Helsinki: A Finnish satellite maker says it could help Australia build its own alternative to Elon Musk’s Starlink, made locally and owned by Australians.
ReOrbit, which assembles communications satellites for defence customers inside a former Ford car factory in Helsinki, wants to set up manufacturing in Australia with local companies and the government.
“I’m very interested personally, making this happen in Australia,” chief commercial officer Markus Räikkönen told this masthead in an interview. He plans to visit in February.
The pitch arrives as Australia leans harder on satellites it does not control. From next year, the Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation requires the mobile carriers to provide basic outdoor voice and text coverage through a low-earth-orbit satellite partner, so a phone with no tower in range can still send a message.
The Australian Telecommunications Alliance, the industry’s peak body, says that market “does not currently provide any competitive options”. Telstra and Optus have both signed with Elon Musk’s Starlink for satellite-to-phone services.
In late October, Musk said SpaceX had restricted Ukraine’s Starlink service, accusing its military of breaching the terms by using it for “offensive drone strikes”, which Ukrainian officials dispute. Ukraine says the problems hampered its defensive operations for more than a week. Musk had earlier denied deliberately throttling the service, which was restored after US President Donald Trump said he had told Musk to “put it back”.
Räikkönen said it matters little to someone shopping online whose satellite carries the signal. For defence, he said, it is “extremely important who controls the satellite connectivity”. “Can somebody turn it off? Can somebody slow it down?”
Sovereignty used to mean leasing a reserved slice of capacity on another operator’s satellite, he said. Governments now want the whole system. “I want to own my satellites, my ground station. I want to operate the satellite,” he said, describing what customers ask for, with data landing in their own country and “no restrictions or kill switch” outside it.
Australia would need more of them than most. Finland could cover its critical communications with a single geostationary satellite, which sits fixed about 36,000 kilometres above the equator, Räikkönen said. “For Australia it’s a massive land area,” he said, and several would be needed.
A sovereign version of Starlink, using satellites about 550 kilometres up, would need a constellation of about 600 to 1000 satellites for Australia, he said, though a service could start with fewer.
ReOrbit would act as the systems integrator and hand over the know-how, he said. “With a company like ReOrbit we could actually do it in Australia and everything could be owned by locals,” he said.
Australia has tried this before. In 2024, the Defence Department cancelled JP9102, a $6.9 billion sovereign military satellite communications system built around new geostationary satellites, a year and a half after awarding the contract to Lockheed Martin Australia.
ReOrbit was founded in 2019 and has about 160 staff, adding more than 10 a month, Räikkönen said. Its biggest investors are Finnish pension funds, including Varma and Elo. That helps in defence sales, Räikkönen said, because governments wary of choosing between American and Chinese suppliers can buy Finnish without upsetting anyone. “If you buy from Finland, nobody cares.”
Chief executive Sethu Saveda Suvanam has pitched ReOrbit as an affordable alternative to Starlink for countries that cannot build their own satellites, TechCrunch reported when the company raised €45 million ($71.7 million) last year, in what the site described as a record round for a European space start-up. He said it had signed a contract worth “some hundreds of millions” with one country and memorandums of understanding with others.
ReOrbit’s first satellite, which runs artificial intelligence on board to analyse images before sending them down, is due to launch in February on a SpaceX rideshare flight. Räikkönen said whether SpaceX keeps launching rivals’ satellites is “completely on them to decide”, though he expects it to, because the business helps pay for its rockets. The launch is set for the same month as his Australian trip.
David Swan travelled to Finland as a guest of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
