Bharti Space is a London registry entry that Mittal uses to sit in European boardrooms. Journalists call it a “space company” because that sounds exciting. In practice it’s a fund slipstreaming behind the French treasury and the UK bailout office.

The OneWeb saga was never romantic. The thing went bankrupt in 2020, and Bharti jumped in with Whitehall to make sure it didn’t vanish completely. The French later bolted it onto Eutelsat, which had been growing stale on GEO rents and needed to borrow relevance. That’s the hybrid “multi-orbit” operator you see now: one half creaky French GEO heritage, one half LEO salvage job dressed as innovation.

This year’s capital raise was the latest round of life support. Eutelsat announced it needed more than a billion euros to steady the ship, and the usual suspects obliged. Paris wrote the big cheque, London chipped in, Bharti threw in just enough to keep its chair. The narrative from headquarters talks about “funding growth.” The reality is that cash was needed to stop bankers from bolting and to convince Brussels the program isn’t collapsing before IRIS² even gets traction.

On the hardware side, Airbus got a contract for a hundred new satellites. Toulouse will crank them out, Brussels will wave the European flag, and PowerPoints will talk about 5G integration. Strip all that away and what’s left is an aging network that desperately needs replacements before it gets lapped again by Musk.

India is the part where the mask slips. Airtel is both selling OneWeb and lining up to distribute Starlink. A contradiction if you think in terms of brand loyalty, perfectly logical if you think like Mittal. The Department of Telecom can stall Starlink, bless OneWeb, or drag both into endless hearings. Whatever comes out, Airtel will still be the gatekeeper.

The French cling to sovereignty, the British cling to sunk costs, and Bharti clings to influence. That’s the triangle. Bharti doesn’t care which side wins. If satellites fly, fine. If they burn, fine. They’ve already bought the one thing that always survives: a seat at the table.