Operators at SATELLITE 2025 made the case for multi-orbit as the answer to resiliency, sovereignty, and the desire for optionality — rather than direct competition with Starlink.
Eutelsat CEO Eva Berneke said 2025 will be the year Eutelsat ramps up constellation activity, citing European demand for alternatives to Starlink following geopolitical tensions around Ukraine: “The priority is making sure that all verticals are served. We have a lot of government interest into providing alternatives.” She noted that many customers want multi-orbit not to beat Starlink but simply to avoid single-vendor dependency: “A lot of our customers say they want alternatives. They don’t want to be caught in a potential monopoly situation.” She also described the OneWeb integration as still in progress: “We are now one and a half years down the road of that, but there’s still quite some work to make sure that we have a fully functional one single team.”
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Rivada Space Networks CEO Declan Ganley announced plans to deploy the first satellites of its Outernet — a completely gateway-less, sovereign LEO network — in 2026, citing growing demand from cable attack concerns: “The recent spate of cable attacks and the changing global environment is certainly driving demand.” He said Rivada’s Outernet is “the world’s first completely self-contained global communications network … you can maintain data sovereignty, data residency, data security, and just avoid the harm of the subsea cables.”
Yahsat Space Services CEO Ali Al Hashemi said the answer to multi-orbit positioning is “open architectural system that can cater for all the stakeholders that want to join the direct-to-device initiative. Network consolidation will be the answer.”
Neo Space Group CEO Martijn Blanken (backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund) said demand in the Middle East and East Africa is driven by a desire for government control in times of crisis: “Saudi Arabia will argue that they live in a somewhat challenging neighborhood … They want a level of control if problems do arise.” VS
