Tech
Qatar Airways claims Starlink in-flight connectivity benchmark | Computer Weekly
In the latest airline connectivity win for the SpaceX-owned connectivity provider, and hot on the heels of arch-rival Emirates making a similar announcement, Qatar Airways has accelerated its Starlink installation.
Qatar Airways currently flies to more than 170 destinations worldwide, connecting through its Doha hub, Hamad International Airport. It was also the first airline in the Middle East to be certified to the highest level of IATA’s Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) programme, based on recognised environmental management system principles (such as ISO 14001).
Qatar Airways claims to be the operator of the largest number of Starlink-equipped widebody aircraft and the only carrier in the MENA region currently offering Starlink in-flight connectivity. It has described the expansion as “reaffirming its position as the world’s leading airline for innovation, reliability and unmatched passenger experience.”
The airline sees the deal as a major milestone in its Starlink roll-out, equipping over 100 widebody aircraft with the fastest Wi-Fi in the sky.
It also regards the move as an achievement representing one of the most rapid and ambitious Starlink installation programmes in the aviation industry, that furthermore is being implemented ahead of the initially expected schedule to bring the service to passengers even sooner.
Since its launch of the world’s first Starlink-equipped Boeing 777 in October 2024, meaning it has more than half of its widebody fleet now Starlink-connected, Qatar Airways has operated over 30,000 flights across six continents with gate-to-gate connectivity. This includes key destinations across Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas.
To date, Qatar Airways has completed the roll-out programme for its Boeing 777 fleet, and is rapidly finalising the Starlink roll-out across its Airbus A350 aircraft, also set to be completed ahead of schedule.
Qatar Airways believes its new connectivity service is “game-changing”, and transforming the onboard experience for both business and leisure travellers by enabling streaming, gaming and working at 35,000 feet.
“Qatar Airways continues to lead the industry by setting new benchmarks with action, and not just intent,” said Qatar Airways group chief executive officer Mohammed Al-Meer. “We have expedited our Starlink roll-out, which is now advancing ahead of schedule as Qatar Airways brings the best travel experience to our passengers as an immediate priority, not a future ambition.
“Equipping over 100 widebody aircraft since the launch of our first Starlink-equipped flight in October 2024 reflects this commitment,” he said. “We now operate up to 200 daily Starlink-connected flights to key destinations to ensure our passengers stay seamlessly connected with speeds faster than many home Wi-Fi services. Whether working, streaming movies and sports, or staying in touch with friends and family, staying connected at 35,000 feet has never been more convenient.”
The increased deployment of Starlink connectivity comes after the airline announced it had rolled out SITA’s next-generation software-defined wide-area network to keep global outstations connected, secure and resilient.
This installation was made to address the dual challenges that modern airlines face through rising passenger volumes and increasingly complex digital operations, resulting in legacy networks being stretched to unprecedented levels of tolerance.
If I were buying a camera today, this is the body I would get, travel or otherwise. The A7C R is one of the smallest full-frame, interchangeable-lens cameras on the market. This is why it’s our top pick for travelers in our guide to the Best Mirrorless Cameras. The 61-MP sensor offers amazing detail and very good dynamic range (14.7 EV). The super fast autofocus system is among the best you’ll find in mirrorless camera, and there’s great subject tracking as well, making it perfect for shooting fast-moving scenes on the go.
While Sony’s R series cameras are mainly for high resolution still images, the video specs here are solid enough for the casual video user, with support for 4K/60 fps video in full-frame mode (1.2X crop) or oversampled 4K/30 fps video. Both support 10-bit 4:2 color depth, various Log formats, and even 16-bit RAW output to an external recorder.
My main gripe about the A7C R is the same as it was in my initial review. The viewfinder is cramped and low-resolution (2.36 million dots). It’s not a deal breaker for me, but it’s something to keep in mind and good reason to rent a camera before you invest.
The big question with this camera is, which lens do you pair it with for travel? There’s a compelling argument to be made for the Sony FE 24-105-mm f/4 G ($1,398), which gives you everything from wide to portrait with a little bit of extra reach as well. Another great option if you like primes is the Sony 40-mm f2.5 G ($798), which makes for a compact kit, and 40-mm is a surprisingly great focal length for travel in my experience.
★ Alternative: At $2,198, Sony’s A7C II (note, no R) is a bit cheaper. It uses Sony’s smaller 33-MP sensor but is otherwise very close in size and capabilities, with considerably more video chops than the A7C R. If you want to make videos as well as stills, the A7C II is a better choice.
Tech
Eutelsat extends Airbus contract for further low Earth orbit OneWeb satellites | Computer Weekly
As the space communications industry shows no signs of slowing down this year following on from a robust 2025, Airbus Defence and Space has been awarded a contract by operator Eutelsat to build 340 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to ensure operational continuity of the OneWeb constellation.
