EU project to rival Starlink must meet buyer expectations, Eutelsat CEO says

By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Maria Rugamer PARIS, Feb 13 (Reuters) -

Eutelsat said ​on Friday that Europe's planned IRIS2 satellite ​network must meet customer expectations ‌in terms ​of pricing and performance to attract buyers, following remarks from major telecoms companies about the project's commercial appeal. Eutelsat CEO Jean-François Fallacher told reporters ‌that comments made by Orange and Deutsche Telekom reflected what he was hearing across the market.

"In my opinion, customers are expecting competitive services and competitive prices," he said. Executives from Orange and Telekom, subcontractors in the consortium ‌building IRIS2, said at an industry event in January that the European Union programme would ‌have to deliver performances close to Elon Musk's Starlink and Amazon's LEO. Both operators told Reuters they fully support the IRIS2 constellation, which is expected to start operating around 2029. Orange said a European system must be competitive with Starlink and ⁠Amazon's ​planned low Earth orbit ⁠network, and that Europe should avoid fragmentation by aligning efforts behind a single solution.

Telekom said customers would ultimately choose based ⁠on performance, security and cost, and that IRIS2 was being developed to meet those expectations. Fallacher said the IRIS2 project, ​which has a budget of about 10.6 billion euros ($12.6 billion), was being designed to deliver competitive ⁠services. He described the cost as significant but appropriate for a system of that scale.

Eutelsat plans to launch its ⁠next-generation ​OneWeb satellites along with IRIS2 after 2030, Fallacher added. OneWeb's second-generation satellites are meant to be far more advanced than the current network, set to be replenished with slightly updated versions.

But despite ⁠an early lead in serving polar regions, the first-generation fleet of 600 currently in service is based ⁠on technology designed a ⁠decade ago. U.S. rivals Starlink - whose network already reaches 9,000 satellites - and Amazon are moving ahead with plans to deploy thousands of newer satellites.

($1 = 0.8430 euros)