-deployment milestones. Licences should be conditioned on demonstrated satellite use within a defined period, with non-compliance triggering forfeiture. This is the standard remedy against warehousing and is well-precedented in U.S. FCC and EU practice.
- Mandatory open access where one bidder takes all. If a single winner emerges with the full 2 × 25 MHz, the licence should require wholesale access to any qualified satellite operator on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. That prevents a Telstra-Starlink lock-in and equally prevents a SpaceX-only outcome.
- Coordination with the ITU harmonisation regime. ACMA should publish licence conditions that explicitly acknowledge the band's international MSS status and require licensees to operate consistently with the harmonised arrangements, so cross-border satellite economics are not eroded.
The threat is bargaining, not policy
Goldman called Australia "one of our most significant markets." That is not the language of a company about to walk. Starlink launched a commercial Australian direct-to-device service eleven months before Goldman's testimony, has hundreds of thousands of fixed-broadband subscribers in the country, and would surrender a first-mover advantage in a high-ARPU market by leaving. The withdrawal threat is what large incumbents do during spectrum proceedings — and Australia should price it accordingly.
Proceed with the allocation. Make the licence conditions match the service. Don't let either an incumbent MNO or a hyperscale satellite operator dictate the rules.