France sees Eutelsat as a strategic asset for the EU to promote technological sovereignty.
Benoit Tessier | AFP via Getty Images
For many years, France Eutelsat Always trying to build European alternatives Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite broadband service.
The company merged with UK satellite venture capital Oneweb in 2023, solidifying the region’s satellite communications industry to catch up with SpaceX-owned Starlink.
Last week, the French state led 1.35 billion Utd ($1.58 billion) investment in Eutelsat, making it the company’s largest shareholder with a stake of about 30%.
Europe lags behind the United States in the global space race to a large extent. Starlink’s more than 7,000 satellites dwarfed the Eutelsat satellite. Meanwhile, Europe has more limited launch capabilities than the United States, and the region still relies heavily on some of the U.S. launch services, a market dominated by SpaceX.
Eutelsat currently has a market capitalization of €1.6 billion, which is much lower than the estimate of Starlink owner SpaceX’s value, which is Fixed at $350 billion Among the minor stocks last year. In 2020 Morgan Stanley analysts say They believe that Stars and Stripes grew to $80.9 billion in the company’s “basic case valuation.”
Luke Kehoe, an industry analyst at network monitoring firm Ookla, said France’s investment in Eutelsat shows that the country “now treats Eutelsat less like commercial telecom companies, but more like a dual-use critical infrastructure provider” and the EU’s “strategic assets” driven by the EU. Technical sovereignty.
But building European competitors as Starlink is not a mean feat.
Scale issue
Communications industry experts told CNBC that while Eutelsat could facilitate European efforts to create sovereign satellite internet providers, challenging its rival Starlink will require substantial increase in investment in low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.
Eutelsat’s OneWeb Arm has 650 Leo satellites, less than one-tenth of Starlink’s 7,600-person global satellite constellation.
“To provide greater capacity and coverage, the fact that (Eutelsat) needs to increase the number of satellites in space becomes even more difficult, that many of OneWeb’s satellites are approaching the end of their life cycle and need to change the size of the star first,” Joe Gardiner, on the CCS CCS Insight Market Research never of Mealtiage ccs insight in the Constellation size, via email cnbc insight.
Ookla’s Kehoe responded to this point. “Given SpaceX’s unparalleled global scale in LEO infrastructure, Eutelsat’s chances of average with Starlink over the next five years are still limited,” he said.
“Even with the latest French state injecting capital, Eutelsat is still lagging behind Starlink in several key areas, including capital, manufacturing throughput, transmit access, spectrum and user terminals.”
Nevertheless, he believes the company “has a good position in Europe’s head, security-sensitive and corporate fields, prioritizing the ability to prioritize jurisdictional control and sovereignty over the original constellation.” The corporate segment refers to the market for the company’s space customers.
Can Eutelsat replace Starlink in Europe?
That must be hope. France’s Emmanuel Macron urged Europe to increase its investment in space, saying last week: “Space has become a measure of international powers to some extent.”
When Eutelsat announced its investment in France last week, the company highlighted its role as “the only European operator with a fully operational LEO network” and “Leo Constellation’s strategic role in France’s sovereign defense and space communications model.”
Earlier this year, there were rumors that Eutelsat was running for Ukraine’s Starlink. Starlink has provided its satellite internet services to Ukrainian troops for years to assist in the ongoing Russian invasion.
Relations between the United States and Ukraine deteriorate after presidential election Donald Trump It also reported that U.S. negotiators have increased the possibility of cutting Ukraine’s access to the star-stripe link.
Germany established 1,000 Eutelsat docks in Ukraine in April, with the aim of providing Starlink with another option (rather than an alternative) in war-torn countries.
Since then, Ukrainian tensions have cooled a bit, and Starlink remains the main satellite broadband provider for Ukrainian military.
Eva Berneke, former CEO of Eutelsat, himself acknowledged that the company has not matched Starlink’s size yet.
“If we were to take over the entire connectivity capacity of Ukraine and all citizens – we wouldn’t be able to do it. Let’s be very honest,” she said. In an April interview with Politico said.
Berneke was replaced in May by former French telecom giant Jean-Francois-Fallacher orange.
Apples and oranges
Meanwhile, while Eutelsat has been increasing its investment in Leo satellites, experts say its technical architecture and orbital design ultimately differ from Starlink’s design.
He added: “The OneWeb constellation currently uses a flexure-type architecture that is not as capable as the Starlink satellite; therefore, OneWeb also needs to invest in second-generation satellites.”
French companies also have different use cases than Starlink. Eutelsat operates the constellations of geostationary orbits (GEO) and LEO satellites. Geographic satellites are much higher in height than their Leo equivalents and can usually cover more satellite land.
“Eutelsat’s higher altitude satellites are leveraged for specialized use cases such as coverage of companies and research facilities in remote areas such as Greenland and Alaska,” said Joe Vaccaro. Cisco’s Qiansheng Network Intelligence Department.
Looking ahead, Eutelsat said it plans to “build on its operational improvement” through “differentiated listing models” and “strong European anchorage”. It also noted that the UK government could also increase investment in Eutelsat “in due time”.