OneWeb formed in 2012 with the aim of addressing the communication needs of hard-to-reach places, stating that its network has a unique capability to serve hard-to-reach communities and provide improved capacity, mobile resilience, backhaul and coverage, including Fixed Wireless Access, in challenging geographic locations.
However, the company’s evolution was a struggle and OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in the US in March 2020 after failing to find private investment. It was rescued by a $500m investment from both the UK government and Bharti Global, and returned to business in December 2020 with a 36-satellite payload, with an aim to implement a constellation of 650 LEO satellites with a network of global gateway stations and a range of user terminals. These were seen as a way to provide an affordable, fast, high-bandwidth and low-latency communications service, connected to internet of things (IoT) devices, and a pathway for mass adoption of 5G services.
In September 2021, OneWeb confirmed the completion of substantial investment by French satellite operator Eutelsat, as part of the latter’s strategy of looking for growth beyond traditional broadcast and broadband applications, with it becoming a shareholder partner. Less than a year later, Eutelsat entered into merger with OneWeb.
Flying in 12 synchronised orbital planes 1,200km above the Earth, OneWeb LEO satellite network currently delivers high-speed, low-latency connectivity on a global basis. Airbus believes that the availability of these latest satellites will assure full operational continuity for customers of the constellation, progressively replacing early batches coming to end of operational life.
Looking to achieve its objectives, Eutelsat procured a batch of 100 Airbus Space satellites in December 2024, taking the total number of satellites ordered by Eutelsat to 440. These new satellites will be manufactured at Airbus Defence and Space’s Toulouse facility on a newly installed production line, with delivery from the end of 2026. Airbus said this represents a further step for European sovereignty.
The new craft will integrate technology upgrades including advanced digital channelisers, enabling enhanced onboard processing capabilities as well as greater efficiency and flexibility, according to the company. Airbus added that it will incorporate optimised architecture designed to maximise long-term operational performance.
With these latest satellites, Eutelsat will also be evaluating opportunities for new business cases, notably through embarkation capabilities for hosted payloads.
Commenting on the new contract, Eutelsat CEO Jean-François Fallacher said: “We are pleased to rely on our long-standing partner, Airbus, for the procurement of these latest satellites. They ensure service continuity for the growing number of our customers and distribution partners benefiting from the unparalleled performance of our ubiquitous, low-latency LEO capacity, and enable us to pursue our growth path.”
Alain Fauré, head of space systems in Airbus, added: “This latest contract from Eutelsat is an endorsement of our design and manufacturing expertise for LEO satellites. Airbus has been a key partner and supplier to Eutelsat for more than 30 years and this award further cements our important relationship.”
Data sovereignty is a hot topic. For commercial and public sector organisations, compliance to ensure personal data is secure is a primary objective. And that means it cannot be subject to foreign laws or interference.
Data sovereignty is also a matter for international relations, where states strive to ensure citizen and organisation data is secure from foreign interference. And, for states, achieving data sovereignty is also a way of protecting and developing national economies.
In this article, we look at data sovereignty, and the key steps CIOs need to take to build their data sovereignty strategy. This centres on auditing, classification and building controls over data location and movement.
What is data sovereignty, and why is it an issue?
At the most general level, data sovereignty is the retention of data within the jurisdiction – usually state boundaries – whose laws govern its use.
Interest in data sovereignty has been building for some time. In one sense, it looks a lot like law catching up with the “wild west” early years of cloud use and popularity. Here, organisations rushed to this new, highly flexible location to process and store data, then later discovered the risks to which they – and their customer data – had become exposed.
More recently, the drive to digital sovereignty stepped up to the level of states. That trend got a big boost during US president Donald Trump’s first term. That saw the country’s introduction of the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (Cloud) Act, for example, which potentially allows US law enforcement to access data stored by US companies anywhere. Alarm bells started ringing, especially in Europe.
Organisations achieve digital sovereignty in their operations by making data subject to the laws and control of the state they operate in, or from. But we are far from achieving that, when, for example, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) have around 70% of the European cloud market, and many European state organisations are completely or overwhelmingly dependent on US hyperscalers for cloud services.
What are the concerns about data sovereignty, and what do CIOs plan to do?
Surveys regularly find IT decision-makers are concerned about data sovereignty. A Gartner survey conducted among 241 IT decision-makers globally found the majority (75%) of those outside the US plan to have a digital sovereignty strategy in place by 2030. Meanwhile, 53% said concerns over geopolitics would restrict future use of global cloud providers, and 61% said such worries would increase their use of regional or local cloud providers.
Complexity – and the potential for contradictory regulations and increased costs – is also a major concern, says Simon Robinson, principal analyst for storage and data infrastructure at Omdia.
“Our research found 74% of organisations say sovereign clouds have become more important over the last two years,” he says.
“However, it is a complex and fast-moving area. The regulatory and compliance environment is evolving rapidly. But the challenge for global organisations is that some regulations may actually conflict, potentially forcing them to contemplate whether they might break one law or regulation to satisfy another.”
