IRIS²

Right.

They have an older limited system called OneWeb, and sure, they are planning a new constellation called Iris2 for 2029, but right now they are completely dependent on American billionaires and American foreign policy just to communicate.

And the mechanism behind that failure is all about launch capability.

SpaceX pioneered reusable rockets-

And just taking a step back.

Let me say a third is going to go to the Iris Squared constellation with European operators.

The other third, though, is to new entrants, correct? So it's one third for European operators, one third for new entrant type operators, one third for anyone and his brother who could be out there.

So there's

Canada is investing in military satellite communications through TELSAT.

The European Union is developing its own secure satellite network, IRIS2, for government, defense, and commercial uses.

And these projects were already underway.

This episode gives their supporters another argument for having these alternatives.

There'll be a 10 by 10 allocation to the Irish squared European initiative, which we learned about last week that Thales, Airbus, and I think Leonardo's are putting together a new space joint venture.

And they're going to probably be the ones who build the iris constellation and then there's a few satellite operators based off europe that are going to try to deploy that build satellites and deploy it sometime in 2030 right and so that's that's 10 by 10 another 10 by 10 allocation is going to a european based operator and that one originally was the high the highest likelihood and bloomberg reported on this The player that was likely well positioned for that was Satellite Connect Europe, which is a joint venture between AST and Vodafone, which Orange and Telefonica are also part of.

However, with this new formation of the joint venture today, I think this joint venture is going to bid on that spectrum together.

And so I think this new joint venture of MNOs who AST is working with is likely going to get one 10 by 10 allocation.

Maybe, you know, to be candid, those rules are not fully set.

There could be a world where Iris 2 gets 10 by 10, or it might get 15 by 15.

And then this joint venture with AST ultimately gets 10 by 10 or 15 by 15 or 20 by 20, right? Like if Iris gets 10 by 10 and the MNOs get 20 by 20, there is a world where Starlink doesn't get anything.

And so is that a possibility? I think, you know, I would have told you before that the likelihood of Starlink not getting allocation was probably low.

Okay? Just to give you an idea.

Now, the answer that the sort of s- single transferrable quest- uh, answer to the question when you say, what about, well, what about that, is this, um, IRS, IRIS2, IRIS2, which is the prospective EU version of this.

Yeah.

Um, but that is not gonna come on stream until officially 2030 at the late, at the latest, which means 2040.

Um, but they're not the only ones making news because also during the, uh, the quarter you had Telesat, uh, get a $2.3 billion, uh, Escape P program, which is a Canadian program to monitor the polar, and they expanded their constellation up to 225 satellites.

At the same time in Europe- Uh, Iris Squared, you know, we, we saw another three billion committed to that program, and Eutelsat, uh, again, added 229 satellites to their OneWeb constellation.

And you had other companies, you know, popping up, uh, you know, both, uh, you know, startups and others that are building out constellation capability.

You know, and I've mentioned this before on the ma- on the manufacturing side, since the beginning of 2025, we've seen 13 nine-figure rounds for satellite manufacturers.

It may be the difference between a space capability that can be degraded and rebuilt and one that, once lost, is really crippled.

The most concrete institutional response to this need for independence is Iris Squared.

the EU's own sovereign satellite communications constellation, 42 satellites in medium-Earth orbit and low-Earth orbit, providing secure connectivity for government users, emergency services and defence forces across Europe, owned by the European Union, operated by a European consortium, not able to be switched off by anyone outside Europe.

Lorena Bois-Jalonso describes what Iris Squared is designed to do and why it matters beyond the defence community.

This is like, for example, Iris Square.

It's a fantastic new programme that we are developing because this is to be able to ensure secure connectivity for security and also defence purposes.

This is, for me, a fantastic argument to the citizens that we need the European Union.

Only the European Union can deliver a project on this scale.