Another satellite constellation. The astronomers will be delighted.
European companies form space jam to secure comms sovereignty with satellites
A bunch of European space and telecoms companies have banded together to answer the EU's call for a satellite constellation to guarantee "communications sovereignty" for the region. The IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) program was announced last year, following an agreement …
COMMENTS
-
-
Friday 5th May 2023 18:31 GMT Justthefacts
This would almost be OK, if….
This would almost be Ok if private commerce (or “people whose money it actually is” as they are otherwise known) really were convinced of the commercial case to stump up €3.6bn of the €6bm total cost.
Unfortunately, that’s another EU lie. It’s completely taxpayer-funded.
First off, from that €3.6bn, 50% is further funded by “loan” from the European Investment Bank. This will never be paid back because it is secured on commercial revenues for the system which will never appear.
Of the €1.8bn remaining, the EU provides R&D grants covering about €400M to match €400M notional company R&D. ESA ditto for €300M
But in both cases, the company R&D is actually fully-funded separately under different budget, that would otherwise be spent on other projects. That leaves just €400M total spent by the companies shareholders.
€200M comes from companies like Airbus and Thales which are “golden share” 50% government-owned and therefore €100M direct from French and German taxpayer. The other €100M is funded by Airbus and Thales issuing bonds into the “public debt market”, which are immediately bought by the ECB as part of the Repo operation (aka QE, aka Pandemic Recovery)
The other €200M funding comes from small “ecosystem” companies which exist only to serve EU and ESA, and have no outside revenue. Therefore, the only place that money can come from is the re-directed profit from yet other EU projects.
It’s a circle jerk.
Not one single euro-cent has to be asked to come from people-whose-money-it-actually-is. Every cent comes from people-whose-money-it-isnt.
And that’s how the system works.
-
-
Saturday 6th May 2023 10:23 GMT Justthefacts
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
I’m on the left, not the right. I believe in *more* government (taxpayer) spending on: health, education, social services, pensions, defence, and *maintenance* of infrastructure. It’s “grand plan” large infrastructure “road to nowhere” projects I have a problem with.
The EU doesn’t raise taxes, national governments do. I personally want taxes to *rise* in the civilised world to pay for better and fairer services, but that’s not relevant for current discussion. Total spending is fixed by taxes, what varies is what it gets spent on. In this case, that €6bn could have paid the salaries of 250,000 carers for people with dementia. That’s the choice that is being made. Taxes should be spent on things *needed* by people who don’t have money. Not on things people who do have money, will pay for anyway.
One issue with these big infrastructure projects is that they are logically inconsistent. If there were a real business case for it, VCs would invest quick-time. €6bn spread across the top 5 VCs would be invested and diluted into market capital on even a quiet week in the markets. It’s not a lot of money by those standards. I’ve worked on commercially funded space projects that are bigger, adjusted for inflation. But if there isn’t a business case for it…..what’s the reasoning why the benefit exceeds the cost? Is it seriously claimed that EU sees an un-met market need more accurately than anyone else? It’s crazy nonsense. It’s even worse: they aren’t even claiming the consumer need is un-met. In fact, they notice that both Starlink and OneWeb is going to meet the consumer need (yay, that’s a good thing, right?), but they’re salty it isn’t a European company building it. So….they’re deliberately choosing a market they will be third in, and will be more expensive, to….I don’t know. I literally don’t know what the justification is to build it, other than “the other child has a toy, I want one too”.
They’ve learnt nothing from the Galileo debacle. Remember when the EU thought companies were going to pay them for a commercial service? Forget about the fact that Galileo has been a total shitshow in execution. Where’s the commercial service, promised in the original cost-benefit analysis? The truth of course, is that nobody was ever going to *pay* them for it. And everybody knew that. I worked on the billing system (I led it, actually). Yes it exists, it was built and mothballed over a decade ago. We all knew it. Every single person, including the EU Officers who let the contract and oversaw it, knew perfectly that if the Billing System was ever used, it would be billing maybe hundred organisations at best, all governmental who would be told that they had to use it. But it was spec’d and built as if it would have a million monthly users. We built what we were contracted to build.
This is money taken from teachers and nurses salaries. It’s morally wrong.
-
Saturday 6th May 2023 15:59 GMT Richard 12
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
There's no business case for a National Grid of electricity distribution, a national road network or a national communications network.
Those things cost a huge amount to set up and are basically impossible to justify on a purely commercial basis, as the direct payback period is so long.
But all those things do enable huge amounts of commercial activity, and have a very short indirect payback period.
