MWC 2026: SES touts multi-orbit edge amid Starlink buzz

• The hype around SpaceX’s Starlink overshadows other satellite ventures
• Some mobile operators are excited about Starlink; others are worried about what Elon Musk might do next
• SES is pitching multi-orbit assets as the answer for reliability and guaranteed SLAs

Imagine you’re a long-time satellite company and the world is finally realizing how satellites are integral to providing connectivity to consumers around the globe. But all anyone wants to talk about is Elon Musk’s SpaceX ambitions with Starlink Mobile and the impact he’s going to have on terrestrial wireless carriers. 

That’s kind of where veteran satellite operator SES found itself at last week’s Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona. Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites were stealing all the thunder. 

“The reality is they [SpaceX/Starlink] continue to be the big story,” Gerry Collins, director of Product Management at SES, told Fierce at the show. “The challenge for us is to get our message out that LEO doesn’t solve every problem. That’s our multi-orbit play.”

Last year, Luxembourg-based SES completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of Intelsat, bringing together their geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) satellite assets to compete against well-known LEO rivals like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon Leo. Besides GEO, SES owns medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite assets; their access to LEO coverage is primarily accomplished through partnerships.  

Starlink expands market for SES

Collins identified a silver lining in all of the hoopla: Starlink has expanded the market “massively,” he said. 

“They brought satellite broadband services to the forefront of telecom,” he said. “People are now realizing that, yes, it works really well, but can I guarantee my customers service? Can I do an SLA? Can I go to the really mission-critical use cases?”

People are discovering that they want satellite connectivity with a service level agreement (SLA) for guaranteed availability and throughput. That means SES is having conversations with prospective enterprise customers that they probably wouldn’t have had a few years ago. 

In some cases, customers are seeking both SES and Starlink solutions. On a cruise chip, for example, SES’s MEO satellites provide mission-critical connectivity for passengers’ paid Wi-Fi while Starlink gives crew members the ability to call home or watch Netflix. 

“When I do need SLA, I’m going to use a high throughput MEO,” he said. “What we're seeing is more educated behavior from the end users as they're getting more familiar” with the satellite services that are available. 

“We probably have conversations which we weren't having years ago because we just didn't reach that many people previously,” he said. “SpaceX, Amazon in many ways and a lot of the other LEO players have brought that kind of knowledge and maybe maturity to satellite services as well.”

Throughout MWC, the prospect of Musk doing an Apple-sized (or bigger) takeover of the wireless industry permeated the halls. Collins shared an anecdote about meeting privately with the CEO of a fairly large mobile operator who had big concerns about what Musk and SpaceX could do to his business. 

“There are some operators who are partnering quite closely [with SpaceX], but there are some operators who are very much concerned,” he said. In the U.S. in particular, SpaceX is getting access to mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum that will put it in a much more advantageous position than ever before. 

Historically, satellite operators like SES have stressed a desire to work with mobile operators rather than focusing on their rivalry. SES refers to this work with carriers via “sell to” and “sell through” models. 

“We want to help them build out their network. That’s what we call the ‘sell to’ business,” he said. “Then we also want to do the ‘sell through,’ which is where we want them to distribute our enterprise products. Our model is pretty clear that we will distribute through telcos as partners.”

Even though SpaceX/Starlink executives stressed at MWC that Starlink Mobile is complementary to terrestrial networks and it’s working with mobile operators around the globe, Musk has never appeared to be particularly fond (to put it kindly) of the U.S. telecom players, with the exception of maybe T-Mobile.

“Some of the stuff, obviously, is complementary,” like the relationship between T-Mobile and SpaceX. “I think that was a more collaborative model,” Collins said. “I think some operators are worried that it’ll be less collaborative as they figure this stuff out.” 

SES’s D2D strategy 

SES will be the go-to-market partner of Lynk Global, which is in the process of merging with Omnispace, for its direct-to-device (D2D) phone service. SES already has a lot of agreements in place with mobile network operators (MNOs) worldwide, “so we’re hoping to provide an efficient go-to-market channel strategy for them,” he said. 

SES looked at a lot of the D2D options out there, including AST SpaceMobile, and “we like the Lynk architecture. It’s a unique design which puts certain functions up in the satellite, certain functions on the ground and this will deliver an overall lower-cost business case,” he said. 

Lynk will be able to take advantage of SES’s ground-based network facilities. “That means they don’t need to invest early days in as much ground infrastructure,” he said. “That will give them a much lower cost of operation. We think that’s a significant advantage.”