Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

What is amazing is how the EU consistently rewards European companies that failed to anticipate technological change like Eutelsat and Arianespace. Its French executives were too busy with two hour lunches, Bordeaux wines, and crème brûlée to realize that LEO satellites were the future. See the quotes below. 😉 Eutelsat is one of the prime beneficiaries of the IRIS2 project which involves a 330 LEO and 18 MEO constellation that will only cost $18 billion. We all know that Starlink could have done the project for under a billion dollars. A Starlink V3 satellite costs $1.2 million to manufacture and provides 1 terabit download throughput. The point is that the European satellite industry is grossly inefficient. It lacks the economies of scale in production. Hence a Fortress Europe approach to technology is likely to be super expensive. EU procurement often rewards mediocrity because it is trying to create sovereign infrastructure in areas where the Americans dominate and won fair and...

Arianespace will carry 32 Amazon satellites into orbit on April 28th. Amazon has booked a total of 18 launches that will expand the current 250 LEO constellation to 826 birds. For context, Starlink began service in the Northern latitudes when it had 700 operating satellites. So year's end is when competition begins in earnest. However, the Starlink groupies keep trying to move the goal post. They now claim either the company with the most infrastructure wins or they claim that Amazon cannot credibly offer service unless they have several thousands LEOs up and running. But here's reality. There is no real correlation between the amount of infrastructure and business success in telecom. Nor is there is a first mover advantage in telecom. Equinix and Digital Realty were not first movers in the colo industry. But they dominate today. Free came into the French mobile market in 2007, ten years after full liberalization, yet today has over 20% market share and completely...