IRIS²: The EU’s Response to Musk’s Starlink

Quantum encryption?? Can anybody explain how this is related to satellites?

- falcon 9 - $2700/kg

- falcon heavy - $1400/kg

- ariane 5 - $9000/kg

> If the current one works - why would they?

This is just low quality flame bait. If any of the before-mentioned (US) companies succeed commercially long-term, they will transform world-wide internet access especially in less developed countries.

For clarification: as a European citizen, I want the EU to stay competitive in the space tech sector.

Also, I imagine 5G satellites will be of interest to the DoD.

Anyway, the main point I was trying to make is: EU competition is so far behind (even conceptually) that they are playing catch up with 10 year old tech instead of looking where the puck might be going.

There is no demand for something more expensive than starlink, aside from government stuff and you need consumers to support it and not be money pit

Gallileo can detect a distress beacon in the middle of the pacific ocean and send gelm. No other system can do that.

Civilian gallileo has better accuracy than GPS or any competitors.

Every mibile phone has multi-system reciever and accuracy of navigation has tripled in the past 10 years precisely because Gallileo and Glonass and the chinese system went online.

I agree, but those satellites shouldn't have been there to begin with in my opinion. But it's too late now.

They don't. There are other satellite internet providers they just don't use LEO constallations.

Those that fall are planned to fall and to be replaced .. the issue is that are now thousands (and will be more) sats in LEO orbits polluting the night sky with both visible light and transmission spectra energy.

Doesn't matter much to those that live in cities and can't see the stars in any case .. but it's a blight to those that formally had clear skys, and to both visible and radio spectrum astronomers.

I am certainly you've developed this view in November of 2022. Meanwhile any European stuck with DSL - which would be most of my family - would be ecstatic to get sensible bandwidth today.

That's not actually a thing.

> Now there are just so many satellites swirling around in your sight. I find that quite sad.

Except 99.9% of the time you can't see any of them. So for 99.9999% of people who don't do advanced space photography the night sky looks like it has always looked.

If something is already on an orbit that decades within a decade or so, it still will.

Look at any recent disasters caused by companies, such as recent train crash with a toxic spill, boeing Max scandal, BP oil spill, 2008, anything.

Where has the CEO been personally punished?

Or does your idea of 'blamed' mean people will write something mean on twitter?

the press announce ment where CEO of Boeing took full responsebility for Boeing Max failure, CEOs of major banks took reaponsebility for 2008,

If Ariane 6 first flies this year, don't expect funding for a new rocket for at least 5-10 years and then at least 5 years of development.

Any Ariane Next will not exist before 2030 and likely not before 2035.

The only viable European rocket is the Ariane 6. And that has already been booked by Amazon. So unless they want to kick out Amazon, there is no way this will launch before 2027.

It sometimes is almost reminiscent of the eastern European oligarchs that emerged at the end of the coldwar.

They just don't like that it exists.

    the comments basically boil down to "EU bad, US better"

what’s your position on the EU? perhaps I notice the negative comments more because I’m very pro-EU, and vv for you?

And far more sensitive about it.

All Americans are cynical about their own country and government.

The EU is a wierd entity, and few Europeanns have a true understanding of the mechanisms of power, the horrible democracy deficit; a result of a kind of 'blind faith' in institutions, and a naivte with respect to the power and motivation of their leaders.

I guess it's a bit like the 'faith' we have in something like the UN, it's all well meaning, but when you look at operational elements it's bizarre. There's a kind of utterly detached academic view that permeates UN culture, it reminds me of Brussels.

The French population roundly rejected the trety of Lisbon, the French government went ahead with it anyhow, and future referendums in Europe were annulled because the elite had no will to allow the plebes to have a voice. In their view, the plebes woudl be too dumb to make the calculation.

The European Court of Justice is one of the most insane things in Judicial history of the world - it was never granted the powers it has (!), rather, it 'took them'. ECJ 'Judicial Supremacy' is the longest political sleight of hand in history. It's a bit mind-melting and the smoke that the institutions throw up to try to imply legal foundations are established. In Germany, they still contest the legitimacy of ECJ Supremacy, as they should, but it's not allowed to be talked about outside Germany. If they bring it up in the UK or Poland it's considered 'alt right' inanity.

