Ursula von der Leyen posted a video this week standing among satellite dishes in Greenland, calling the EU's "new cooperation on satellite connectivity" a triumph with "immediate results." The results, according to Tusass's own chief executive, are an upgrade from roughly 6 megabits per second to 15. Starlink, banned in Greenland since 2024, routinely delivers 100 to 200 megabits per second to users in similarly remote terrain.

The sequence matters more than the speed test. Greenland outlawed Starlink after regulators identified perhaps ten households using it, officially to protect Tusass's licensed monopoly and to preserve a subsidy model where dense towns cross-fund service to the empty interior. Unofficially, and this part shows up in the reporting too, the ban tracks a geopolitical anxiety about American infrastructure sitting inside a territory Washington has openly discussed acquiring. Denmark and the EU responded not by opening the market but by funding the incumbent: €9.1 million over five years to let Eutelsat's OneWeb constellation do, slower and later, what a private American company was already doing for free to the ten households that tried it.

This is compliance dressed as sovereignty. Nobody in Brussels is arguing the Eutelsat service is technically superior — the CEO delivering the good news is quoting a number that would be embarrassing in a press release if it weren't wrapped in the language of resilience and strategic autonomy. The actual argument, never stated this plainly, is that a slower connection controlled by European partners is worth more than a fast one that Brussels can't regulate.

I understand the instinct. Data sovereignty is a real category of harm and Greenland's exposure to a single foreign satellite operator is a legitimate concern for a government, especially one this small next to a superpower currently talking about buying the island outright. What I don't understand is calling the outcome a triumph rather than a trade-off. Ten megabits given up for whatever security is bought is a number worth stating honestly. Fifteen megabits framed as "immediate results" next to a photo op is not honesty, it's the same instinct that produces every EU tech announcement lately: name the compliance win, skip the performance cost, count on nobody running the comparison.

Greenlanders in Tasiilaq and the eastern settlements will get faster internet than they had. That's a real improvement and worth saying plainly. What it is not is competitive with what they were banned from using, and a continent that keeps choosing the second-best option because the best option comes from the wrong country should stop calling the choice a win.