Greenland’s national telco, Tusass, signs new agreement with Eutelsat
dagens.com
dagens.com
We all know at this point that rage == clicks == ad revenue.
(The only ads here are YC startup job offers)
If you read the article, that's not exactly the arguments pointed out by neither Tusass nor Greenland's politicians.
Cited from the article:
> Binzer said it was not about which company was better, but about trust and long-term cooperation. Tusass already works with Eutelsat and knows their systems well.
> Some Greenlandic politicians have warned that the country must keep control of its telecom infrastructure.
> They fear that opening the market to foreign providers could threaten national security. For now, Tusass remains the sole provider of telecommunications in Greenland.
The citations from the article are clear on how national security concerns were a key argument to not go with Starlink.
It's also not very "between the lines" at all, the article finishes with:
> Binzer said the company will keep an open mind for future partnerships, but the priority remains clear. Greenland’s communication systems must stay under Greenlandic control.
Sovereignty is more important than ever, and governments are catching up to this fact.
Apparently, some partners/"friends" are more likely to take military action against you than others.
If you're considering sovereignty and you have a choice between one partner who've said "I'll protect you" and another that said "Well, we'll never rule out military action against you", working together with one of those are obviously better for your sovereignty than the other.
West-Ukraine wouldn't. East-Ukraine ... not so sure.
When an invader has a gun against your head, how would you vote?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in...
why you acting like ukraine is already lose its territory???? the war is still going on
there is no winner yet
USA has and has had military bases on Greenland, once established despite opposition from native Greenlanders. Several of these are ecological disasters. There are valleys full of rusting oil drums and machinery. There are fears of there being radioactive waste hidden under the ice, expected to leak sooner or later.
That Denmark had approved some of these bases has fuelled sentiment against Denmark and the US in the first place.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/28/85-of-greenlan...
> But a new survey by pollster Verian, commissioned by the Danish paper Berlingske, showed only 6% of Greenlanders are in favour of becoming part of the US, with 9% undecided.
6%, for practical purposes, means 0%; whenever you have a poll with a clearly insane option, about 4-5% of people will choose it, due to a combination of mistakes and trolling.
About half of Greenlanders support independence (in a concrete sense; far more than that in an abstract sense), but that's rather different to becoming part of the US.
> This article is made and published by Anna Hartz, which may have used AI in the preparation
The editors don't even know for sure if the author used AI or not.
> This article is made and published by Anna Hartz, which may have used AI in the preparation
Which, not who. They're not even sure the author is human!
They don't even specifically know for each article if their authors use LLMs or not. What a shitshow.
Considering that "using AI" can mean anything from "AI wrote the whole article" to "the author used AI to check the grammar", I'd argue this disclaimer is unnecessary and it's safe to assume AI is involved in some way nowadays.
(the author of this comment may have used AI)
I don't think it's safe to assume so at all. Granted, I only know one journalist, and they've told me they only use LLMs in their work to gather further sources/references to check, everything else they still do "manually" with their own hands.
The editorial team should know exactly the scope of their teams AI usage. The snark mostly comes from them not knowing if AI was used or not, and they be upfront about them not knowing it. Feels like they're missing integrity if they don't know such things.
I'd argue that your example falls under "which may have used AI in the preparation", which was exactly my point. (I actually had using AI for research as an example, but English is not my first language and I couldn't get the sentence to sound correct and chatGPT suggested I drop it)
> The editorial team should know exactly the scope of their teams AI usage. The snark mostly comes from them not knowing if AI was used or not, and they be upfront about them not knowing it. Feels like they're missing integrity if they don't know such things.
I don't see this as a lack of integrity, but rather as a futile attempt at being transparent. Everyone else is in the same position, they are just not adding a disclaimer.
And that's nothing specific about journalists, this applies to all professions. At most you can say what your official policy states, but you have absolutely no way of knowing how your employees/coworkers are using AIs.
AI suggests you drop disclosing possible usage of AI.
If it was smart we'd say this was AI influencing the narrative ;)
Might be because i'm on a 14" laptop and it didn't fit on screen.
Note: each of the tabs on the left has their own "vendors" you may grant access. In total, there are over 800 toggle switches.
Still quite clearly illegal though. Rejecting tracking should be as easy as accepting it.
