Rivada Space Networks CEO Declan Ganley on a panel during SATELLITE 2025. Photo: Steven David for Access Intelligence

There’s a growing recognition that governments and large enterprises need alternative paths of connectivity, Rivada Space Networks CEO Declan Ganley says. In a recent conversation with Via Satellite, Ganley says Rivada’s “time has come” as recent undersea cable attacks in the Baltic Sea and off the coast of Taiwan highlight the need for data sovereignty and data resiliency. 

“Sophisticated people now realize that the whole world is dependent upon approximately 500 subsea cables and everybody knows where they are. All you need to do to break them is drag an anchor off of any ship,” Ganley says. “That has been a useful spotlight on why sophisticated government and large enterprise customers need the Outernet for continuity of operations. It has driven customers to us.” 

“We’ve been banging the drum on this and now people are listening,” he adds. 

Rivada is ramping up activity to build the 600-satellite Outernet constellation, and plans to demonstrate the first Outernet satellites on orbit in 2026 and launch the network in 2027. Ganley confirms that Terran Orbital is still building the constellation. 

Rivada signed Terran Orbital for an eye-catching $2.4 billion, 300-satellite deal in 2023, but Terran Orbital ended up removing the contract from its backlog after Rivada didn’t meet expected timing on payments. Lockheed Martin then acquired Terran Orbital last year. 

Ganley said this situation has not impacted Rivada’s support from its investors and future customers. Rivada has not publicly disclosed its investors, which are said to include a large sovereign. 

Ganley is also confident Rivada will have spectrum rights in place by the time the service is ready. Last year, the regulator in Liechtenstein where Rivada has its International Telecommunication Union (ITU) filing rescinded Rivada’s constellation license. The company has an additional ITU filing through Germany and Ganley says the company has a “solid, trusted working relationship” with the Liechtenstein regulatory team and he expects the frequency rights to be restored. 

Rivada now has an investment bank leading a new round of fundraising and Ganley said the company is looking to raise more than $1 billion in equity. 

The company says it has secured more than $15 billion in contracts, including a recent joint engineering cooperation with the U.S. Navy to work on a virtual network architecture on the Outernet to meet the Navy’s needs. 

Ganley says Rivada’s customer commitments are from governments, government resellers, large telcos, and enterprise users that have specific connectivity needs centered around data security, resiliency, and sovereignty. Rivada is building the Outernet as a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) network with service level agreements (SLAs) that can enable point-to-point connectivity with an audit trail on data, which is what these customers value. 

Outernet is not trying to compete with Starlink, Ganley says. He explains that while Starlink may eventually serve more than 1 billion customers, Rivada will have around 3,000 customers. There may be some overlap, but Rivada will have fewer customers made up of large enterprises and governments. 

“Everybody wants optionality. Government customers do not want to put all [their] eggs in one basket. You want to be able to spread your risk,” Ganley says. “It is a statement of fact that enterprise and government customers are looking for alternatives in addition to [Starlink]. They’re not going to cut off Starlink, but they want other options as well.”

There have been increasing calls in Europe to invest in satellite connectivity solutions that are not Starlink, and the European Commission in investing IRIS² as a future constellation of 290 satellites to provide secure connectivity services to the EU and its Member States. 

Although Rivada Space Networks is based in Germany, Ganley does not aim to participate in the IRIS² project. He has a strong opinion on IRIS², calling it the kind of “dinosaur idea” that Europe has had too many of. 

“There is a war in Europe. People are getting killed right now. We haven’t got time to screw around with stupid crony corporatist regulatory capture boondoggles, and that’s what IRIS² is,” Ganley says. 

“There is nothing that IRIS² is going to be able to do realistically that Rivada and the Outernet can’t do, or some combination of Rivada and some other things that are already there,” he says, adding, “It’s going to be more than a decade out of date by the time they turn it on.”