Robinson adds: “At the very least it pushes up costs, may lead to inconsistent data policies around retention, and could slow down the adoption of advanced technologies, such as AI [artificial intelligence].”
So, while risks around stored data being in datacentres in a foreign country, on foreign infrastructure and subject to that country’s laws are a major worry, resolving that situation can bring its own issues too.
What is a data sovereignty audit, and why is it so important?
Core to an organisation’s responses to an unknown or uncontrolled data sovereignty situation is an audit of its data. This is the first step towards ensuring data is kept and processed within the appropriate state boundaries.
That will likely take the form of identification of the risks around different classes of data, according to Jon Collins, vice-president of engagement and field chief technology officer at GigaOm.
“Not all data is created equal, and not all parts of the architecture are created equal,” he says. “The first step is to classify what you’ve got. Identify whether it needs to fall within the scope of sovereignty, understand what kind of data it is, and consider how it might be impacted in terms of privacy, localisation and compliance.”
Key parts of a digital sovereignty strategy include mapping digital assets and data flows throughout their lifecycle and the laws to which they are subject at all stages. Then classify the data to assess risk levels for each class.
This can include geo-tagging, and should be part of an ongoing process, says Bettina Tratz-Ryan, vice-president and analyst at Gartner. “Automated discovery tools help identify and tag sensitive data, whether in physical storage or incidental locations like shared drives and folders,” she adds.
“Regular audits and compliance checks are non-negotiable and require strong governance policies and periodic manual reviews.”
How to minimise exposure to data storage risks
A data storage strategy that addresses data sovereignty builds on the classification of data in the data audit to limit what data can go where.
As part of the classification process, data will be subject to a policy that manifests in metadata tagging that indicates its sensitivity and tolerance for movement.
“Organisations should adopt a data governance as code approach, automating compliance through infrastructure as code techniques for consistent enforcement and rapid remediation,” says Tratz-Ryan.
That means sensitive data should be stored locally or in regional datacentres to meet residency requirements, with the cloud used for scalability under strict, region-specific compliance requirements.
“Continuous monitoring, encryption and geo-fencing are essential, and governance must be built in, not bolted on,” adds Tratz-Ryan.
Such approaches address the difficulties that potentially arise with data in transit. With the ability to monitor compliance and auditability built in via classification and tagging, critical workloads can be more easily segregated from less sensitive data at rest and in transit.
“Strict governance over location and movement is the cornerstone of risk mitigation,” says Tratz-Ryan.
Challenges in maintaining knowledge and control
There are many challenges to data sovereignty auditing. Data moves, and it moves across borders. We might believe we have nailed down data in our infrastructure, while data finds other backdoor routes across frontiers. Meanwhile, proprietary systems present huge challenges to audits and tagging, and staff create shadow IT, use emails, attach files, and so on.
In short, data movement in an organisation can be very complex indeed. It is potentially simple to audit and control the vast bulk of our data, but the problems come with incidental cases of data movement, says Tratz-Ryan.
“In globally connected organisations, sovereignty risks will occur even if data is stored in local servers. Remote access, backups, and software-as-a-service integrations can create cross-border exposure, triggering compliance challenges under laws like the US Cloud Act. Also, governance can be bypassed by incidental data movement via virtual private networks, personal devices, or email,” she says.
“And, for example, an automotive manufacturer may store design files on-premise in one location, but metadata and backups can flow through global product lifecycle management systems, creating sovereignty exposure.
“Incidental data movement, such as emails, shared drives and collaboration tools, often push data into unsanctioned cloud folders, outside sovereign governance. Shadow IT compounds the problem when employees use external apps without IT oversight, creating blind spots.”
GigaOm’s Collins believes that for most, the key elements needed to incorporate data sovereignty compliance are already present in their organisation.
“It’s practical to consider it within your broader governance, risk and compliance framework,” he says. “The advantage is, as a larger organisation, you already have practices, processes and people in place for audit, reporting and oversight. Sovereignty requirements can be incorporated into those mechanisms.”
Collins says we should not assume all data needs to meet sovereignty rules, and that in many cases, it’s not possible to do so.
“For example, it’s not realistic to make email a fully sovereign, locally contained application because it’s inherently distributed,” says Collins. “But you can prevent sovereign data from being transmitted by email. That’s where data loss prevention and data protection policies come in, to make sure data from certain repositories, or of certain classifications, is not emailed out.”
Similarly with cloud. Rather than try to make all cloud folders sovereign, we should instead decide what data can and cannot be stored there. And if data needs to be stored locally, then it goes to a local on-premise or domestic cloud service or availability zone.
“The core debate is deciding whether a particular dataset is sovereign,” says Collins. “If you operate in a given country and you hold customer data about people in that country, then that data stays in that country. That gives you a clear list of what cannot go into cloud folders, be sent by email, or managed by a system that can’t guarantee localisation. Once you frame it that way, the whole thing becomes much more straightforward.”
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