Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Blowback against Elon Musk has lit a rocket under Europe\u2019s besieged space sector, as countries rethink their reliance on Starlink, the satellite system of President Donald Trump\u2019s favoured tech billionaire. In Italy, a proposed $1.5bn contract with Starlink for secure military communications has run into opposition. Canada\u2019s Ontario has already ripped up its $100mn deal. In Ukraine, European governments fret that a key plank of campaign warfare \u2014 battlefield communications and drone connectivity \u2014 is reliant on Starlink and are in talks with four large satellite operators about providing back-up. Two of these are Luxembourg\u2019s SES and French satellite operator Eutelsat. The latter\u2019s shares virtually quadrupled last week \u2014 off a low base \u2014 while SES of Luxembourg was up by a quarter.As things stand, the pair were in a tight spot. Legacy satellite operators have to contend with the rise of new communication services from low Earth orbit, while traditional cash cows such as satellite broadcasting \u2014 making up half of Eutelsat\u2019s revenues \u2014 face structural decline. It is expensive to build and maintain a constellation of satellites. Eutelsat is earmarking a \u20ac2bn-\u20ac2.2bn spend for its low-Earth orbiting satellites through 2029. Its balance sheet is already stretched. Net debt is almost four times annual adjusted ebitda, and was nudging up against covenants before these were extended.That\u2019s bad enough. But it also faces formidable competition in Starlink, which beats it hands down in terms of capacity, coverage and technology. This is a global business by definition and Starlink operates in 120 countries, meaning orbiting satellites are more likely to be working more of the time.\u00a0Effectively a vertically integrated group, Starlink has crunched down costs, manufacturing its own kit and \u2014 thanks to Musk\u2019s SpaceX \u2014 launching the satellites into space. Much the same will apply to Amazon\u2019s Kuiper, launching this year and which again has much more capacity than OneWeb, Eutelsat\u2019s low-orbit operation.Bumping up revenues would pivot Eutelsat into positive free cash flow territory next year. Despite its smaller fleet of satellites, Eutelstat has slack; Bernstein estimates capacity utilisation is running at just 15-20 per cent. If the Italian contract switches to Eutelsat \u2014 and Musk will not let go lightly \u2014 that would be an additional annual $300mn of revenues, roughly half the group\u2019s interim haul.The concerns about Starlink speed up an existing trend towards more homegrown European satellite spend. Eutelsat is already part of the consortium working on IRIS\u00b2, a \u20ac10.6bn project 60 per cent funded by the EU and due to go into service in 2030. Of course, what money doesn\u2019t buy is time. Even in the unlikely event that the money was ponied up tomorrow, users need terminals on the ground and any additional satellite orders will need to go to tender. Still, as problems go, these are the nicest Eutelsat has had for a very long time.louise.lucas@ft.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Blowback against Elon Musk has lit a rocket under Europe\u2019s besieged space sector, as countries rethink their reliance on Starlink, the satellite system of President Donald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-235607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}