Eutelsat/OneWeb: UK’s £500m LEO satellite bet loses two-thirds of value in six years

Joe Purnell2026-07-20T16:25:00

Source: Eutelsat

As now-parent Eutelsat painfully pivots from geostationary to low Earth orbit infrastructure, the UK’s £342m loss on its controversial OneWeb rescue faces fresh scrutiny. Despite the substantial loss of value, government officials maintain that LEO commitment remains crucial to the nation.

This article includes:

Themes: Direct-to-device (D2D); Geostationary orbit (GEO); Government investment; IRIS2 project; Low-Earth orbit (LEO); Project Gigabit; Public policy; Satellite communications; Satellite investment; Shared Rural Network; SpaceRISE consortium; Telecom infrastructure.
People: Andy Burnham; Boris Johnson; Jonathan Reynolds; Julian Divett; Keir Starmer; Matt Clifford .
Geographic: China; Europe; France; India; Japan; Luxembourg; Spain; United Kingdom (UK); United States (US).
Organisations: Agence des Participations de l’État (APE); AST SpaceMobile; Bharti Global; Bharti Space; BT Group; CMA-CGM Participations; Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT); Deutsche Telekom; EE; Eutelsat; Financial Times; Fonds Stratégique de Participations (FSP); Guardian; Hispasat; HSIC Holdings; Ofcom; OneWeb; Orange; Satellite Connect Europe; SES; SoftBank; Starlink; Telegraph; The Francis Crick Institute; Vodafone Group.

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