The gigantic Starlink satellite constellation has left Europe at strategic disadvantageas the Ukraine War demonstrated since its inception. In the new geopolitical context of Rearme, and while the European space industry seeks to become independent from the United States, Spain has decided to take care of one of its key assets in the low terrestrial orbit.
The news. The Spanish government has approved A strategic investment of 13.85 million euros in Sateliot, The Catalan 5G satellite company for the Internet of Things. The investment will leave the European funds Next Tech (of the recovery plan, transformation and resilience), managed by the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT).
Although the State I already participated in Sateliot Through the Public Company Sepides (with 4.69% of the capital), this investment 10 times greater reinforces the position of Spain prior to the development of IRIS2, the future European Starlink.
What is Sateliot. Founded in 2018 by Jaume Sanpera (CEO) and Marco Guadalupi (CTO), Sateliot operates a constellation nanosatellites which offer 5G connectivity for the Internet of things from the low terrestrial orbit. These cubesats operate 600 km altitude and can connect any IoT device compatible with the standard “Rela 17” NTN.
Sateliot is not a broadband service such as Starlink, but points to a thousand millionaire business: eliminating areas without cellular coverage for agriculture (irrigation devices, fertilizers), livestock (animal geolocation), logistics (trucks and ships), industrial infrastructure and renewable energy.
Small satellites, huge expectations. Sateliot has launched six small cubesat satellites in orbits of about 600 km altitude, but projects to expand its constellation 250 satellites in 2026 to offer almost global coverage.
The company has signed commercial contracts with companies such as Telefónica or Amazon Web Services, with which it plans to invoice 270 million euros a year. His forecast is reach income of one billion euros Annual for 2030.
Integrated with terrestrial networks. Satelliot technology takes advantage of the 5G standard so that the IoT devices of its customers can connect directly to the satellites without specific equipment.
Your customers or those of the operatorsbecause technology is integrated directly into land networks so that devices have continuous connectivity in remote or rural areas without stable terrestrial coverage. In this way, farmers can optimize the use of water and fertilizers to reduce costs. and industries such as logistics will be able to have a real -time monitoring of containers and goods.
The way to Iris2. Sateliot acts as Precursor and strategic complement of the future IRIS2 European system, planned for 2030 with a public and private investment of 10,000 million euros.
Iris2 is the European response Starlink, a constellation of satellites in different orbits that will initially offer sovereign communications for the Member States and their NATO partners, and will be expanded with commercial services or agglutinating other existing ones, such as Oneweb of the French Eutelsat. The Spanish Hispasat is another of the companies that leads the effort.
A compartmentalized Starlink. Sateliot and Oneweb are somehow pieces of the future European Starlink, but cannot compete on the Starlink is far from what the European industry can offer right now.
While Sateliot as Oneweb deployed their satellites (hiring Falcon 9 rockets, among others), Spacex has built in just over a year its first direct-to-cell constellation with LTE connectivity for all types of customers. The system He began to deploy In January 2024 and It is already working in the United States In beta phase, integrated with T-Mobile.
Europe is aware of this resource difference, and is putting its eggs in many baskets. Part of the Strategy 2040 of ESA It is to support the development of these constellations and achieve autonomy in access to space with new commercial rockets that aspire to be reuse.
Image | Sateliot
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