The German government is paying for Ukraine to have access to French company Eutelsat‘s satellite service as Europe seeks alternatives to the equivalent of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communication system.

Eutelsat’s chief executive, Eva Berneke, told Reuters that the company had been providing the high-speed satellite internet service in Ukraine for about a year through a German distributor.

Speaking yesterday at the company’s headquarters in Paris, Berneke said the provision was funded by the German government, but declined to say how much it cost.

The chief executive of that French company said there are fewer than a thousand terminals connecting users in Ukraine to Eutelsat’s network, a number far smaller than the approximately 50,000 Starlink terminals Kiev says it has on Ukrainian territory. However, Berneke said she expects the number of Eutelsat terminals in Ukraine to increase.

“We are now trying to get between 5,000 and 10,000 (terminals) there relatively quickly,” he said, adding that this could be done “within weeks.”

Asked whether Germany would also finance this deployment of additional terminals, Eutelsat spokeswoman Joanna Darlington said this was currently under discussion. “We do not yet know how the EU collectively or country by country will finance the efforts going forward,” Darlington said.

Germany’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

European response to Trump and Musk’s US

US President Donald Trump‘s more hostile approach to Ukraine since his return to the White House has raised concerns in Europe about reliance on Starlink.

This is part of the SpaceX rocket company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and member of the US government. Starlink provides satellite service to Ukraine and its military in the war against Russia.

Eutelsat’s OneWeb is Starlink’s main rival in providing high-speed satellite internet.

These satellites are low-orbiting relative to other satellites, and have the ability to transmit data extremely efficiently, providing high-speed internet services for remote communities, ships and armies.

Eutelsat had previously said it was involved in discussions with the European Union about providing additional internet access in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Thursday, Berneke said that talks with Brussels on Ukraine are active and that they are mainly taking place in the context of an EU-backed consortium, a consortium of which Eutelsat is a member, working on a long-term secure satellite connectivity project known as IRIS².

The EU’s IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite) satellite constellation will offer enhanced communications capabilities to government users and businesses, while ensuring high-speed internet to address connectivity dead spots. This multi-orbit constellation will combine the benefits offered by Low Earth (LEO), Geostationary (GEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites.

Berneke added that Eutelsat has capabilities that it could offer Ukraine through its network of geostationary satellites, which are in orbit further away from Earth and typically offer lower connectivity speeds. She stressed that the network uses terminals that are relatively low-cost and are good for consumer use or as an alternative.

“When you’re in a situation like Ukraine today, you want to have all your options available,” Berneke said. As long as Starlink is working in the country, “it doesn’t make sense to choose not to use it,” he said.

However, it makes sense to have a plan B “especially when you had these kinds of situations where it was a little bit tense about whether this would still be an option, you would want to have alternatives,” the Eutelsat CEO added.

About half of the 50,000 Starlink terminals Ukraine says it has received were supplied by the Polish government, which says it has spent about $84 million on Starlink terminals and services since 2022. The US government and SpaceX have also provided Starlink access to Ukraine.

Last month, in its White Paper presentation, the European Commission stressed that the European Union should fund Ukraine’s access to space services that can be provided by EU-based commercial providers.

European Commissioner for Defence, Andrews Kubilius, met with Poland’s Defence Minister during a visit to Warsaw this week.

Asked by Reuters during a press conference the day before yesterday, Wednesday, about the status of discussions on alternatives to Starlink in Ukraine, Kubilius said there were solutions that would be implemented in case of “unexpected developments” but declined to give further details.

Europe needs to develop its own capacities “in a fast and urgent way,” the European commissioner added. He noted that two European efforts were under way. One known as GOVSATCOM that brings together national satellites should be ready by the middle of this year, he said. The other is the EU-backed IRIS², which is a public-private partnership that won’t be operational until about 2030.