Eutelsat Boost Funding of OneWeb UK’s LEO Broadband Satellites

British-registered satellite company OneWeb, which is busy deploying a large constellation of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for ultrafast low-latency broadband provision, has received a second investment boost – worth $165m (c.£120m) – from rival operator Eutelsat that raises their stake from 17.6% to 22.9%.

At present OneWeb, which is also partly owned by the UK Government, Bharti Global, Softbank and Hanwha, has launched a total of 322 small c.150kg LEO satellites into space and their initial plan is to build a constellation of 648, which is enough for a reasonable level of global coverage by around the end of 2022 (a beta service is due to launch around November 2021).

Back in April 2021 it received some surprise support from a rival, with Eutelsat choosing to invest $550m (£395m) into the operator (here). At the time, the company received a c.24% equity stake in OneWeb and similar governance rights to the UK Government and OneWeb’s other significant equity partners. But since then their stake has shrunk, due to the addition of new strategic investments from other organisations.

Eutelsat is of course best known for operating a rival geostationary satellite broadband network via their KA-SAT and KONNECT platforms, which sells to UK consumers via several ISPs including their own provider – Konnect Europe. The move to grab a slice of OneWeb also gave them a strategic stake in the growing LEO broadband market, which their latest investment boost seems intended to repair back toward its original level.

Eutelsat Statement

Since Eutelsat’s initial investment, OneWeb has gained significant traction, both operationally, with a 100% launch success rate leading to nearly half of the constellation now in orbit, and commercially, with numerous distribution partnerships secured ahead of its partial entry into service, which remains on track for end-2021.

In the meantime, as already announced by the company, OneWeb’s capital structure has been further strengthened with an additional $500 million commitment by Bharti completing the funding of its first-generation constellation and a $300 million capital injection from South Korea’s Hanwha.

Following the exercise of the call option and the completion of Hanwha’s investment, Eutelsat’s 22.9% holding will make it the second largest shareholder behind Bharti with 30.0%, thereby strengthening its position as a key shareholder and partner of OneWeb.

Interestingly, Eutelsat’s move comes shortly after they rejected a takeover proposal from Patrick Drahi, which is a name that some of our readers might recall after one of his companies grabbed a 12% stake in BT earlier this year (here). Since then, Deutsche Telekom, which also holds a 12% stake in BT, has hinted that it could work with Drahi to do a deal that might result in a takeover of BT (here). Prior to all this, BT had also signed a deal with OneWeb to help harness their constellation to support rural broadband and possibly 5G mobile services (here).

In theory, OneWeb’s network could deliver ultrafast broadband speeds (100Mbps+) and latency times of under 40ms (here and here), although we still don’t know exactly what sort of service will actually be made available to the domestic connectivity market (via a third-party ISP as they don’t sell direct like Starlink) and how much it might cost. OneWeb’s main focus is more on secure business, maritime and government connectivity.

We should add that OneWeb also has future approval for a total of 2,000 satellites and 1,280 of those would be a second-generation model that could sit in a higher Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of 8,500km – possibly with some GPS style navigation features attached (note: you could add limited navigation features to the existing LEOs via software, but their accuracy would be too poor to be of much use).

OneWeb’s first initial commercial (beta) services are predicted to go live across parts of the United Kingdom, Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic seas before the end of this year (i.e. from 50th parallel and above).