OneWeb Expands Availability of LEO Broadband Satellites
British registered OneWeb, which is part-owned by the UK government, has announced that they’ve expanded the commercial availability of their new constellation of low-latency and ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The service is now available throughout Europe and to the majority of the United States.
The operator has so far launched 634 of their small (c.150kg) satellites into space (plus one experimental GEN2 spacecraft) – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km above the Earth (588 of them for coverage and the rest are for redundancy). The network was technically completed in March 2023 (here), but some work (e.g. ground stations) still needs to be completed.
However, until now OneWeb’s service was only delivering connectivity at 50 degrees north, working with Distribution Partners to provide community broadband solutions, cellular backhaul, corporate enterprise services and more across the Arctic to connect locations in Alaska, Canada, the UK and elsewhere.
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The change today is that they’re now reaching regions above the latitude of 35 degrees north, which includes 37 new countries in Europe, including Austria, Italy, France and Portugal, as well as the entire western U.S. coast from Washington to California, northeast coast from Maine to Virginia, and across the Midwest. This expansion also further enhances connectivity across Canada and additional maritime regions as well.
Stephen Beynon, OneWeb’s Chief Customer Officer, said:
“This expansion is a significant step in our journey to delivering global commercial service for our customers. We are seeing increased demand for our service as we have expanded coverage and grown our portfolio of user terminals for different markets. Our technical experience in all corners of the globe, as well as the strong relationships we have with existing partners in Alaska, Canada and Europe, means OneWeb is well placed to support customers in these new regions as well as welcoming new partners to activate services for the first time. As our network coverage continues to grow, I am incredibly excited to serve more maritime, government, enterprise and aviation customers than ever before.”
The entire global service is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2023, although OneWeb won’t be able to rest on their laurels and have already started developing their second-generation satellites. The operator has approval for a total of 2,000 satellites (they may go beyond that – funding allowing) and 1,280 of those will be the future GEN2 model that could sit in a higher Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) of 8,500km. The GEN2s 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).
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 and Linkedin.
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Meanwhile on Starlink all is well 🙂 Welcome to the late party!
Having more than one option is a good thing btw.
I totally agree with you. It’s like an Alt.net for Starlink I get it
Agree with that view. Kinda funny that the alt net in this case is BT
Nobody is late to the party. Oneweb and Starlink are offering a completely different business models. Starlink need to make their consumer service work hard and fast. The UK government need to fill in the gaps in their plans to deliver on connectivity. The only comparison may be technical, but as we don’t know what the realworld performance capabilities are of onewebs constellation, we have no way of knowing how long they’ve been capable of offering service at that level.
The comparison to Starlink is simply not helpful in this case. Oneweb are not offering a consumer service. The closest the consumer is going to get is get is seeing the service delivered transparently, through a third-party.
Nobody is sat there thinking they got there first – except maybe Elon.
Amazon’s product offering, on the other hand…
What is Oneweb offering that Starlink are not?
Starlink are offering B2B, cruiseships, airlines, infrastructure projects.
Sure starlink makes lots of headlines for having a relatively succesful consumer aimed product, but that isn’t all they’re doing – just look at all the cruise liners now that have arrays of Starlink antenna, or Japanese remote cells towers that use starlink for backhaul, or the airlines that now use starlink for internet access – isn’t this oneweb’s bread and butter business?
Fair point DSawn. When you show me a speedtest with 320 down and 39 up then I will believe they are on par with Starlink. Oh I can show you more than that – 427 down and 69 up is my record so far
And that’s on Best Effort..
You both miss the point completely.
Oneweb are not offering a consumer service. So whatever speed you’re getting from Starlink is not comparable, because you can’t compare it. Hence my reply that they are not late to the party.
The product offering from Oneweb is not being drained by a constantly changing consumer offering. That’s a big difference too.
Again, not about speed but by they’re COMMERCIAL, but clearly there are speed queens out there… hope that those speeds stay consistent for you!