OneWeb has turned its attention to completing ground stations after launching the last batch of satellites needed to deliver broadband services around the world, Chief Executive Officer Sunil Mittal said on March 27. Mittal said it has deployed “many of the mission-critical ground stations” necessary for a commercial launch in all markets for which the British operator is licensed to serve. More ground stations are expected to come online in the coming months as the new batch of OneWeb satellites is operational after the March 25 launch.

“My hope is that everything else will be done, except for a few ground stations in places like St. Helena and Seychelles where there are many difficulties in setting up ground stations,” he said at a media briefing. .

According to Mittal, OneWeb plans to raise “hundreds of millions of dollars” from international corporate and government clients over the next 12 months.

Phased launch

OneWeb said it has successfully communicated with all 36 low-Earth-orbiting (LEO) satellites after taking off at 23:30 ET with the Mark 3 Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle, or LVM3, from India’s Satish Space Center Dhavana. New Space India Limited (NSIL), the commercial arm of the Indian space agency, set out to expand the OneWeb satellite constellation to 618 satellites.

Most OneWeb satellites in LEO have already reached their final orbital positions using onboard thrust, Mittal said. The rest is expected to be implemented “in the coming weeks and months”. While OneWeb still needs to complete ground stations, Mittal said its latest launch is the final “critical part” of OneWeb’s business strategy and “signals the completion of our space program” to have enough satellites for global coverage in LEO.

Currently, OneWeb only provides business services in regions north of 50 degrees latitude, and says these regions generate around a few million dollars in revenue per month. He added that the company’s global grouping has 1.2 terabytes of usable capacity per second, which would generate more than $1 billion in revenue if sold at current rates. He said it remains to be seen how quickly OneWeb can get to this point, as regulatory hurdles still need to be overcome in countries like India.

Global expansion

OneWeb only needs 588 of the 648 proposed satellites running on LEO to provide global services, and any satellites launched after that point will act as backup. SpaceX is contracted to launch an as yet unspecified number of backup satellites for OneWeb as part of a joint mission Mittal plans for May or June.

SpaceX has launched a total of 120 satellites for OneWeb during three Falcon 9 missions since December. The third and final special mission for OneWeb was launched on March 9 from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first mission under NSIL’s two launch contracts for OneWeb deployed 36 LVM3 satellites from India on 22 October, signaling the resumption of the operator’s launch campaign.

Arianespace had previously planned to deploy the remaining OneWeb satellites using Soyuz rockets before that contract was canceled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to Mittal, the launch failure set the company back eight to nine months and several hundred million dollars.

He said OneWeb also expects Russia to be an important market for broadband services before the war. Along with China, North Korea, and “a few other global hotspots”, the country’s service is currently not considered. According to him, however, the company continues to see significant demand from businesses and government customers in other countries. He added that smaller and lighter user terminals that have recently become commercially available will also help accelerate revenues.

And while SpaceX’s Starlink LEO broadband group is “a serious player in this market,” Mittal says OneWeb has the advantage of serving enterprise customers such as cell phone providers because its business is not focused on a consumer-focused growth strategy.

next generation

Proceeds from the global OneWeb group will help support the $4 billion second-generation LEO group, developed in partnership with French geostationary satellite operator Eutelsat, which is seeking regulatory approval to acquire the British company.

Eutelsat is listed on the Euronext Paris exchange, and Mittal said the companies plan to sign an agreement to raise money in the UK through an IPO on OneWeb “in the coming months”.

Last month, Eutelsat CEO Eva Bernecke said that she expects the request for proposals for the second-generation OneWeb group to be published by the end of June and that launches could begin as early as 2025.