Consent-O-Matic does it for most sites but not on this particular type of dialog.
There are sites that ignore this requirement – they set tracking cookies on the first visit, before you've even seen the dialog. Consent-O-Matic could potentially be better in those cases, assuming the "Reject All" button actually works. There are also sites where the "Reject" option is intentionally or unintentionally broken.
PS. One of my hobbies is to track sites in my country that set non-required cookies on first visit, and contact them asking to fix it. And escalate to the local DPA if they refuse or don't respond. I made a little script that checks a list of sites nightly: https://github.com/cuu508/tasting-party One reason for re-checking regularly is regressions – somebody fixes their site, then two months later the problem is back... Over a year, the list of problematic sites has shrunk from 300-400-something to ~100, so there's progress :-)
There is an assumption that such a loss would be a prelude to a major attack - but cock up is always more likely.
https://www.ipinternational.net/oneweb-and-spacex-a-surprisi...
EDIT: Nvm, just now saw the sibling comment with the wiki article.
Greenland decision was political not technical to pay x5 more for x10 slower service.
Who else out there is making full-on beamforming capable satellite terminals under $1k? Kymeta's over $20k+ for a single dish.
People may hate the company and the man behind it but there's something special about being able to grab specialized satcoms hardware for like $300 at Best Buy.
10 years ago a BGAN terminal ran me $5000+ and a 384k connection several thousand bucks a month. Now you can get ~512k for $5 a month in Standby Mode on a $300 dish.
The company and the man behind it cost $300 more per terminal.
I dunno, is "bus factor" a political or technical thing to consider? How about "did the country of this business threaten us before?" a technical or political consideration?
Personally, I'd try to stay away from entities I can't rely on, on a technical basis. Based on the article, it seems like Greenland traded stability and resilience for performance and price, doesn't seem political.
Ally (which Greenland and the US were in 2024)
and
Active invasion
Starlink removing service is nowhere near as extreme as America jamming starlink (which would be a breach of international treaties)
Don't forget a guy who is so aligned with the leadership of that country that he paid to be a part of it, was kind of a government minister, and of course went on live national TV to perform a Nazi salute at an official event.
The interesting question is to what extent this is symptomatic of a wider pattern where governments and companies around the world are making such decisions for similar reasons.
I have no knowledge of who has deals and who doesn't, but more countries will find themselves in this situation — if you were picking countries who might see quasi-state embargo from a Trump-aligned oligarch this week, you'd pick Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Colombia. Next week, who knows.
Here's a recent story from the other perspective.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...
That was secured by Paul Manafort, a man who —- only months earlier -- worked as an advisor to and lobbyist for a pro-Russian Ukrainian PM (Viktor Yanukovych, essentially a Putin stooge).
Paul Manafort worked for Trump for free (this is not in doubt), but appears to have had massive debts at the time, which appear to have ultimately been settled.
Ukraine is the thread that runs through the entire story of Trump's political career. It is and has always been so utterly, abundantly obvious that Trump's position on Ukraine consistently has favoured and will favour Putin's, that media and journalists failing to observe it is nothing short of malpractice.
Question I have about Ukraine - for those hawks that have consistently said Russia's army is about to collapse, and it's just one more push, or one more escalation in western involvement - is where is there red line?
At what point do you stop escalating? Western nuclear capable missiles into Russia? Western boots on the ground? Western conscription to enable that? Tactical nukes?
Russia appears to be winning on the ground right now. We have stopped talking of victory and now just want to freeze the front line - and Russia isn't interested.
I'm sure the hawks will say we didn't commit enough - but you can't say that without being clear about where that red line is. Not in a democracy.
You could argue in this case Trump was simply being clear eyed about what was actually achievable, rather than either hopelessly optimistic or having a secret agenda to escalate to an all out war with Russia that nobody would have signed up for at the start.
You could. But you could more credibly argue that the US position on Ukraine has been slowly and comprehensively fucked over in a way that very precisely mirrors Putin's goals, by people who have notably public pro-Putin alignments, from Manafort to Trump himself (a man who literally laundered oligarch money).
It is truly obvious what is going on and it's a shame people can't see it.
If you look at the situation on the front line when Trump got in to power in Jan Russian already had the momentum ( if slow and grinding ).
