Europe enters Southeast Asia’s direct-to-device satellite race

Telkom Indonesia’s satellite arm has taken on three direct-to-device satellite partners in barely 18 Spectrum will decide Southeast Asia’s direct-to-device satellite race, and Europe has just entered it

Telkom Indonesia’s satellite arm has taken on three direct-to-device satellite partners in barely eighteen months: American, Emirati, and, as of this week, French. The newest is Univity, a startup backed by the French government, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Telkomsat to study wholesale 5G services beamed straight to ordinary phones. 

Univity is building a very-low-Earth-orbit constellation, flying around 375km up, low enough, it says, to cut latency and support 5G speeds from space, ahead of two demonstrator satellites in 2027 and operational deployment from 2028. Telkomsat’s development chief, Anggoro K. Widiawan, framed the deal around connectivity for Indonesia’s “remote and geographically dispersed areas.”

Those partners tell their own story. Telkomsat has resold Starlink since 2024 and signed a direct-to-device agreement with the Emirati-backed Equatys venture in December; Univity makes three. Individually, the deals are exploratory, the kind that rarely survive first contact with a regulator.

Together, they show Europe joining a Southeast Asian market that the United States and China were already contesting. They point to how the winner will be chosen: less by whose satellites are overhead, since increasingly everyone’s are, than by who secures the spectrum to reach a phone, and on whose terms.

That the region is ready is no longer the question. Southeast Asia’s coverage gaps have already hardened into a live market, with the Philippines switching on the region’s first commercial satellite-to-phone service earlier this year. What is unsettled is who ends up controlling it.

An American, Chinese and now European field

Starlink is the incumbent, licensed and live across much of the region. China’s way in runs through Shanghai Spacesail, whose Qianfan constellation signed an MoU with Malaysia’s MEASAT in February 2025 covering low-Earth-orbit broadband, direct-to-device and satellite IoT, as SpaceNews reported. It is still a route to market rather than a licensed Malaysian service, but the intent is clear, and Spacesail said late last year it had already run connectivity tests in the country.

Univity is selling something the other two cannot. It describes its network as shared and neutral, built for telcos to run on their own spectrum rather than to compete with them, and its Telkomsat pitch leans on sovereignty, proposing nationally hosted ground infrastructure so Indonesian traffic stays under Indonesian control. The framing is deliberate. In a market where the two biggest names are American and Chinese, neutrality is the product.

Governments are treating these as strategic choices. Malaysia has hedged, with MEASAT reselling Starlink while courting Qianfan; when the Spacesail deal was signed, communications minister Fahmi Fadzil tied it to “the many positive outcomes” of Malaysia’s friendship with China.

Why will spectrum decide the direct-to-device satellite race?

Whether any of this reaches a handset comes down to spectrum, and that is where the real gatekeeping sits. Direct-to-device services run on one of two kinds of airwaves. Some use mobile-satellite (MSS) bands, which work only on newer, satellite-ready phones. Others borrow the mobile bands already licensed to operators, which allow any ordinary handset to connect but raise questions about interference and who controls the frequency.

Every regulator in the region is now working out how to license that, with no settled international rulebook to lean on. The global framework is not expected to firm up until WRC-27, the ITU’s 2027 world radio conference, which will weigh dedicated spectrum for direct-to-device and non-geostationary systems. 

Until then, the decisive players are not the constellations but the regulators: Indonesia’s Komdigi, Malaysia’s MCMC and their neighbours, who decide who gets spectrum, on what terms, and whether a foreign operator’s traffic may leave the country at all.

This is the layer beneath the steady run of MoUs. The satellites are largely in place, and a European contender has just made the field a three-way one. What Southeast Asia’s regulators settle over the next two years, on spectrum, on hosting and on data, will decide who actually owns the direct-to-device satellite market they are all racing to serve.

See also: Direct-to-cell satellite services find their proving ground in Asia

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