OneWeb finally blasts back after delays

OneWeb’s chairman h i said id it has proved ‘naysayers’ wrong after it launched the final set of satellites needed to offer global coverage.

sunil bharti Mittal said the UK satellite business was ‘back on track’ after launches from a Russian site in Kazakhstan last year were cancelled following the invasion of Ukraine – costing more than £250m.

‘At that time I must say the situation looked very bleak,’ Mittal said.

It was the latest setback for the company which previously went bust before being rescued by the Government in a deal championed by exprime minister boris Johnson’s former adviser Dominic Cummings.

The latest launch of 36 satellites from India takes the total ‘constellation’ in orbit to 618 and should mean it is soon in a position to offer global broadband coverage, a company spokesman said.

OneWeb, a rival to elon Musk’s starlink network, operates low-earth orbit (LeO) satellites, aimed at providing access to high-speed internet where traditional ground infrastructure is hard to reach.

Applications include broadband on aeroplanes and parts of the Third World as well as the farthest-flung reaches of the UK.

Mittal, 65, said the suspension of launches from Kazakhstan had put ‘a lot of pressure on the company’, costing it hundreds of millions of dollars and setting it back by eight or nine months.

but the completion of the latest launch over the weekend – the third this year – means that OneWeb will have 618 satellites in orbit.

A total of 588 are needed to operate its network with the rest as spares in case any need to be replaced or fixed.

britain’s rescue of OneWeb in 2020 saw it take a 20pc stake for £420m, a deal that went through despite reported opposition at the time from senior government officials.

Last year it agreed a merger deal which will see it become part of Paris-listed eutelsat – though the Government will keep a ‘ golden share’ and the deal, expected to complete shortly, will also see the company eventually take a secondary listing in London.

Mittal said the Government took a ‘bold step’ in backing it, but that it has now repaid that faith after raising billions from new investors, giving it a cushion that helped it see off the setback posed by the Ukraine war.

‘Clearly there were naysayers [who said] this company would never be able to put up global services with the limited funds they have,’ he said.

‘We have done that and everything is now in place to start global services.’

Mittal said OneWeb ‘will be able to provide what has been missing for a long period of time’. The aim is to offer internet access that is both high speed and low latency – that is, not lagging in its response when needed for live interactions, for example. Oil rigs, ocean-going vessels and aircraft stand to benefit, the chairman added.

‘Gone will be the days when you have a very snail-paced type of availability of broadband in aircraft.’ Test results had been ‘ absolutely stunning’ according to Mittal, and he added: ‘Deserts, forests, mountains – the Himalayas – hard-to-reach areas will all start to get covered. We are on to something very, very special. Like any other industry there will be competition and that is to be expected. starlink is a serious player in this market and have launched thousands of satellites and are providing services in most parts of the world. so we have some catching up to do.

‘but I am pleased to report that demand seems very robust.’

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means that, along with the likes of China and north Korea, it will not be a market for OneWeb’s service. but the company is looking to operate in other parts of the world from Canada and the Us to europe, the Middle east, Australia, India, Africa and Latin America. Aid agencies and security forces are among potential customers.

‘The most important and critical job of putting satellites in space is behind us now,’ Mittal said. ‘The rest of the work is now a matter of a few months seeing global coverage becoming a reality.’