However, building a European competitor to Starlink will be no mean feat. A matter of scale Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news with the Housing Deconstructed newsletter. SIGN UP Communications industry experts tell CNBC that, while Eutelsat could boost Europe's efforts to create a sovereign satellite internet provider, challenging its U.S. rival Starlink would require a significant increase in investments in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Eutelsat's OneWeb arm operates a total of 650 LEO satellites, which is less than a tenth of Starlink's 7,600-strong global satellite constellation. "To offer greater capacity and coverage, [Eutelsat] needs to increase the number of satellites in space, a task made more difficult due to the fact that many of OneWeb's satellites are nearing the end of their lifespan and will need to be first replaced before growing the constellation's size," Joe Gardiner, research analyst at market research firm CCS Insight, told CNBC via email. Ookla's Kehoe echoed this view. "Eutelsat's chances of achieving parity with Starlink in the mass-market satellite broadband segment within the next five years remain limited, given SpaceX's unmatched global scale in LEO infrastructure," he said. "Even with the latest injection of capital from the French state, Eutelsat continues to lag behind Starlink in several key areas, including capital, manufacturing throughput, launch access, spectrum and user terminals." Nevertheless, he thinks the company is "well positioned to succeed in European-sovereign, security-sensitive and enterprise segments that prioritise jurisdictional control and sovereignty over raw constellation capacity." The enterprise segment refers to the market for corporate space clients. Could Eutelsat replace Starlink in Europe? That's certainly the hope. France's Emmanuel Macron has urged Europe to ramp up its investment in space, saying last week that "space has in some way become a gauge of international power." When Eutelsat announced its investment from France last week, the firm stressed its role as "the only European operator with a fully operational LEO network" as well as the "strategic role of the LEO constellation in France's model for sovereign defense and space communications." Earlier this year, Eutelsat was rumoured to be in the running to replace Starlink in Ukraine. For years, Starlink has offered Ukraine's military its satellite internet services to assist with the war effort amid Russia's ongoing invasion.