Vodafone CEO establishes satellite game plan

Vodafone Group CEO Margherita Della Valle urged the mobile industry to learn through a collective experience and establish a list of rules to organise the use of satellite services, as its new business venture reached agreements with European giants.

“These rules need to be applied to how mobile operators use the sky to add new services. But let me start by saying that we don’t need new ideas, and neither do we need better engineers as an industry. All this we have plenty of, and it’s not even about money,” Della Valle said during the opening keynote. 

“What we do need, first and foremost, is clear safety and security rules for satellite communication so that our customers are protected, and individual operators cannot independently accept excessive risk, potentially breaking the trust for the whole industry.”

“And we need to push for international collaboration on these rules as far as possible. We have the technology companies full, we have the investors and the policy makers. That is, work together to avoid a wild west in the sky, disrupting the earth instead of enriching it.”

The Vodafone chief also reported that operators of 10 European markets, such as Orange and Telefonica, have agreed to collaborate in the satellite connectivity through AST SpaceMobile birds.

“This new frontier in communication is both exciting and possible. We need to work together to connect everyone and everything, everywhere all of the time, from the seabed all the way up to the stars.”

Although the operators have affirmed their participation in the Satellite Connect Europe project, Deutsche Telecom announced such plans separately to increase its network coverage by the direct connection with Starlink.