Anyone relying on Starlink for connectivity now faces a new question: what happens if the provider stops being friendly? Open Cosmos, a space company founded just over a decade ago with sites in the UK, Greece and Portugal, is answering with ConnectedCosmos, a constellation designed as a European alternative. The first concrete test came after a Starlink service throttle in Ukraine, which put dependence on a foreign power back at the centre of the debate.
The ConnectedCosmos constellation currently has two satellites in orbit, launched by Rocket Lab in January 2026. The company plans to operate more than 96 satellites by the end of 2028 and reach full coverage in 2030. The core connectivity backbone should consist of 192 satellites, which founder and CEO Rafel Jordà Siquier describes as "the foundation, not the ceiling."
One satellite a day, the company says
Production is where Open Cosmos will be judged. The company says it can build one satellite per day, a pace that the Register found realistic after visiting the Harwell site in the UK. It is far below the roughly 70 Starlink satellites per week SpaceX has claimed. The difference also reflects a design choice: ConnectedCosmos operates above 1,000 km, where far fewer satellites are needed to cover the same area, but latency rises. Co-founder and CTO Jordi Barrera Ars puts it between 30 and 80 milliseconds, acceptable for most applications but not for all.
Direct-to-smartphone connectivity, by contrast, is not on the roadmap. VP Commercial Satcom Danielle Edwards says the company is focused on direct devices, mainly in the Internet of Things (IoT), and rules out smartphones for now: "Never say never," she added, but for the moment the focus is elsewhere.
From test bench to satellite nursery
During the visit, Open Cosmos showed its assembly and testing facilities, including temperature and pressure tests and a shaker table that simulates launch conditions. Each satellite starts from a common bus, onto which solar panels and payload are fitted. Before launch they are stored in what a company representative called "the satellite nursery."
A constellation for sensitive customers
The architecture serves two purposes. Satellites from the OpenConstellation service, which the company uses to share data from Earth observation satellites, use ConnectedCosmos as their connectivity backbone, while the same constellation also provides point-to-point broadband. The company says the network is designed for government, institutional and commercial customers that need secure connectivity and clear custody of critical data.
The comparison with Starlink is unavoidable, but the scale differs enormously. SpaceX's constellation exceeds 10,000 satellites, while Open Cosmos's plan is far more modest. The service will not suit guiding high-speed drones, which is not its purpose. It will instead offer sovereign communication channels that do not depend on the decisions of a single operator.
The company already has sector experience through OpenConstellation and custom spacecraft built for individual customers. The Register notes that, unlike many industry projects, its satellites and facilities exist beyond presentations.
In Italy the debate on satellite sovereignty runs in parallel with the European IRIS² network, which the country follows closely for government and secure communications.
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