Eutelsat’s headquarters in Paris. Photo: Eutelsat

Reuters exclusively reported on April 4 that Eutelsat has been supplying satellite internet to Ukraine with funding from the German government. 

Eutelsat has been providing the connectivity for about a year through a German distributor, Reuters reported. Eutelsat CEO Eva Berneke spoke with Reuters, saying currently there are less than 1,000 user terminals, but she expects it to ramp up and it could reach 5,000 to 10,000 terminals within weeks. Read the full story from Reuters. 

Eutelsat’s Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) services are currently deployed in Ukraine supporting government and institutional communications, Katie Dowd, Eutelsat director of Government & Corporate Affairs Communication, confirmed to Via Satellite. 

“Our OneWeb solutions can provide an alternative for certain government and defense applications. We are actively collaborating with European institutions and business partners to enable the swift deployment of additional user terminals for critical missions and infrastructure,” Dowd said in a statement.

Dowd said the company’s Geostationary (GEO) services could work as a complement to “provide additional capacity over Ukraine as well as stronger resilience for critical infrastructure connectivity.” 

European leaders have called for the EU to invest in European alternatives to SpaceX’s Starlink. Eutelsat is one of the satellite operators leading the development of the IRIS² constellation, a European constellation with satellites in Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to provide secure connectivity services and broadband to the EU and its Member States. 

Last month at SATELLITE, Berneke said there is a lot of government interest in Eutelsat and its OneWeb constellation, and ramping up around the EU is a priority for the company. 

“Users simply want multiple sources of supply, even in the cases where we are head to head [with Starlink],” Berneke said. “A lot of our customers say they want alternatives. They don’t want to be caught in a potential monopoly situation with a single supplier. They want to have multiple solutions.”