At 10:14 a.m. this Sunday in India, when the contact of the 36 satellites launched 1 hour and 14 minutes earlier from the Satish Dhawan space center in Sriharikota, was established, the teams of OneWeb, the British satellite communications company in low orbit , was doubly smiling: not only were they keeping their promise to bring secure high-speed internet connectivity to India in the near future, including in remote areas, but they could also be happy to have enough satellites to cover by the end of the year the whole planet. As a reminder, with its constellation in low orbit, a few hundred kilometers above sea level, OneWeb provides high-speed, low-latency internet, i.e. fast data transmission, for the particular benefit of isolated regions without fiber optics.
“This is the biggest milestone in OneWeb’s history, as we reach the number of satellites needed for global coverage. With today’s satellite deployment (..) we are realizing this central ambition and are even closer to changing lives on a large scale,” said Neil Masterson, CEO of OneWeb, in a statement. British low-orbit satellite communications company.
In fact, with the successful deployment of these 36 satellites to cover India, the Oneweb constellation now has 618 satellites. Far more than the 588 needed for global coverage.
« By the end of the year, OneWeb will be ready to deploy global coverage, enhancing its existing connectivity solutions that are already operational in regions north of 50 degrees latitude, while bringing new areas online. through partnerships with leading suppliers “Said the company in a press release, specifying that other additional satellites were also planned to secure the system.
Merger with Eutelsat
As a reminder, Oneweb is in the process of merging with the European satellite operator Eutelsat. Scheduled “in the second or third quarter”, this operation will give birth to a European giant in the race for the internet from space, facing the Starlink juggernaut led by the owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk. In this booming market, estimated at 16 billion dollars by 2030 by Eutelsat, the American SpaceX has taken a step ahead with more than 2,000 satellites of its Starlink constellation already deployed (it wants 42,000 in the long term). ). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to deploy more than 3,200 satellites for his Kuiper constellation. The European Union also wants to deploy its own constellation in low orbit of around 250 satellites from 2024, in the name of its sovereignty.
Eutelsat joins forces with Intelsat
Illustrating the potential outlets offered by the merger project, Eutelsat announced a fortnight ago that it was going to join forces with its American counterpart Intelsat to provide it with connectivity capacities in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, and access to the Oneweb network. A partnership lasting 7 years and which “represents several million euros”, according to Eutelsat. The latter had already entered into a partnership in 2019 with Gogo Commercial Aviation, a well-known company in air transport, which Intelsat acquired in 2020. The new contract is “multi-orbit”, that is to say that it combines OneWeb’s constellation of low-orbit satellites with Eutelsat’s geostationary satellites.