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France views Eutelsat as a strategic asset on the EU’s pressing sovereignty.
Benoit Tessier | AFP via Getty Images
For years France Eutelsat trying to build a European alternative Elon Musk Broadband Service Starlink.
The company united with a British satellite company Oneweb in 2023, consolidating the industry communication industry in the region, trying to catch up with SpaceX.
Last week, the French state headed the Eutelsat investment by 1.35 billion ($ 1.58 billion), making it the largest shareholder of the company about 30% of the shares.
Europe is largely lagging behind the US in the world space race. Constellation Starlink with more than 7,000 Eutelsat’s gnomes. Meanwhile, the possibility of launching Europe is more limited than in the US, the region is still largely based on America for certain launch, which is a market where SpaceX prevails.
Eutelsat currently has a market capitalization of 1.6 billion euros, which is much lower than the cost estimates of Starlink SpaceX, which was tied up to 350 billion dollars in the secondary sale of stock last year. In 2020, Analysts in Morgan Stanley said What they see that Starlink is growing to $ 80.9 billion in their “basic case” for the company.
Luke Keho, an industry analyst at the Oookla Network monitoring, said France’s investment in Eutelsat shows that the country “now refers to Eutelsat as commercial television, and more like a double -use critical infrastructure provider and” strategic asset ” Technological sovereignty.
However, the creation of a European competitor in Starlink will not be a significant feat.
The right scale
Communications industry experts say CNBC that, while Eutelsat can increase Europe’s efforts to create a sovereign satellite provider by challenging its Starlink opponent, will require a significant increase in low orbit investment (LEO).
ARMEWEB ARM Eutelsat is running a total of 650 Leo satellites, which is less than a tenth of the 7600-year-old Starlink Satellite.
“To offer great power and coverage, (Eutelsat) you need to increase the number of satellites in space, the task is more difficult because many oneweb satellites are approaching the end of their lives and will first need to be replaced before increasing the constellation,” said Joe Gardinin, an analyst at CCS Insight.
Kehoe Ookla repeated this opinion. “Eutelsat’s chances of reaching parity from Starlink in a broadband segment in the mass market over the next five years remain limited, given the unsurpassed global SpaceX scale in the Leo infrastructure,” he said.
“Even with the latest capital injection from the French state, Eutelsat continues to lag behind Starlink in several key areas, including capital, production check, launch, spectrum and user terminals.”
However, he believes that the company “has the opportunity to succeed in European ones that follow, sensitive to safety and entrepreneurial segments that prefer control of jurisdiction and sovereignty over the raw materials of the constellation.” The Enterprise segment refers to the market for corporate space customers.
Can Eutelsat replace Starlink in Europe?
This is definitely hope. France Emanuel Macron called on Europe to increase its investment into space, saying that last week, that “the space somehow became a sensor of international power.”
When Eutelsat announced investments from France last week, the firm emphasized its role as a “single European operator with a fully operative network of Leo”, as well as the “strategic role of the constellation Leo in the France model for sovereign defense and space communications.”
Earlier this year, eutelsat was rumored to replace Starlink in Ukraine. For many years, Starlink has offered Ukrainian military personnel his satellite online services to assist in military efforts against the background of Russia’s permanent invasion.
Relations between the US and Ukraine went bad after the presidential election Donald Trump And the reports came up that the participants of the US talks raised the opportunity to reduce Ukraine’s access to Starlink.
Germany created 1000 Eutelsat terminals in Ukraine in April with the aim of providing an alternative-not replacement-for 50,000 Starlink terminals in a destroyed war.
Since then, the tensions in the USA-Ukraine have been cooled, and Starlink remains the main supplier of a broadband satellite for the Ukrainian military.
Former Eutelsat CEO Eva Bernke herself has admitted that the company cannot yet match the scale of Starlink.
“If we captured the whole ability to connect to Ukraine and all citizens – we couldn’t do it. Let’s just be very honest,” she said in April interview Politico.
In May, Berneke was replaced Orange.
Apples and oranges
Meanwhile, despite the fact that Eutelsat is increasing the investment in Satellite Leo with its Oneweb unit, experts point out that its technical architecture and orbital structures eventually differ from Starlink’s.
“The OneWeb constellation is currently using a bent pipe architecture, which is not as capable of Starlink satellites; so Oneweb will also have to invest in second-generation companions,” he added.
Cases of use of the French firm are also different from Starlink. Eutelsat is running a constellation of geostationary orbit (Geo) as well as Leo satellites. GEO’s satellites refrigerate the soil at a much higher height than their Leo equivalents, and can usually cover a smaller companion.
“Satellites with greater Eutelsat height are used for specialized use cases such as polar coverage for companies and research institutions in remote regions such as Greenland and Alaska,” said Joe Vice -President and General Manager in the use Cisco’s Network intelligence unit TITHERYES.
Going forward, Eutelsat said he plans to “rely on improving his work” with “differentiated model on the market” and “strong European consolidation”. He also noted that the UK government could also increase its investment in Eutelsat “at one time”.
