this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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“European Starlink rival” is a bit far fetched when there’s merely rumours that they might be able to offer a similar service. But that’s the stock market for you.
They have both GEO and LEO satellites. Not on the scale of Starlink (for LEO), but they do have a network.
I am not commenting on the nature of the stock market or anything like that. Just pointing out that they do have a working network, it's not 100% speculation (like you see with crypto schemes).
You're correct but their LEO constellation is over 10x smaller than Starlink, so they've still got a lot of catching up to do.
They are doing much better than other fabled starlink competitors though, like amazon kuiper which is still not a real thing after all this time.
They have one strong competitive advantage that Starlink will never have; they are not American.
By definition, you cannot trust an American service. Even if the people who run a given service are not degenerates, there are enough degenerates in the US that they could elect a degenerate who will fuck you over.
They have very, very different business models. Constellation size is meaningless on its own, you have to account for the satellites capabilities, orbits, and the number and needs of your customers.
That's true and I even thought about trying to investigate one of their satellites bandwidth capabilities versus one starlink satellite before I commented. But ultimately it doesn't really matter because we're talking about them being a rival to starlink so In the context of this conversation, they need to match their capacity and capabilities in all aspects to be a worthy rival.
Alphane_Moon just convinced me to take out a huge loan with my house as security, and invest in Eutelsat. I suggest everyone else does the same.
Now they have to offer a similar service. No pressure then 😊
They do offer a better service, albeit marginally - better download speeds, lower latency, slower upload speeds though. Problem is their antennas - they cost 8.000€ compared to 300€ the starlink ones...
Eutelsat are aimed at a different market: infrastructure. Their intended customers are larger and more demanding: research outposts, small villages, oil rigs, mobile phone towers, ships, and so on, as opposed to Starlink who focus on consumers directly, which is much more low-stakes. I'm genuinely curious if Eutelsat can move into Starlink's territory.
They will surely do in the future. For example in Spain the government is subsidizing satellite internet through Hispasat for remote communities. I'm sure many other governments do the same in their backyard. If EU throws starlink contracts out the window and start subsidizing EU satellite related businesses and startups things will definitely improve for everybody and the more contracts they sign the lower the prices will go for their clients.
A man can dream