Orange and Eutelsat have inaugurated a new teleport in Martinique hosting a OneWeb gateway, positioning the French overseas territory as a strategic hub for low Earth orbit (LEO) connectivity across the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
The Lamentin site, built and operated by Orange on behalf of Eutelsat, houses 14 LEO antennas to support OneWeb services in hard-to-reach areas on land and at sea. The gateway extends the constellation’s global footprint, closes the remaining coverage gap over key transatlantic maritime routes and is designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency links for residential, enterprise, maritime and defence users.
The project, unveiled in the presence of French regulator ARCEP chair Laure de La Raudière, forms part of a joint resilience and “sovereign connectivity” strategy. By anchoring a OneWeb ground segment in the Caribbean and tying it directly into regional subsea systems Kanawa, Southern Caribbean Fiber and ECFS, plus Orange’s terrestrial backbone, the partners are pitching a hybrid satellite–fibre architecture aimed at improving redundancy, service continuity and data routing flexibility in a zone exposed to both geographic constraints and climate risks.
Eutelsat COO Fabio Mando said the gateway makes the group’s OneWeb LEO service fully available across the Caribbean while reinforcing continuity along transatlantic routes, “strengthening the Caribbean’s connectivity infrastructure for the long term”. Orange executives framed the site as a regional node within a wider European strategy of trusted, multi-orbit connectivity, complementing its existing teleports in France and interconnections in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
The Martinique deployment also builds on Orange’s expanded LEO partnership with Eutelsat, including recent moves to integrate OneWeb capacity into its enterprise and crisis communications portfolio, and underscores how incumbents are using multi-orbit satcom to backstop terrestrial networks and address coverage and resiliency requirements.
Orange and Eutelsat say the project was developed with local stakeholders to manage coexistence with agriculture and protect a sensitive coastal environment, including a mangrove restoration initiative, positioning the teleport as part of a longer-term, “responsible” digital infrastructure plan for the region.
