Bridging 5G and Space: Inside France 2030’s End-to-End NTN Pilot With Dual LEO Satellites
France 2030, launched in 2021 as a €30 billion investment plan, prioritizes converging 5G with space through end-to-end NTN pilots. The European Commission’s IRIS² programme, approved in 2022, will deploy hundreds of satellites (about 270 LEO and 18 MEO) and be fully operational by 2030, with Eutelsat as a prime contractor. In early 2025, Eutelsat announced the world’s first 5G NTN trial using the OneWeb LEO constellation at ~1200 km altitude, linking a standard 5G signal to the core network. The pilot used Airbus-built LEO satellites, a MediaTek 5G-NTN test chipset, an ITRI prototype gNB, and a Sharp phased-array antenna,
Cosmic IoT Revolution: How Optimized Satellite Constellations Are Connecting Every Corner of Earth
Starlink has over 7,500 active LEO satellites as of 2025 at about 550 km altitude, with plans to up to 42,000, uses Ku/Ka bands and laser inter-satellite links, and is piloting Direct-to-Cell IoT connectivity with latency around 20–50 ms. OneWeb has approximately 600 active satellites out of 648 in its first-generation network in near-polar orbits at about 1,200 km, delivering ~70 ms latency and enterprise backhaul IoT capability, with global coverage achieved in early 2023 and a merger with Eutelsat. Iridium operates 66 active cross‑linked LEO satellites at around 780 km, uses Ka-band inter-satellite links, provides truly global 100% coverage,