A new competitor for Starlink and Elon Musk: the merger between satellite operators Eutelsat and OneWeb, which should give rise to a European giant in the race for Internet from space, was approved on Thursday by shareholders.
The new company, called Eutelsat Group, will maintain its headquarters in France and will continue to be listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. It should generate a turnover of “around €2 billion in 2027,” or growth of more than 10% annually, according to a press release.
An advantage for Starlink
This operation consolidates Eutelsat’s turn towards telecommunications, while the market for high-speed space connectivity in low orbit (OTB), particularly useful for serving isolated regions that lack fiber optics, is estimated at 16 billion dollars on the horizon of 2030.
It has already seen big players emerge, such as the Amazon constellation or the giant Starlink led by Elon Musk, which has taken advantage by consolidating itself as one of the main global providers of satellite internet, with more than two million customers. .
Starlink has already launched nearly 3,600 satellites into orbit and has been authorized to deploy 7,500 of the 30,000 second-generation satellites in its constellation. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, plans to deploy more than 3,200 satellites for his Kuiper constellation.
Behind these American projects, China is betting on its Guowang constellation of 13,000 satellites, while the European Union formalized at the end of November 2022 the launch of its own constellation, Iris, intended to protect the Internet and its communications throughout the territory of the EU. starting in 2027.
Low Earth Orbit
Historical satellite Internet services pass through machines in geostationary orbit, at more than 35,000 kilometers in altitude. But their distance prevents them from achieving the performance of a very high-speed connection, particularly due to the delay between the command and the execution of the request.
In contrast, future satellites, such as those already installed by Starlink, operate in low Earth orbit around the Earth, that is, at an altitude of a few hundred kilometers. Smaller and much less expensive, they allow low latency communications, that is, with reduced transmission delay, and therefore faster.
Having Internet access on the open sea, in the air, in the desert or in conflict zones is now possible thanks to these new constellations. The most striking example: the request of the Ukrainian Minister of Digital Affairs to Elon Musk to provide Internet connection in the areas affected by the attacks of the Russian army since the invasion launched at the end of February 2022.
SpaceX had also donated 50 Starlink satellite terminals to the Tonga islands to help them reconnect with the world, following the eruption of a volcano in mid-January 2022.
Source: BFM TV
