A London Economics study published on April 30, 2026, examined a hypothetical seven-day loss of satellite communications across European Space Agency member states and Canada. It estimated an economic impact of €10.2 billion, potentially reaching €20 billion under other assumptions. These figures describe a modeled scenario, rather than a recorded outage or a prediction that such an event will occur.
The study’s boundaries are as important as its headline number. It assumed communications satellites in all orbits were unavailable, but satellite navigation remained operational. A week without satellite communications is different from a week without every space-based service. The scenario isolates a particular dependency so that its consequences can be examined without treating all satellite functions as interchangeable.
London Economics’ published study description identifies five sectors: maritime, aviation, consumer connectivity, energy, and payments. Its evidence included interviews with 48 stakeholders as well as existing research. The authors estimated that around 2.2 million users would be left entirely offline. Maritime and aviation accounted for more than 90% of the estimated economic impact.
Those findings challenge an exclusively household view of satellite communication. A person whose home internet uses a ground network might experience no immediate failure of that connection. The same person could still depend on goods transported by ships, flights crossing oceans, or services operating at remote sites. The consequences of an infrastructure failure can travel through economic relationships even when an individual’s own phone remains connected.
Ships make the importance of geography easy to understand. A vessel far from shore cannot assume access to an ordinary cellular tower or a nearby fiber cable. Communications supports operational reporting, coordination, and contact with shore-based services. A loss of satellite capacity would force operators to assess what could continue using other equipment and procedures. The result would depend on the vessel, its route, and the alternatives available.
Aviation presents a related but distinct problem. Aircraft operating over oceanic regions use communications systems suited to their routes and regulatory requirements. Losing a supported communications path could affect the conditions under which a flight operates. It would not automatically mean every aircraft loses every form of communication. A useful outage analysis must account for existing alternatives and the operational decisions required when normal service is unavailable.
For consumers, the largest immediate difference would be between those using satellites as their primary connection and those using other infrastructure. A remote household dependent on satellite broadband could lose ordinary online access. A household served by functioning terrestrial networks might remain connected. Shared public facilities and local backup arrangements could change the experience in particular communities, making national averages an incomplete description of individual consequences.
Remote industrial sites face their own communications needs. An offshore operation may depend on links for coordination, data exchange, and contact between workers and people ashore. Its response would reflect safety requirements and the equipment needed to continue operating. The loss of personal communication could also affect workers even when an activity can proceed. Economic output is only one measure of a service’s importance.
Payments illustrate why an absence of a quantified loss should be interpreted carefully. The study did not identify a direct monetizable impact for that sector, but noted possible localized effects. A service can matter greatly to a particular remote community without producing a clearly estimated total in a broad model. Data limitations and differences in backup arrangements can complicate the measurement of smaller or more dispersed consequences.
New Space Economy’s explanation of satellites as everyday infrastructure provides context for separating communications, navigation, observation, and weather services. These functions may support the same industry but do different jobs. Preserving navigation in the study’s scenario means location and timing services continue under the stated assumptions; it does not restore the missing communications route.
The seven-day duration also shapes the interpretation. An interruption lasting a few minutes can often be handled differently from a disruption lasting a week. Stored information, spare capacity, and temporary workarounds have limits. As time passes, postponed tasks can interact with later schedules and other organizations’ decisions. Those effects are reasons to examine duration explicitly, rather than multiply a brief interruption’s cost into a week without additional analysis.
A backup connection needs to be evaluated against the scenario. A second satellite provider may offer protection against an individual operator’s failure, but would not solve an assumption that all satellite communications are unavailable. A terrestrial alternative can provide a more independent path where it exists. In the middle of an ocean or at an isolated site, that alternative may be limited or absent.
The study does not establish a single physical cause capable of producing the modeled outage. Its purpose is to examine consequences under an assumed loss of service. That is a useful planning exercise, but it should not be converted into an assessment of probability. Questions about cyberattacks, solar activity, equipment failures, or other causes require separate evidence about the systems and events involved.
Economic estimates also depend on definitions and assumptions. Lost production, reduced service benefits, delayed activities, and effects extending through supply chains are related concepts that cannot always be added without adjustment. The value of a model lies partly in making those choices understandable. A precise-looking total should be read alongside the scenario and method that produced it.
Planning also requires knowing who owns each part of the connection. A business may buy a service from a local supplier without knowing which satellite network carries it. Understanding that chain helps establish whether two apparently separate subscriptions actually provide independent communications paths.
A week without satellite communications would produce uneven consequences, concentrated where a ground-based substitute is difficult to obtain. The study gives that dependency a defined scale and scope without predicting a universal communications collapse. Its practical lesson is to identify the services that require satellite links and test whether their alternatives would still function during the particular failure being considered.