So blaming Trump specifically seems like a bit like scapegoating. Sure he is against it and thus hasn't helped ( this started with me pointing to an incident where he appeared to be actively helping Russia ) - but surely it was already was going south before he became president.
I'm not blaming Trump for the invasion -— it's clearly Putin's invasion! (Indeed in the last couple of days you can even see the slight hint that Trump now gets it. That he's tired of his "friendship" with "Vladimir". You can see a hint of him expressing narcissistic injury from Putin, which he hasn't ever really done before.)
But Putin has been manipulating Trump, Trump lets him, and that is as clear as day. He has absolutely done things Putin wants him to do and on Putin's timescales — the whole 60-then-50 days thing was clearly Putin's plan, for example.
It's not just at odds with former US policy: it's basically sort of revoltingly unbecoming, emasculating, creepy and odd, and it always has been. (e.g. Helsinki). No other politician except a couple of leaders from Russian client states talks about Putin in the frankly admiring, subordinate way Trump does. It's like he's a horse who has been broken. He does not look like who he is —- the leader of the free world, the head of a proper democratic state. He looks like a cheerleader.
Ultimately what I am saying, very clearly, is that people underestimate the extent to which Trump's presidential ambitions and presidencies have always been interwoven with issues about Ukraine. Like, from before he was even President. There is Ukraine at every turn. His people. His corrupt outreach to try to get Biden. Russia's involvement in his campaign. "Russia, if you're listening". Alaska. It goes on and on and on.
This is quite different to Obama or Biden, for whom Ukraine was just one of the things. Trump is just plain weird about Russia and Ukraine; he was after all impeached the first time over it. And he has a long, long history of being enamoured with Russia, relying on Russian emigres to invest in Trump project apartments, trying to do things in Moscow, and laundering Russian money (which is the point at which the Russia/Ukraine thing may intersect with the Epstein thing)
He is much tougher with Netanyahu, even. And that is saying something.
I wasn't suggesting that! I was suggesting you were blaming him for the failure of the US supported Ukrainian counter offensive - sure he hasn't helped - but in my view it was already failing.
On the wider point I agree Trump has an affinity to 'strong' leaders ( particularly for stop-at-nothing ethno-nationalists ). I'd argue that's because that's what he is, rather than some weird mind control. He shares views with them in the sense that saying Canada should be part of the US is quite similar to saying Ukraine should be Russian, or Netanyahu blatant disregard for the lives of Palestians because they are 'other' is reflected in Trumps views on ( non-white ) immigrants in the US ( legal or not ).
ie they are very similar people with similar views. One of the odd things about nationalists ( defining us versus them ) is they are quite happy to work with the 'them' if they are also nationalists....
and not just SpaceX but every Tech company already work with Gov. Agency
Answer: Because of corruption! It's illegal to use Starlink in Greenland, and Tusass holds a concessioned monopoly over “telecommunications services in, to and from Greenland” and the underlying infrastructure! https://www.aqutsisut.gl/en/tele/satellite-regulation
Tusass was in talks with Starlink to basically provide Starlink service but via the Tusass monopoly, basically making Tusass a no-value-added reseller of Starlink at massively inflated prices (subsidized of course, basically being paid by the Danish government to do nothing besides cash checks while Starlink does everything else). This is so obviously corrupt that it's better for them to use a worse, more expensive service that doesn't make Tusass completely pointless.
With 56,831 inhabitants and those spread rather thinly I assume they enjoyed the years when it was both expensive and heavily subsidised. Without heavy government support I would claim nothing would happen.
Times are changing and commercial offerings starts to be viable. But the outlook of being in the pocket of StarLink is not too appealing. I think they would prefer other options in Ukraine these days. And if you notice the relations between Denmark (the only country outside US to celebrate the 4th of July) is at a record low.
Free markets you say? Tariffs I say!
Having a single infrastructure provider isn't corruption. It's making the best out of a natural monopoly. It could lead to corruption, but unless you have any proof that it has, you're simply wrong.
"Ditches" sounds like they were already using Starlink, but abandoned it in favor of Eutelsat's system. The text clarifies that they only decided to (continue to) use Eutelsat, and Starlink was just another option considered.
> Binzer said it was not about which company was better, but about trust and long-term cooperation.
