By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Leo Marchandon<\/p>\n
(Reuters) -Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile on Friday unveiled plans to establish a Europe-led satellite constellation to \u200bprovide satellite-to-smartphone connectivity for commercial and government applications.<\/p>\n
The constellation’s European operational \u200ccentre will be based in Germany, with potential sites near Munich or Hannover under consideration, the companies \u200csaid. The initiative will be managed by a joint venture between the two firms.<\/p>\n
Satellite service providers are pushing to offer mobile connectivity as broadband internet demand in underserved areas grows. The satellite-to-phone connectivity market could exceed $10 billion by 2033, according to Paris-\u2060based consulting firm Novaspace.<\/p>\n
The German \u200ccentre will provide connectivity for mobile network operators across Europe, supporting broadband services, public protection, and disaster relief, Vodafone and \u200dAST said.<\/p>\n
The constellation will feature a “command switch” for oversight and security, including communication encryption and satellite control over Europe, they added.<\/p>\n
STARLINK COMPETITION<\/p>\n
The announcement comes after Elon Musk’s Starlink signed \u200ba deal with telecoms group Veon on Thursday to deliver direct-to-cell connectivity \u200cthat could give the SpaceX unit access to 150 million potential customers across Veon’s markets.<\/p>\n
SpaceX also acquired more U.S. spectrum licenses from EchoStar for $2.6 billion, aiming to expand its reach among mobile users.<\/p>\n
AST SpaceMobile, which aims to deploy up to 60 satellites by 2026, currently operates six satellites compared to Starlink’s fleet of \u2060more than 8,000.<\/p>\n
New York-listed shares of AST \u200bSpaceMobile rose about 2% in premarket trading. \u200bVodafone shares were largely unchanged in London.<\/p>\n
Vodafone, an investor in AST, said operators in 21 European Union member states had shown interest in adopting \u200dthe service that relies \u2060on satellites in space beaming telephone signals back to Earth.<\/p>\n
Commercial operations for the constellation are slated to begin in 2026.<\/p>\n
Vodafone CEO Margherita Della Valle said in the press \u2060release that this “sovereign satellite solution” would give operators in Europe access to secure satellite communications \u200cthat would complement terrestrial networks.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon and Gianluca Lo Nostro \u200cin Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gianluca Lo Nostro and Leo Marchandon (Reuters) -Vodafone and AST SpaceMobile on Friday unveiled plans to establish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[23470,6931,18,19,17,96854,10557,47492,133,451,51180],"class_list":{"0":"post-169117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ast-spacemobile","9":"tag-connectivity","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-mobile-connectivity","14":"tag-satellite-constellation","15":"tag-satellite-service-providers","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-vodafone"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115512142903750798","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}