Jean-François Fallacher. Credit: French Senat video
TUPPER LAKE, NY — Eutelsat has opened negotiations with the European Commission to enable an EU purchase of Ka-band broadband capacity on Eutelsat’s Konnect VHTS satellite in geostationary orbit for Ukraine as a complement to the use of Eutelsat OneWeb LEO capacity, which is about sold out over Ukraine, Eutelsat Chief Executive Jean-François Fallacher said.
In Dec. 3 testimony before the French Senate’s Economic Affairs Committee, Fallacher also outlined why Eutelsat cannot promise it will no longer use SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and why OneWeb is avoiding the mass consumer market.
Takeaways from Eutelsat’s Dec. 3 French Senate testimony
— Eutelsat is “very present in Ukraine,” Fallacher said. “We have sold about all the capacity on OneWeb over Ukraine. We have several thousand antennas that are active. Today, this is being done through a German distributor.
“We are in advanced discussions with the European Commission to be capable of providing GEO satellite connectivity through European budgets, as part of the same cadre as the Iris2 project. Why? Not all needs require low latency.
Eutelsat’s Konnect VHTS satellite, with 500 Gbps of capacity. Credit: Eutelsat Group
“We have lots of capacity with [the Konnect VHTS satellite at 2.7 degrees east]. We have made proposals to the Commission to furnish high capacity to Ukraine. We have met in Brussels the Ukrainian Defense minister and the Commission. We are in Ukraine now and can be much more there by adding our antennas. And we have maneuvering room in GEO.”
— A possible German military broadband satellite constellation would be “regrettable” and Eutelsat is working with German government and industry officials to win them over to Europe’s future Iris2 secure communications network.
“The investment to build these constellations is very high. I don’t want them to be duplicated in Europe. There are temptations in certain countries to go it alone. It would be a shame if Europe dispersed itself and made several constellations. We are contacting German industry and the German government to explain that we have something that exists in Iris2 and there is an interest that Germany participates more in it.
“Nonetheless, it won’t surprise us if there is an interest in Germany in developing its own space industry more than it is today. Even if Germany puts 12 billion euros into a purely military constellation, while waiting for it we can bring solutions to them as of today.”
— “The best thing that has happened to Eutelsat was that Elon Musk shut down Starlink in Ukraine and threatened to do it a second time,” Fallacher said. “That provoked a consciousness raising on what sovereignty signifies and the dependence we might have and what that might mean.”
Musk in September 2022 declined to allow Ukraine to use Starling to coordinate an attack by armed drones on Russia’s naval fleet in Crimea, saying he didn’t want to be responsible for widening the war. Eutelsat and the European Commission may well have made the same decision at the time if they were in Musk’s place. But the story has morphed into one that European politicians regularly use to contrast Iris2 with Starlink.
— The decision by the Moody’s rating service to raise Eutelsat’s debt rating by three notches — to Ba3 from B2 — will facilitate Eutelsat’s refinancing of its debt and came in the wake of the company’s 1.5-billion-euro capital raise, which increased the French government’s ownership stake to 29.65%.
Moody’s said Dec. 2 that the revised stable outlook for Eutelsat includes “expectations of Eutelsat’s ability to stabilize its earnings profile in the next 12 months to 18 months.”
— Fallacher conceded that the increased French government ownership and the fact that he is French may give the impression that Eutelsat has become a French company. This is one of the motivations behind Germany’s consideration of its own military constellation.
“We remain a company with international capital, from the UK government (11% ownership], from Bharti [Space of India, 17.9%] and much revenue at export,” he said. Eutelsat’s 10-year, billion-euro contract with the French Defense Ministry for OneWeb capacity has caused other European defense agencies, including Poland’s, to consider similar deals, he said. “That is what we hope to do.”
— Eutelsat needs 44 gateway Earth stations around the world to assure full global coverage for OneWeb. It now has 41. The final three, expected to be operational by late 2026, are in Senegal, Tanzania and the Marshall Islands. Eutelsat OneWeb needs these stations to present a full commercial offer to airlines and maritime operators.
— Eutelsat favors the European Ariane 6 launcher and also the future French-led Maia Space reusable rocket, but probably cannot do without the SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle.
“We have to state today that we cannot avoid using the Falcon 9 because of their launch capacity, which is colossal. Our priority is to Ariane and in the future Maia, but we will probably also launch with Falcon.
“Why? For our constellation today we need to replace satellites. We are not launching a complete constellation.
“For replacement, we need to put a few satellites into several orbits. Given these operational constraints, the smaller launchers are much better adapted to what we need to do. We are counting a lot of Maia, to put groups of 10 satellites in orbit. With [Ariane 6] it is 90 satellites at a time, so we will be launching with them and with other launchers like SpaceX, which launches 45 satellites and is more adapted technically to what we want to do.”
— OneWeb is firmly focused on the enterprise and government verticals and will not be entering the consumer market given the huge scale manufacturing advantage of SpaceX Starlink today and likely Amazon LEO tomorrow.
“The battle is ferocious and with the price of Starling terminals, with such a volume, we don’t see ourselves being competitive in the consumer market,” Fallacher said. “For corporate and government and military customers we have services that are adapted to them, we can do virtual private networks, cyber, and we have strong partners that can help us adapt to special markets, such as Marlink for maritime, or Speedcast.”