The UK government has signed up to its OneWeb for global connectivity, and European governments and their militaries are counting on it for all kinds of applications. But in capacity terms, Eutelsat is rapidly falling behind Elon Musk's Starlink, new numbers showed this week.

And it won't be catching up.

Eutelsat reported that OneWeb made for some 15% of its revenues in the full year to the end of June, thanks to what new CEO Jean-François Fallacher described as "genuine traction in our LEO revenues" – amounting to an 84% year-on-year increase.

Eutelsat puts its sellable capacity at 1Tbps, or a bit more than a fifth of one percent of the capacity SpaceX's Starlink says it has in orbit. 

European politicians have increasingly pushed for a larger sovereign LEO, or low earth orbit, satellite network since Musk threatened to cut Ukraine's military off from Starlink earlier this year.

More staff than birds

That capacity number is largely unchanged over the past two years. Since acquiring OneWeb in September 2023, Eutelsat has added an average of 15 satellites per year to the constellation, to get to a number above 650.

Last year, it added 49 staff to the OneWeb headcount.

As last reported in July, Starlink had 7,800 satellites in orbit, and said it was adding 5Tbps of capacity per week – with its second-generation satellites. It has promised to be putting up third-gen satellites in the first half of 2026.

If starships stop exploding and are used for deployment as planned, that will be 60Tbps of capacity added for each of those mega rockets that gets to orbit. 

Amazon's competing Project Kuiper sent up its first production satellites in April and June, for a total of 54 of the 1,600 minimum satellites it must have operational by mid-2026 under its licence conditions. 

Enter IRIS

Eutelsat's current plans are to launch another 100 satellites by 2027 to extend the use of its LEO fleet. Another 264 LEO craft are planned under the banner of IRIS, the EU's public-private Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite fleet planned to be operational in 2030.

IRIS is due to use Eutelsat's Ku band allocation. 

Eutelsat has quickly signed up European customers as the continent grew suspicious of dependence on US infrastructure. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office contracted to use OneWeb for embassies as well as broader activities. France’s Ministry of Armed Forces entered a framework agreement valued at €1 billion, and, via integrator MBS, Eutelsat has a multi-year agreement for connectivity for EU governments and institutions.

The French government became Eutelsat's largest shareholder in June as part of a multi-party €1.35 billion capital injection, where the UK also upped its investment in the group.

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