The European Commission has rejected four smaller consortia for its IRIS² low Earth orbiting constellation. It has selected a consortium made up of Airbus Defense & Space, Eutelsat, Hispasat, SES and Thales Alenia Space, backed also by Deutsche Telekom, OHB SE, Orange, Hisdesat, Telespazio and Thales Group.

This major group will now fine tune its proposals with the EC and at the end of the process, create an operating business to bring the IRIS² concept to life.

The ‘failed’ applicants included France’s Exotrail, Spain’s Integrasys, France’s CEA and Germany-based Rivada Space Networks. While the EC rejected these four because of concerns over their financial ability. However, it is possible that some of the four might end up in the larger, winning, consortium.

There is a positive discrimination in favour of smaller enterprises being part of the final consortium and the EC has set a minimum threshold of 30 per cent participation in favour of smaller Europe-based players.

The EC’s deadline is set at July 31^st for initial proposals and the period of August 1st – October 13th for “competitive dialogue” between the consortium, with a best and final offer to be agreed by December 13th. The actual contract will be issued on January 26th 2024.

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Categories: Articles, Broadband, Business, Funding, Policy, Regulation, Satellite

Tags: Airbus Defense & Space, eutelsat, Hispasat, SES, Thales Alenia Space