As relations between Ukraine and the Trump administration sour, Kyiv has encountered a pressing problem: it relies on Starlink to help its military coordinate operations. The good news is that it wouldn't break the bank to replace Elon Musk's satellite operator with kit supplied by $3 billion Anglo-French rival Eutelsat. The bad news is that executing such a switch would be highly complex – and couldn't happen overnight.

As things stand it doesn't look like Musk will imminently axe Ukraine's Starlink access, which is part funded by Poland. He just wants the world to know there would be devastating consequences if he did. In a March 9 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the billionaire claimed Ukraine's "entire front line would collapse" without links to his satellites. Though he went on to insist he'd never pull the plug, such episodes underline the case for using a satellite operator based in the European Union.

At first glance, the costs of such a swap might appear to be a major barrier. Providing internet from space requires terminals on the ground to transmit satellite signals to end users, and analysts estimate the price of one Eutelsat ground terminal is around $10,000. Musk's company, by comparison, offers terminals to Ukrainian consumers at less than $600 each. Assuming each of Starlink's 40,000 or so terminals in Ukraine is eventually swapped out with a Eutelsat one, the replacement drive would cost $400 million before the internet is even switched on.

Weighed against the EU's $17 trillion GDP this expense looks bearable, though. The European Commission is talking about mobilising 800 billion euros for defence, including 150 billion euros in loans for member states to spend on weapons. Throw in scope to raise pandemic-style joint debt at the EU level, and the bloc should be both able and willing to fund a satcom switch for Ukraine.

What's less clear is whether Eutelsat's OneWeb constellation has the satellite heft to deliver a quality of internet comparable to Musk's outfit. Eutelsat has around 650 satellites in low earth orbit, far less than Starlink's 7,000-strong fleet. Calculations by investment bank Bryan Garnier suggest the OneWeb constellation could only offer Ukraine one or two dozen gigabits of data per second (GBPS), a rate sufficient to supply around 10,000 residential ground terminals. Eutelsat has a powerful satellite in farther-flung geostationary orbit that could help to fill the gap, but whether the result is connectivity on par with Starlink's is uncertain.

Capacity concerns aside, there are also questions around Eutelsat's ability to roll out the new terminals on the ground at the necessary pace. The company's CEO Eva Berneke told Bloomberg that the group would be capable of sourcing 40,000 of them in a matter of months. But unlike Starlink, which makes all its own equipment, Eutelsat relies on third parties to supply its terminals. These vary in terms of size and capabilities, with several bulky and power-hungry designs in the mix.

Even if Eutelsat can get its hands on the kit in a matter of months, there's no guarantee that the mix of those terminals would meet the actual demands of Ukraine's forces on the ground, according to Hamish Low of Enders Analysis. Matching terminals to the appropriate locations and users will take time.

One consolation is that Ukraine doesn't necessarily need all of its Starlink capacity to fight a war with Russia. Some of the terminals in the country are used by civilians for day-to-day communications, while others support government institutions.

Another consolation is that Eutelsat may have some breathing space. The US agreed on March 12 to resume military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Compared with last month, when Trump administration negotiators reportedly raised the possibility of cutting off Starlink if a critical minerals deal failed to materialise, that arguably counts as a conciliatory turn.

At 6 euros, Eutelsat shares have risen fivefold in the two weeks since Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's infamous White House encounter with Trump. That's still far below the 30 euros-plus at which they traded a decade ago, and the company still has around 2.5 billion euros of net debt. Either way investors seem confident that Eutelsat will be a winner in Europe's rearmament – the question is how committed EU politicians are to ramping it up.

Elon Musk and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had a Starlink-related spat with a Polish government official on X, formerly Twitter, on March 9. Foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested that Ukraine may need an alternative to Musk's satellite internet service if it becomes "unreliable".

Poland pays for part of Ukraine's Starlink connectivity and has purchased 20,000 ground terminals for the country since 2022. In response, Rubio accused Sikorski of being ungrateful, while Musk called him a "small man".