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Deutsche Telekom Satellite Day 2026 urged the satellite industry to partner rather than compete. Collaborations will drive the next wave of satellite ambitions, yet each of them rests on launch capability that Europe does not yet have.
Introduction
Deutsche Telekom Satellite Day 2026, ‘Beyond the Sky – Enabling Tomorrow. Together’, took place on 19 September 2026 at Deutsche Telekom’s headquarters in Bonn, Germany. The annual event drew around 350 attendees, up from roughly 200 last year. This growth echoed the message of the opening keynote: attention around satellite is intensifying because the market itself is accelerating sharply, and satellite has now evolved into Deutsche Telekom’s third connectivity pillar, alongside fixed and mobile.
If that growth set the tone for the day, one word that recurred across the keynotes and framed the discussions that followed is ‘partnership’. Rodrigo Diehl, CEO of Telekom Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom’s German operating unit, argued that satellite will be complementary to terrestrial networks rather than a substitute for them, and that there is more to be gained from partnering than from competing. The more rewarding approach, as he put it, is to grow the pie together rather than to slice it.
This report draws out three themes that stood out on Satellite Day:
- Defence is redefining what a sovereign satellite system requires
- Satellite IoT’s next frontier: From asset tracking to D2V
- Data centres in space remain much debated
Related research:
- Satellite D2D: Down-to-Earth scenarios for telcos
- Skywatch constellation: Satellite operator profiles
- Skywatch tracker: Telco-satellite partnerships and strategic analysis
