Eutelsat and Skynopy have launched Global AKAR, a software-defined satellite ground network designed for low Earth orbit constellations.
Announced at the International Space Summit in Paris, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, the commercial venture pairs Eutelsat’s worldwide ground station estate with Skynopy’s cloud-native orchestration software and virtualised modem technology. The system provides commercial and defence satellite operators with a single software interface to access downlinks across S, X, and Ka-band frequencies.
The ground network aims to lower downlink latency from the sector standard of roughly one hour to under three minutes. Data transmission throughput is specified at up to 10 Gbps across the software-defined links, compared to prevailing transfer rates of 1–2 Gbps.
“Global AKAR is the alliance of a European champion, Eutelsat, and one of France’s most promising startups, Skynopy, working hand-in-hand to offer the best service on the missing element of the space economy: the ground segment,” stated Macron.
“This endeavour embodies the ambition of France 2030: to make our technological excellence and the worldwide reach of our territories a foundation the whole space sector can build on.”
Software orchestration and antenna virtualisation
Skynopy, founded in late 2023 by Pierre Bertrand and Antonin Hirsch, operates 17 ground sites and more than 35 stations across five continents. The company has secured €18 million in backing from investors and partners, including Amazon Web Services, while providing tracking services for 30 commercial and defence operators such as Airbus Defence and Space, Endurosat, and U-Space.
The company’s orchestration engine integrates distributed radiofrequency hardware into a unified Ground-Station-as-a-Service layer. By deploying virtualised modems directly onto operational antennas, the platform routes data transfers dynamically without requiring satellite operators to construct dedicated physical reception terminals.
“Satellite operators keep telling us the same thing: they need their data on the ground faster, everywhere, and without building the infrastructure themselves,” says Bertrand, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Skynopy.
“With Global AKAR, Eutelsat and Skynopy turn the world’s most extensive gateway network into an on-demand service that delivers exactly that—near-real-time data and global coverage through a single integration, for the fastest-growing constellations in Earth observation and, increasingly, across the whole low Earth orbit economy.”
Technical validation and 2029 deployment targets
Eutelsat, established as a combined geostationary and low Earth orbit operator following its 2023 merger with OneWeb, operates 31 geostationary satellites alongside more than 600 low Earth orbit spacecraft. Selected ground stations across its network will be integrated into the Global AKAR architecture while maintaining existing connectivity, video distribution, and government missions.
The operational architecture builds directly on an initial phase backed in part by the French government, which validated the software routing model through a three-antenna Earth observation proof of concept. The shared infrastructure will support Earth observation downlinks, orbital data centres, and direct orbital edge-computing links.
Network expansion plans call for the deployment of more than 100 operational antennas across select Eutelsat facilities worldwide by the end of 2029.
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