-
Saturday 6th May 2023 16:33 GMT Justthefacts
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
That’s a fair point in principle. I’m very happy for government to get involved in all of those. My vote is to re-nationalise all those assets you mention in UK, plus rail. The deeper reason for holding such assets in public hands, isn’t even the long payback periods, is that they are basic utilities where there is little sense in competitive pressure. Citizens can’t choose from *two* National Grids, and as long as we agree we need *one* it’s nonsense to have it in private hands with the reins held by regulators - that’s just another layer of unproductive administrators and advertising budgets. Allocating e,g, gas suppliers to private capital adds a huge un-accounted burden to citizens: constantly having to be on one’s toes to swap, leads to the poorest and most vulnerable paying the *highest* price and a lot of wasted effort (= unpaid labour!) for everyone.
I told you I was on the Left.
The IRIS space project falls into none of these categories. The payback time, *if it’s positive at all* is not longer compared to other space telecoms networks, that are all commercially funded. Inmarsat already provides such a network, has done for decades. Starlink will provide a cheaper one next year (the only thing stopping it providing the service in EU today is that EU governments are messing about on landing rights). Oneweb will provide service in about 2025 or so. Payback periods in normal space telco are around 10 years, because the satellites fall out the sky in maximum 15. There’s no equivalent of 30-40 year paybacks for giant infrastructure like water reservoirs or gas pipelines that last 50-70 years. Nor is it particularly vital. The vast majority of citizens have home broadband, and satellite broadband is always expensive so it’s not for the cheap seats.
As I said, Inmarsat has been doing this for decades, demonstrating there is a market need, mostly for oil&gas platforms, disaster areas, and niche industrials like forestry etc. It’s not core oxygen-and-freshwater infrastructure for average population.
-
Monday 8th May 2023 07:01 GMT Fred Daggy
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
I would always wonder what happens if the roads were sold off. No, i don't have a car, since you may ask. But I appreciate that a lot of things move by roads, including buses, frieght, bikes, etc. Sell them off to the highest bidder - and charge per, um, nautical mile - because no one will have this in their GPS with a variable congestion based charge. Road builders need to pay full costs for land acquision on the open market, on-street parking full paid for.
The "Roads Regulator" gets 1 zorkmid per liter of petrol sold (adjust per country) to fund its operations. Also, roads are sold as a region, no no cherry picking. All (residential, secondary, main and freeway) or nothing. You even get to pick if you choose a right hand side road or left hand side.
Not sure the free market knows how to handle this one.
-
-
-
Sunday 7th May 2023 15:56 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
If there were a real business case for it, VCs would invest quick-time.
Define "real business case". In VC terms it's something with a relatively quick payback time in terms of becoming a profitable business that can be sold on. Infrastructure projects tend not to be. Although they may be enablers for a lot of economic activity they may even become money pits for those owning them because they need to be maintained or updated. When the economy is tight private ownership doesn't necessarily have the money to put in so they then get nationalised (e.g.British Railways). Then they become political footballs; next time money's tight government decides it can't afford them either so they get cut (Beeching) or (ineptly) re-privatised.
-
Monday 8th May 2023 07:22 GMT Justthefacts
Re: This would almost be OK, if….
We are specifically talking about a large satellite telco, investing for its network. I’ve said already that Inmarsat already provide (several) such global networks. BGAN, Aero, etc.
Are you aware that Inmarsat has been owned by VCs (Apax, Permira etc) for more than one period? It has had no problem at all investing large quantities of money to build and launch *several* geostationary satellites with 15-year lifetimes. There’s just no problem with the privately funded model. None at all.
-
-
-
-
-
Saturday 6th May 2023 09:28 GMT xyz
Not another alliance... Please
Trouble is, IMHO, is that when a bunch of like minded whatevers come together in a pack, you get a cartel... Or in modern parlance an alliance.
Everywhere I go I see The <insert name> Alliance which just means artificially high prices due to no competition.
The only alliance I know of that benefited people was in that old Star Wars film and even then a few planets got "lost."
-
-
Saturday 6th May 2023 16:42 GMT Justthefacts
Re: They could just rent space...
Oh, that’s yet another comedy aspect of this. OneWeb is no longer primarily British, its major shareholder is Eutelsat (France).
Eutelsat is nominally a publically-quoted company, but in typical French fashion is actually golden-shared by French government. Once other financial-engineering shenanigans are taken into account, Eutelsat is 70% controlled by the Elysee Palace.
