PARIS — The European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA), both pushing for a multibillion-euro European Union constellation of broadband satellites, continue to treat today’s geostationary-orbit satellite broadband offers as if they did not exist.

They have also seen fit to look past the difficult business case that any global low-orbit broadband constellation must confront.

No one should be surprised that evidence is now coming in that SpaceX Starlink’s per-subscriber throughput is suffering in some areas as Starlink loads more subscribers to a given coverage area.

It is exactly the same problem faced by Viasat Inc. and Hughes Network Systems of the United States, whose next-generation satellites are late and whose current fleet is capacity-constrained in certain high-demand areas.

Amazon, whose $10-billion Kuiper constellation appears to be advancing, cannot be certain of going through with the project. Industry officials said Amazon’s recent launch contracts with United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Arianespace for heavy-lift launches of Kuiper came with curiously small downpayment.

But when a large customer like the European Commission says it needs a global constellation of broadband satellites and is prepared to pay 6 billion euros ($6.1 billion) for it, no one — not hardware builders, not even commercial satellite operators — is going to respond: Wait, let’s think this through.

The most glaring example of this has been Paris-based Eutelsat, which over the past decade has spent well over 1 billion euros to develop a European consumer broadband business.

Its 75-Gbps Ka-Sat satellite entered service over Europe in 2011. A joint venture with Viasat for European broadband collapsed, with the partners now competing in the same business. Viasat owns Ka-Sat and plans to launch one of the terabit-per-second Viasat 3 satellites over Europe, the Middle East and Asia in 2023.

Eutelsat’s 70-Gbps Konnect satellite, now providing broadband in Africa and Europe, will focus mainly on Africa once the 500-Gbps Konnect VHTS, scheduled for launch in September, is fully operational.

The European Union’s telecom regulator said that the commercial capacity of current and planned broadband satellites over Europe was more than enough to meet the needs of customers beyond the reach of terrestrial links.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC), in its assessment of broadband capacity through 2025, included SES Astra’s Astra-2E and London-based Avanti Communications’ Hylas 2B in addition to Ka-Sat and the future GEO and the Starlink and Kuiper LEO-orbit broadband constellations.

Did the Commission’s DG-Defis directorate, which manages defense and space policy, consult with BERC about Europe’s broadband supply and demand picture?

It doesn’t look like it.

The European Council on June 30 gave a mandate to the European Commission for the Commission’s negations with the European Parliament on the secure connectivity proposal.

The mandate set a budget ceiling of 2.4 billion euros between 2023 and 2027. It made little mention of a constellation of broadband satellites, and there was no reference to a 6-billion-euro project.

Here’s how the Council’s mandate summarized satellite broadband in Europe:

“The program should allow for the provision of commercial services by the European private sector… through a commercial infrastructure that can enable access to advanced, reliable and fast connections and services to citizens and businesses including, but not limited to, availability of high-speed broadband and seamless connectivity, removing communication dead zones and increasing cohesion across Member state territories and EU outermost regions, including rural, peripheral, remove and isolated areas and islands where deployment of broadband fiber would be too expensive and connectivity could only be achieved with satellite infrastructure.”

It did allow as how the new infrastructure, to be financed by the private sector, should “include adequate safeguards to avoid any overcompensation of the private sector for the provision of government services, or potential distortions of the competition stemming from the provision of commercial services….

“The commercial infrastructure shall be entirely financed by the contractors.”

Even ESA, which will be asked to provide technology advice for the Commission’s connectivity infrastructure, has been wearing blinders when it comes to the current state of broadband in Europe.

ESA Director-General Josef Aschbacher, addressing the June 7 Paris Air Forum, organized by the economic daily La Tribune, listed Europe’s pluses and minuses in space.

“On the minus, you see some of the elements where we have fallen behind,” Aschbacher said. “We have to recognize this if we want to do an honest assessment.

“In launchers, up to 7-10 years ago we had the world leadership. Today I don’t need to explain the situation. We have to catch up.

“And also in other domains: Secure connectivity, of course, is well known here. Broadband internet — we do not have anything in Europe at this point in time. This is happening outside and Europe needs to position itself on how we do that.” [Emphasis added]

Eutelsat, further demonstrating its belief in satellite broadband, is now the second-largest shareholder in the London-headquartered OneWeb project, which expects to complete its first-generation constellation of 648 satellites by late 2023.

The Commission has said it would not consider OneWeb as a provider for the secure connectivity project because OneWeb is British. Whether Eutelsat and OneWeb’s largest shareholder, Bharti Global of India; and the British government can conclude a deal to make OneWeb palatable to the Commission is uncertain. An effort in that direction is currently under way.

Industry officials have said Eva Berneke was hired in January as Eutelsat’s Chief Executive with the mission of concluding a transaction of some kind to put Eutelsat on a more-stable footing over the long term. A deal with Bharti that included OneWeb would be a step in that direction.

When Berkeke addressed the “Assises du NewSpace” conference here on July 7, she avoided her company’s GEO-orbit commitment altogether as one possible solution to Europe’s digital divide.

She mentioned OneWeb only in passing, saying it was an innovator.

“And today this large [space] family is being joined by large innovators from other sectors, whether it’s SpaceX or Kuiper,” Berneke said.

“Both of them are Americans, and it is a large challenge for us to determine what actors in Europe and in France that might, together, compete with this very American initiative. And I have no doubt that there are similar Russian or Chinese that will join them.”

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