Well, who can blame them? After Trump repeatedly expressed "interest" in owning Greenland (fortunately he seems to have moved on to other pet projects in the meantime), and with Musk being one of Trump's closest allies, it would be a bit naive to trust Starlink...
Don't know the publication, but it seems to be a Danish publishing in English.
> to get rid of something or someone that is no longer wanted:
They were considering two contracts, with two different companies, and were in talks with both of them. If they stop considering one of those contracts/companies, wouldn't it be accurate to say they "ditched" that bid/contract then?
I guess the misleading part could be that "ditched" might implicitly imply they were already using Starlink, but the "ditched" used in the title is actually about the contract, not established service?
A more appropriate term here would be "rejected" which means to decide against something prior to accepting it. Example: “I was going to buy that car, but I rejected their offer.”
"How" I'm not sure about, but it's been like that for decades at this point, so if you haven't yet adapted and started filtering out that stuff, that's kind of on you. Install a adblocker and be done with it already :)
0: No shade thrown at the submitter, as this is the title used by the site.
In business, especially on the government side, incumbency plays a very big role. Just knowing whom to call in case of issues and how soon they respond may account for all the trust needed to renew. My 2c.
But this year is also the year all European companies and governments learned the hard way they need to ditch US providers, and actually started working on it.
Blackmail from your provider is not great for business relations. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
But this article has nothing to do with the above, or with views of Musk. As others said, this request was for centralized access and SpaceX responded with a B2C proposal. It would have been rejected just as quickly even if it came from another company unaffiliated with the US.
The obvious aspect is that Starlink is a US company owned by a US oligarch with deep ties to the ruling regime, which is repeatedly threatening Greenland with invasion and annexation.
Relying on that service provider for communication would be outright stupid.
Oracle could offer a company a better product/service, but would you really trust them?
Also, what's cool about Starlink is that they have sort of vertical integration with SpaceX that allows them to constantly keep launching new satellites which allows them maintain lower orbit constellation that allows for cheaper end-user equipment and potentially better speeds. Also the constant recycling of satellites allow for ever going network improvement as the tech advances.
What's not cool about Starlink is that it is American and Elon Musk affiliated, which makes it national security risk for Europe and Greenland in particular. That is also part of the newsworthiness because if this becomes a trend Starlink may become unviable business for a market of just 300M people.
When shopping solar, installers would open with ‘we sell various brands, what are your views on Musk?’
The do 4gb too, but I can’t use that much, and rarely get over 1gb.
It's described as slightly worse than Starlink, which makes sense because the orbits are not that different to warrant 20 orders of magnitude performance difference.
Where do you get the 1s latency number?
“If it’s like old school satellite internet”
Coverage is smaller than Starlink, but I don't think Greenland plans to move anywhere any time soon.
Nobody is arguing that it isn't newsworthy.
"but losing to an established competitor isn't super newsworthy"
345M people. Of which, the real market is around 15M households. Everyone else already has wired broadband. I suppose some people will want an additional link for redundancy, but my understanding is that Starlink satellites would be oversubscribed if urban areas had significant adoption.
AFAIK, you, as end user, cannot. Last time i checked that Eutelsat offers the service only as wholesale, to ISPs and other large customers, not to regular end-users.
For example particularly in the UK and I think in Australia, the expression "ditched at the altar" is not uncommon.
If Greenland was legitimately close to a finalising a deal with Starlink, my semantics brain cells will accept "ditched" here.
I reckon he has delivered on plenty.
The only thing that has changed is who you can trust long-term, but I think trust has always been one of the top factors.
Recent upheavals and actions have really pushed people to question exactly who and what you can trust.
Also the recent focus on strategic elements with regard to globalisation also plays into these choices now - where it might have been dismissed a couple of years ago.
Granted you live in a neat place, those two first ones are still reasonable to trust in your day-to-day life, and in those same places the latter was never worshiped on the same level that happened in the US.
However, after the events of the past few years, especially last 12 months, they have lost a more important kind of trust.
Early in the war, Starlink used their killswitch to prevent Ukraine from utilizing their service for military purposes.
The sitting US president has threatened war against Greenland. He has not backed down or apologized, merely moved on hoping we would forget.
You'd have to be crazy to pick Starlink under these circumstances.