On March 28, OneWeb, a global satellite Internet provider, filed for bankruptcy . Its position has weakened due to the coronavirus pandemic, the ensuing economic crisis and strong competition from Amazon and SpaceX. In addition, the company received a refusal to provide the frequencies necessary for operation in Russia - the country's special services opposed.
At the beginning of the year, the provider was supposed to receive an additional $ 2 billion from its investor, SoftBank, but the epidemic disrupted plans. The talks fell through on March 21, hours before the successful launch of 34 OneWeb satellites into orbit. The company had to resort to bankruptcy proceedings to protect it from creditors. The media began to publish articles about the problems of satellite Internet in the future, but it seems that things are not so bad. A few days ago, the UK announced its intention to buy 20% of the company for $ 500 million . And these are not just statements - a corresponding agreement has been signed.
The document was signed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Finance Minister Rishi Sunak. The issue will be finally resolved on July 10 . This is a great opportunity for the UK to get their own navigation system. After leaving the European Union, the country lost the ability to use Galileo satellites, so the government is now looking for alternatives. Initially, it was planned to create your own system from scratch, but this project turned out to be unaffordable even for such a developed country as Great Britain. OneWeb previously said it would provide not only communications services, but GPS services for civil and military purposes.
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Despite the start of the bankruptcy procedure, the company, it seems, was not going to stop its activities at all. So, on May 28, she submitted an application to the US Federal Communications Commission to expand its satellite constellation from 720 devices to 48 thousand. According to company representatives, such a step will provide an opportunity to provide high-quality communications to absolutely all satellite Internet users.
“OneWeb is building a truly global communications network to deliver high speed, low latency broadband communications around the world. Our current situation is a consequence of the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis, ” CEO Adrian Steckel said on Twitter .
For OneWeb, working and partnering with the British government is an opportunity to avoid bankruptcy. The company's assets are of great interest to many companies - for example, applications for their acquisition were previously submitted by Cerberus Capital Management, Amazon, Eutelsat and SpaceX.
As for the work of OneWeb, the company intends not to supply communication services directly to consumers, but to cooperate with the largest telecommunication companies in the world. According to the plan, it is the partners of the satellite Internet provider that should provide their customers with access to communications from OneWeb. Satellite Internet would be very useful for remote and inaccessible regions and ships. According to company representatives, the user can be in a car, helicopter, on a mountain top, anywhere in the world - communication will always be available.
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Initially, OneWeb's plans were rather modest: the constellation of satellites was supposed to consist of 588 devices and several backup devices. The production of one device costs the company $ 1 million . Some of the satellites have already been launched and entered the calculated orbit.
In addition to OneWeb, Elon Musk, Project Kuiper Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, and the Canadian company Telesat form their own constellations of communications satellites in SpaceX orbit. The vehicles will be placed in low orbits in order to ensure minimal signal latency and high data rates.