Eutelsat explores partnerships to fund Europe’s space-based network

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French satellite operator Eutelsat will have to explore industrial and commercial partnerships in order to fund next-generation satellites for the OneWeb broadband constellation, if it fails to reach agreement on Europe’s planned satellite communication network, according to chief executive Eva Berneke.  

Speaking to the Financial Times on the sidelines of the World Space Business Week conference last week, the Eutelsat boss said in the coming weeks she would be discussing alternatives with her board for upgrading OneWeb’s low Earth orbit network.

“A lot of players out there are finding they need low Earth orbit capacity,” Berneke said. “They could be partnerships with other operators or regional operators who need regional rather than global capacity, or partners in the value chain.”

Some potential partners might be looking for “elements of sovereign capacity. That is a different way of financing the capex,” she added.

Berneke’s comments came amid questions over the future of Europe’s plans for its own space-based broadband network in low Earth orbit, where data can be transmitted faster than from traditional geostationary orbit.

The EU’s IRIS² project aims to provide secure, sovereign communications to the bloc, rivalling Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s proposed Project Kuiper.

But the project has been hit by substantial delays since it was announced in 2022, amid disputes over escalating costs. Both Airbus and Thales have scaled back their roles in the bidding consortium amid concerns over risk sharing.

Last week the project’s biggest supporter in the European Commission, single market commissioner Thierry Breton, resigned unexpectedly. Eutelsat and its consortium partners, SES and Hispasat, submitted their final offer to the commission at the beginning of September.

While Berneke said she was still confident that the project would go ahead, she cautioned “there are many parties involved. We are not in sole control of any timeline”.

IRIS² was “important to how we finance our future”, she said. Failure to win the contract meant that developing a next generation constellation capable of competing with Musk’s Starlink would take far longer.

“We could fund the development of Gen 2 on our own,” she insisted. But it would be “a stepwise approach over years”. 

Eutelsat will not have the luxury of waiting several years to upgrade the OneWeb network, which it acquired barely a year ago. OneWeb relies on older satellite technology and lacks the capabilities of either Starlink or Kuiper.

Starlink already dominates the market for broadband services from low Earth orbit with a much more capable network of more than 6,000 satellites, accounting for more than 60 per cent of all active spacecraft in orbit and the majority of all satellite communications data globally. 

From next year, Kuiper will be launching its low Earth orbit broadband network with more than 3,000 satellites. Meanwhile China also has plans for major low Earth orbit-based broadband networks.

OneWeb has 630 satellites flying 1,200km above the earth, and upgrading the system to be competitive with rivals will require an estimated $4bn, which Eutelsat would struggle to fund.

The group is highly leveraged, with net debt totalling four times earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation.

Earlier this year Eutelsat was forced to cut its revenue guidance for 2024 and 2025, due to uncertainty over the outlook for OneWeb.

In August Eutelsat reported OneWeb’s revenues at barely half the target forecast at the time of the takeover. Berneke said the constellation had been hit by a slower than expected roll out of the ground infrastructure. 

But she was confident that there would continue to be demand for the services of a combined Eutelsat and OneWeb, with a fleet of satellites in both geostationary and low earth orbits.

Eutelsat was “massively” benefiting from being the only current alternative to Starlink. “A lot of our customers are saying how can we help you because we do want an alternative,” she said. 

While acknowledging that the arrival of Kuiper could jeopardise that advantage, Berneke said there was still a role for the company.

“There will be four, maybe five players in this market,” she said. “In most connectivity markets you see . . . at least three players, if not four. When you look behind, who is going to be another number four? I am not sure I am seeing many candidates out there.”

However, the Eutelsat boss, who has seen the company’s shares plunge about 60 per cent since the OneWeb acquisition, admitted that investors were not yet convinced.

“If I look at my share price, I haven’t won that [battle] yet. We need to show them by executing,” she said.