OW28: Europe Stopped Renting Space

AND PUT A RING ON IT

Let’s not get too excited. No, seriously. Don’t. You’ll miss the real story if you keep refreshing launch livestreams like they mean something. What happened this week wasn’t in the sky, it was on paper, behind closed doors, under statements that said everything and nothing at the same time. If you blinked, it looked like bureaucracy. If you didn’t, you saw the scaffolding of a continental watch-your-back-Jack.

The €163 Million Tug-of-War: UK Buys a Seat at Eutelsat’s Lunch Table

Fresh off the highly publicized UK–France summit, an event most notable for its ability to avoid saying anything useful, London quietly handed over €163 million to Eutelsat. Not to buy a satellite, mind you. That would be too direct. No, this was a strategic investment. Because nothing screams sovereignty like wiring millions to a French-headquartered operator so you don’t get left out of a party you weren’t even invited to in the first place.

The UK’s stake remains at 10.9%, which means they get to keep their finger hovering over the big red OneWeb veto button. It’s not a very big button. More of a decorative switch, really. The French, of course, had already dropped €1.35 billion like they were paying off a bar tab, giving them nearly 29% ownership. The message was clear: if Eutelsat’s going down, it’s going down on their terms.

The headlines made it sound like a heartwarming EU-UK reconciliation story. What it really was? Asset fortification with patriotic overtones.

The joint move was cloaked in the noble pursuit of “orbital sovereignty,” as if Europe had suddenly remembered that satellites aren’t just for streaming sports to yachts. Macron reportedly “endorsed” the deal in a state of profound cosmic reflection. UK Tech Minister Peter Kyle came out of the shadows just long enough to say it was all about national security and “a strong domestic LEO market,” which is a poetic way of saying: we didn’t build Starlink, so we’re buying proximity to someone who might survive it.

Let’s not kid ourselves, this is a nervous purchase. Starlink, now the celestial tollbooth for half the planet, has made it abundantly clear what happens when you outsource your orbital destiny to a man who tweets before thinking. Europe’s move is defensive.

They’re investing in the ability to say “we’ll get back to you” without calling California first.

SES and Intelsat: A Marriage of Convenience, and Satellites

Elsewhere in the galaxy of corporate consolidation, SES finally got the bureaucratic thumbs-up it needed to ingest Intelsat. It was a regulatory journey that, like most things in the satellite world, took far too long and involved far too many acronyms. But here we are.

On July 9, U.S. Team Telecom, which sounds like a children’s cartoon but is actually a legal sieve for anything vaguely telecom-related and foreign, gave SES the final okay. European regulators had already given their nods earlier in the year, presumably after verifying that both companies were still solvent.

Looks like SES will be dragging the bloated husk of Intelsat across the finish line and calling it a race. The prize? Over 100 GEO satellites, a handful of Medium Earth Orbit trinkets, and the ability to pretend you’re competing with LEO upstarts by stacking up more acronyms than them.

What SES is really doing is cornering the market on legacy infrastructure before it’s declared obsolete. Think of it as buying up fax machines in 2005 because you “believe in diversified communication pathways.”

When SES says “multi-orbit,” what they mean is “we’re still trying to figure out what LEO is doing, but in the meantime, enjoy our carefully curated patchwork quilt of satellites in varying stages of usefulness.”

The ground infrastructure plan? Yes, there is one. It involves “smart terminals” and “dynamic spectrum allocation,” which is code for “we need new toys to make this Frankenstein monster walk.” The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Expect a flurry of presentations about “seamless network orchestration” and not a single seamless experience to show for it. What’s seamless anyway ??

Subplots You Didn’t Ask For, But Will Regret Ignoring

While the big players threw their financial weight around like bored nobility at an auction, five undercurrents swirled beneath the surface.

IRIS²: The €10.5 Billion Thought Experiment

Remember IRIS²? Europe’s big idea for a secure sovereign constellation? The expensive drawing board. But it got some fresh scribbles this week. Airbus, Thales, and Eutelsat are repositioning themselves for what is essentially a public-funded arms race disguised as broadband.

The 260-satellite LEO vision, plus a few token MEOs, is supposed to be operational for government use by 2030. That’s assuming nobody changes the logo or forgets what the acronym means. It’s a constellation designed to ensure Europe never again has to rent broadband from a foreign billionaire with connectivity issues and a grudge.

Airbus Does a Sudoku Puzzle with Its Own Org Chart

On July 1, Airbus Defence & Space reorganized itself again. Yes, again. This time the reorg promises to make them “faster and leaner.” Previous reorgs promised the same. In reality, it’s about putting just enough lipstick on the payloads team to secure future IRIS² contracts without admitting that everyone’s still arguing over whose turn it is to write the next white paper.

There’s a whiff of Cold War nostalgia in how Airbus is preparing. About being just militarized enough to survive the next wave of privatized orbital disruption.

Saudi Arabia Buys Itself a Satellite Brain

Neo Space Group, a Saudi venture, picked up UP42 from Airbus this week. That’s not a typo. They really did name a company UP42. Now under Saudi ownership, it will likely pivot from “platform for Earth observation” to “platform for looking at things we don’t talk about in press releases.”

This is about control over what satellites see, when, and for whom. And it’s another notch in the belt of countries realizing they don’t need to wait for Western comms companies to remember they exist.

Rivada Still Pretending It’s Not Building a Government Constellation

The team at Rivada Space Networks wants you to know that their 600-satellite “Outernet” is a purely commercial project. Sure it is. And the moon is a luxury timeshare opportunity. With fresh partnerships, including Pulsar International for maritime and defense-lite services, Rivada is not-so-subtly courting government contracts under the guise of enterprise solutions.

They’ve got satellites on order, terminals in development, and a pitch deck that could probably double as a comic book. And yet, they keep getting taken seriously.

That’s the real innovation.

India: The Gate Finally Opens

In the most anti-climactic regulatory reveal of the week, India confirmed that OneWeb, Jio-SES, and Starlink are all green-lit for commercial operation. They’re just waiting on spectrum. Which is to say: the red carpet is out, but the doorman hasn’t handed over the keys.

December is the target. Expect a festive launch of services, followed by a polite regulatory clawback once someone realizes what they just approved.

The Great Orbit Shuffle: A Cacophony of Control

Zoom out, and the theme is blunt: control. Control of satellites. Control of spectrum. Control of end-user data flows. The Eutelsat capital moves are about cutting the dependency umbilical cord. The SES-Intelsat merger is stacking assets high enough to be seen from LEO. Airbus is shedding civilian pretense. And Rivada is building plausible deniability.

Everyone wants their name on the orbital deed, but nobody wants to pay rent.

A Quiet Week That Rewrote the Orbit Map

No, there weren’t any explosions or new satellite selfies. No breathless anchor segments or billionaire livestreams. But in the silence, the real power structures moved.

France bought leverage. The UK bought relevance. SES bought a past it hopes to rebrand as a future. India quietly opened its gates to orbital players. And the private sector, ever the opportunist, built parallel roads while governments squabbled over whose tollbooths go where.

And that, in all its plainness, was the week. July 4–11, 2025. The week Europe stopped applauding from the sidelines and started writing the rules.

Quietly. Competitively. Expensively.

And permanently.

Hopefully !?!