On Thursday, October 1, 2026, Polish-Finnish company ICEYE, a European leader in building sovereign satellite reconnaissance capabilities, and Finnish company Nokia, a global leader in communications infrastructure, announced a partnership to jointly develop secure, sovereign, high-performance broadband satellite communications systems in low Earth orbit (LEO) for government customers. The systems will be intended for defense, border protection, emergency response, and crisis management applications. They will be based on proven European technology. The satellites, ground segment, and terminals will be owned by national governments and remain under their exclusive control. The first communications satellites are scheduled to be launched in 2028.
Photo: ICEYE
When terrestrial networks fail or their security is compromised, armed forces, emergency services, and civilian authorities can lose access to the information and command systems they depend on. Governments therefore need resilient communications infrastructure that continues to operate even under the most demanding conditions, is owned by them, and remains under their full control.
The jointly developed systems will provide high-capacity, low-latency connectivity focused on priority areas of operations. They are not intended to replace military or commercial networks, but to complement them by increasing coverage, resilience, and capacity so that governments, armed forces, and services can maintain communications wherever they operate.
The partnership combines ICEYE’s experience in delivering national satellite missions with Nokia’s extensive expertise in building secure telecommunications networks and its growing portfolio of defense solutions. The two companies will integrate satellites, ground infrastructure, and ruggedized user terminals into a single system. In this way, they will bring to satellite communications the model ICEYE already applies to satellite reconnaissance: the state itself owns and operates the system.
Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and Co-founder of ICEYE, said: „Together with Nokia, we are building on our proven space intelligence expertise and delivering sovereign, high-performance satellite communications. Nations must be able to fully own and control their communications, without dependency on a foreign commercial operator’s terms of service. We delivered Poland its own radar satellite system in under a year. Partnering with Nokia lets us move at a similar speed for satellite communications, on the timelines nations need.”
Justin Hotard, President and CEO of Nokia, said: „Sovereign operations depend on the ability to sense, decide and act in real time. Physical AI makes that possible, but only with secure, resilient connectivity across land, sea, air and space. By bringing together Nokia’s trusted networks with ICEYE’s proven sovereign space capabilities, we will deliver a satellite communications capability—complementing existing terrestrial networks, and giving nations the situational awareness, connectivity, and control they need to operate with confidence in contested environments across all domains.”
Modrzewski and Hotard will speak on October 2 at the Helsinki Security Forum during the session How to Salvage Europe’s Technological Sovereignty.
ICEYE does satellites. @nokia does communications. Today we announced that together we do sovereign satellite communications.
Read more: https://t.co/j648fmOVmo pic.twitter.com/7GkA3DQcWd
— ICEYE (@iceye_global) October 1, 2026
See also:
- ICEYE opens Satellite Technology Center in Warsaw and expands operations in Poland
- ICEYE to lead ARISE consortium in European Earth Observation Governmental Service program
- MSPO 2026: ICEYE and PGZ plan joint satellite communications system for Polish Armed Forces
- ICEYE and POLSA publish educational materials on satellite technologies
