OneWeb Successfully Completes LEO Satellite Broadband Network UPDATE
OneWeb, which is part-owned by the UK government, has today technically completed their new Low Earth Orbit (LEO) based ultrafast (100Mbps+) and low-latency (sub-100ms) satellite broadband network. The development occurred after they successfully launched their final full batch of 36 satellites aboard a rocket from India.
The operator has now launched a total of 618 of their small c.150kg LEO based broadband satellites into space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km above the Earth (588 of them are for coverage and the rest redundancy), which is enough for a good level of global coverage. This reflects their first generation (GEN1) constellation.
The full commercial service is now expected to be ready by the end of 2023, which is admittedly running about a year behind their original schedule. Sadly, a lot of their prior launches took place from Russia, and that ended in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine set off a chain of events that continues to unfold (here). OneWeb ended up taking a £200m hit after Russia blocked further launches and impounded 36 satellites (here).
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At this point the eagle-eyed among you will note that OneWeb originally intended to launch 648 satellites and, while today’s launch does technically complete their global network, the company did initially appear to have one last launch with SpaceX planned for just 15 of their GEN1 satellites in May 2023. This was also expected to include a prototype GEN2 satellite, but we’re unsure if this is still the plan.
OneWeb’s network will initially be mostly focused on serving government, maritime, aviation and enterprise needs rather than community connectivity. Community broadband and mobile connectivity for homes is still in trial and expected to come later, such as via partner ISPs like BT (here) and Eutelsat (KONNECT).
The focus will now switch to what comes after GEN1. OneWeb already has approval for a total of 2,000 satellites (although they want to go beyond that) and 1,280 of those will be the future GEN2 model that could sit in a higher Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of 8,500km, which are widely expected to have more data capacity, support 5G mobile and may, possibly, introduce enhanced navigation and positioning features (something the UK government wants).
The upside of being placed into a higher orbit is that each satellite will be able to cover a much wider area of the Earth’s surface, but the downside is that performance (mainly latency) will suffer. But it is possible to balance this by using LEOs for latency intensive applications (e.g. multiplayer video games, voice calls) and MEOs to help with more data transfer intensive activities (e.g. file downloads and video streaming).
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OneWeb are already developing a prototype of their GEN2 satellites – called “Joey-Sat“. But we aren’t currently expecting to see the first non-trial MEO satellites until 2024-25 and this is still dependent upon the company being able to raise another £3bn of funding (here).
UPDATE 27th March 2023
Regarding OneWeb’s next launch, the company has confirmed to ISPreview.co.uk that they do still plan to launch an additional batch of “spares” (GEN1 LEOs) for redundancy, although they don’t yet have a solid date for this. A spokesperson told us: “We do anticipate launching spares into the constellation at a minimum and have a launch planned with SpaceX in the next month or two to that end.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I wonder what this will do that Starlink, Freedomsat and others already offer? And why the government felt the need to spend $500m to support a late-to-the-part outfit like this.
They still have allot of catching up to do. Do we know how many ground stations they need for global coverage, is this in place yet?
Tl;Dr now we’re not beneficiaries of the EU Galileo programme and we also want to become a science & technology powerhouse, a way to show that is an equivalent to GPS/Galileo that HMG can tout as ours
Allowing a single entity to have monopoly over the satellite space in terms of LEO isn’t a great idea. This is also different as it’s going to be a wholesale as opposed to a single point of infrastructure owner and ISP like starlink, this will garner business and governments alike to use the oneweb network. I think it’s a marvelous idea and the fact the EU has looked into doing something similar I think shows that other countries think the same.
4chanon, except we just sold it to the Europeans. The same Europeans that laughed at us for not buying the right satellites. You can’t make this stuff up.
In response to Sold.
Ironically you did make it up, the “Europeans” didn’t laugh, the British press did.
In response to 4chAnon.
The UK’s administration has given up on yet another of Johnson’s ‘world beating’ fantastical projects, the UK administration is now very much a minority OneWeb shareholder, an apparently cold and distant one at that.
OneWeb as a functionally equivalent British analogue of BeiDou/Galileo/GLONASS/GPS is a fantasy.
I seriously doubt OneWeb will ever offers any kind of GNSS, however if it does it will be the very poor cousin of BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS and GPS, and it certainly won’t be ‘our own’, as OneWeb is a commercial enterprise, predominantly owned by French and Indian interests.
The Sunak administration is far less inclined to wrap a turd in the Union Flag and pretend it’s ‘fantastic’, ‘world beating’, ‘oven ready’ or other such Johnsonian waffllings.
Since the industrial revolution the UK has always been “a science & technology powerhouse”, the UK played a leading roll in the development, construction and hosting of Galileo.
If the UK administration could justify the costs, it could quite easily create a functionally equivalent British analogue of BeiDou/Galileo/GLONASS/GPS, however it would require assistance to orbit the satellites, as that is an area which it long since opted-out of.
Now the UK has an administration the EU can trust, as evidenced by the Windsor Framework, though put at risk with the latest hysterical wedge issue and its threats to international law, the Sunak administration should put pride aside and negotiate for re-admittance to EU science and technological programmes, starting with Galileo and Horizon. Both are far superior to the flag wrapped turds the UK administration tout as ‘their own’.
imagine hating your own country this much, some neurosis on display from the constant “world beating” commenter.
As usual the insane lefties that spend 99% of their lives mad at ‘dem Tories are here to rant again.
In response to Dr Phil & 4chins.
What bizarre disjointed alternative realities you both inhabit.
Criticism of a disgraced politician, his banal bloviating boosterism and incessant failures = ‘hating your country’.
Criticism of an omnishamboic government, whose sole hope to retain its now death grip on the reins of power, after 13 years of chaos, decline and self destruction, is to seed further division with irrational fears of phantom enemies and American style so-called ‘culture wars’ wedge issues (which Lee Anderson, the Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party himself let slip) = being an ‘insane lefty’.
If insanity and neuroses are ‘on display’ here, perhaps said commenters should look closer to home?
kek who let james o’brien on here to whinge constantly?
In theory Russians having physical access to satellites means that they probably already found security flaws and they might be useless in Ukraine.
Sorry what are you talking about here, John?
Jamming satellites is really easy. No need to break into sealed satellite containers, they sit airtight until orbiting, and reverse engineer anything: electronic warfare craft have been doing it for decades.