Nobody ever voted for Ursula Von Der Leyen and nobody even knew who she was (outside of Germany) before the election - and yet - she speaks for everyone now! Because Democracy! All of the arguments in support of this system of choosing leadership fall flat, like Russians justifying their invasion of Ukraine. European elite could 'fix' that specific representation problem instantly, they very actively don't want to.

Those are tiny examples, there are so many more.

Commenters here and other places are super pro-EU in a way that if it were some other country we'd recognize it as being very nationalist, but for some reason, maybe because the EU is not quite a country, we judge the defensiveness by a different standard. Americans might say things that are effectively pro-America, but rarely in a directly nationalist manner. No Americans is going to run on about some government program, rather more like a story about something that is 'great', but which happens to be in America.

Also, for some strange reason the Swiss are the other hyper-sensitive nationalist group here in that if you say anything they will come out like an Army. I'm not necessarily complaining, just nothing that oddity. Also maybe Canadians, except nobody ever talks about them (or rather 'us' as I am Canadian).

As for satelites, we have every right to be skeptical - the EU is 20 years behind in this regard and talk is cheap.

They are 'reacting' to this war, which is a function of careless strategic orientation of the past.

Maybe this 'wake up call' will reveberate into other sectors.

.... it was amazing to see Germany drop it's dependance on Russian Oil very quickly, I'm sure we are all as impressed by that as Ukrainian resilience in the face of invasion. So let's hope for more than Satelites.

How do you explain several non-EU states being members of the Galileo programme - namely Switzerland and Norway? Hell, even China invested into it in 2003. And yet, the UK which invested almost a quarter of its funding is booted out on the basis of an unrelated political issue? It doesn't make sense. The British even offered to continue funding and investing into it. So "forced out" is an accurate description.

But Starlink also doesn’t deliver those 100 Mbps reliably. Starlink is an awesome choice if you are in an underserved region but in most EU countries most people have better alternatives.

The capacity of Starlink is very low for many countries in the EU. If people were to actually use it at scale it wouldn’t work.

Yet the average fixed download/upload speed is 123/40 MiB. Why? Most people just want enough bandwidth for Netflix (TV is reserved separately), Youtube, and basic surfing. So, they'll go with the cheapest subscription, which is usually 100MiB downstream (except on budget providers), pulling down the averages. Starlink-like bandwidth is really cheap on cable/fiber. Heck, I have unlimited 5G and I think it's only 25 Euro per month, less than a third of a Starlink subscription and the bandwidth is usually much better. Even in the small village my parents live I get 100-200MiB downstream.

At any rate, it is no problem at all to get 1GiB downstream in most of the country and much cheaper than Starlink (we currently pay 35 Euro p/m for 1GBit up/down). For European countries that can't offer this yet, it makes more sense to invest in 5G and wired broadband.

That said, I think the EU should also do this. Satellite internet is good for remote areas and in the case of calamities (war, disaster, etc.) and crucial infrastructure should be in European hands.

Good luck getting half of that. Especially if you want to service any significant number of customers.

Meanwhile I get 600Mbps for about $30 in Poland.

Allow competition and good things will happen.

Why VDSL and why only population centers? 50% of the households in The Netherlands have access to fiber internet. My parents live in a small village and have fiber (their village is about as remote as a remote German village). Heck, they are even hooking up farms out in the fields to fiber. It just takes some subsidies from the government, but it'll last for decades, so it is well worth it.

In Germany, mobile internet of any speed gets spotty once you're outside of the cities. It's just a sad state of affairs.

Internet is just hopelessly behind in Germany. We have lived in an economically strong area in Southern Germany. But wired broadband was deplorable (slow on paper, even slower and less reliable in practice). And mobile internet is not only spotty, the pricing is insane. E.g. unlimited 5G was 90 Euro per month last time I looked (I pay 25 per month).