Anyway, you’ve got the bizarre spectacle of Eutelsat responsible for commercial operation of *Iris*, competing directly against Eutelsat largest owner of *OneWeb*. So Eutelsat have had to sign an undertaking that their shareholding in OneWeb is sufficiently arms-length that there is no conflict of interest. Except, there blatantly is conflict of interest, and everyone knows it, which is why they have to sign something, so I don’t know what value the bit of paper can possibly have.
-
Sunday 7th May 2023 09:10 GMT Justthefacts
Re: They could just rent space
Actually, looking at this from a Eutelsat perspective, might give a better understanding what is really going on.
Eutelsat is a sclerotic and dying satellite *TV* operator, its shares having lost 75% of their value over the last decade. For the fairly obvious reason that nobody except very old people actually watch live broadcast TV (as opposed to VOD) any more. Sky TV is transitioning to broadband VOD. Eutelsat total market cap is just $1.7bn. To the extent that a significant part of their value is being the purveyor of Russia Today to large parts of Russia. This is very embarrassing for the Elysee Palace, which as I said is the ultimate recipient of 70% of the revenue that does come in.
What to do? Well, if you are a dying TV company, owned by Macron, why not just give the EU Commission a call? Get them to gift you fully operational satellite telco network, worth €6bn. A wholesale lift-and-shift sideways of your business model, phoenix into becoming a telco instead of a TV company. And don’t even take the risk of cost overruns. If it ends up costing €10bn to build up the network, that’s the Commission’s money, not Eutelsat. Basically, this was a booty call from Macron to der Leyen, to refinance his failing asset.
-
-
-
Monday 8th May 2023 06:27 GMT fg_swe
Better Approach: Shortwave Spread Spectrum Radios
Why:
+ a network of shortwave radio stations cannot be taken out easily, unlike satellites which are easy to spot and attacked by ASAT weapons like the SM3
+ low cost
+ spread spectrum is hard to locate and hard to jam
+ much smaller cybernetic attack surface
Rohde+Schwarz and Thales have spread spectrum shortwave radios readily available. If only the leaders knew what was at their disposal, instead of being fooled by commercial interests who want to live off the teat of state.
Also, given the Russian threat, there must be Common European Action. A centrally controlled air defence wargame, including all west European air forces acting as single power. No more Divide Et Impera by the Kremlin !
-
Monday 8th May 2023 07:03 GMT fg_swe
Narrowband Communications Style
Of course leaders on all levels must accept and learn how to communicate with other leaders using text-chat-style interaction. HF radios cannot support video or even voice communication on a large scale, but this is not really necessary. C2 for huge operations was executed with shortwave, Morse telegrams in the past.
In terms of communications security, the less bits you need to transmit, the better.
-
Monday 8th May 2023 07:14 GMT fg_swe
Survivable High Bandwidth Communications Relay
The Grob EGRETT can fly at 16000 meters and provide e.g. a high speed microwave link from Berlin to Paris, London to Paris. Two EGRETTs would be needed for Madrid to Paris or from Rome to Berlin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grob_G_520
As I wrote before, if only the muppets knew what they already have.
-
Tuesday 9th May 2023 11:44 GMT ThatOne
Re: Survivable High Bandwidth Communications Relay
Nobody cares about what he has, he only cares about what he wants.
That's why most people have several pieces of redundant kit, and won't hesitate to buy yet another one because it pretends to be "better" in some way.
The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener.
-
-
Monday 8th May 2023 07:47 GMT fg_swe
General Staff Airborne Command Post - GESAC
+ Airbus A380
+HF radios
+VHF, UHF, Microwave radios
+Common European Cipher CEC
+manned by the top generals from Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Britain, Poland, Netherlands, Sweden and support officers from said nations
+operating as required, but only in takeoff-ready standby/training as long as no external threats existent
-
Monday 8th May 2023 12:25 GMT fg_swe
Lower Levels: EGRETT Relays
Tactical high speed links could be provided by EGRETT relays using 100..10000Mhz links. EGRETT would be much harder to disable as they will operate at a standoff of 400kms from the frontline. Polar satellites will all fly over the north pole, where Russia can freely operate.
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Monday 8th May 2023 13:06 GMT fg_swe
Looking On the Globe And At Mr Breton
1.) Territory is even worse than thought
2.) Apparently french education is worse than thought: "Im Jahr 1979 erlangte Thierry Breton einen Master an der Supélec (École Supérieure d‘Éléctricité) in Elektrotechnik und Informatik und ist ein Absolvent des „Institut des hautes études de défense nationale“.[2]"
Looks like the Gallics still need German defence support ever since since Karl Martell, the frankish troop leader.
-