OneWeb LEO Broadband Satellites Suffer Major Outage Due to Silly Fault
European satellite operator Eutelsat has confirmed that their OneWeb network, which is the global constellation of broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that is still partly supported by the UK government, suffered a “temporary, 48-hour outage” over the New Year period that started on 31st December 2024.
OneWeb (aka – Eutelsat OneWeb) has 654 small (c.150kg) first generation (GEN1) LEO platforms in space – orbiting at an altitude of 1,200km above the Earth (c.600 of them for coverage and the rest for redundancy). The network was completed in March 2023 (here), promising both ultrafast broadband speeds and fast latency times. But a further 15 satellites (plus one GEN2 prototype) were then added in May 2023 for “resiliency and redundancy to the network” (here) and then 20 more in October 2024 (here).
However, a number of the platform’s business and other users noted that their internet connectivity was suddenly disrupted on New Year’s Eve, which then continued into the next day (the actual outage was more like 36+ hours). The issue is something that OneWeb has remained tight-lipped about, until now.
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Apparently, the cause was a software glitch that occurred because OneWeb’s system timings had failed to take account of 2024 being a leap year, which is a rather surprising oversight for any company that specialises in space-based data connectivity and communications.
OneWeb’s Statement
Eutelsat (ISIN: FR0010221234 – Euronext Paris / London Stock Exchange: ETL), experienced a temporary, 48-hour outage on its OneWeb Low Orbit service, commencing on 31st December 2024.
The root cause was identified as a software issue within the ground segment. Eutelsat was fully mobilized and worked with the vendor to restore full service, while maintaining a constant dialogue with affected customers. The constellation is operating nominally once again.
Despite the somewhat embarrassing fault (that reminds us of the Y2K bug), we do still have to credit OneWeb with being honest about the cause, even if such services really need a better way of communicating with customers when outages like this occur (this has long been a problem in the satellite sector).
At the same time, this incident also goes to show the vulnerability of satellite communication systems, which can have rapid global impacts when they go wrong.
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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So their systems have been out of sync since February 2024 and no one noticed?
Because this is just another taxpayer waste and somehow the EU isn’t pointing out the failures of the UK govt unlike that other satellite internet with many enraged people
Give it a rest with the politics and hugging Elon Musk’s nuts. Given you seem to think the UK is a failing state and London third world surprised you haven’t emigrated yet and starting to wonder if it’s because you’ve so little to offer you know you can’t get a visa to somewhere that’d appeal more. Would have thought small government liberterians would be such huge contributors to the public coffers many nations would welcome them.
The screw-ups here were by a private sector entity supported by the public sector via public-private partnership. If you were in any way making a good faith criticism you’d know one thing the EU is not as a general rule is rapid in responses so not a huge shock it’s not all over this especially given seasonality. How wasteful this is remains to be seen however would’ve thought you’d be a fan of sovereignty. Relying on the whims of a foreign national whose public statements are wildly unstable and who has a history of experimental drug use for mental health issues doesn’t strike me as wise.
If you stopped hugging Musk nuts a while you’d also note the total dependence of SpaceX on the public purse and the amount of taxpayer money that’s almost certain to be shovelled into Mr DoGE’s business over the next 4 years as RoI on his election investment, that ignoring how much of his current wealth was contributed to by taxpayer subsidy for EVs but appears you’re indifferent to that one. Purely coincidental your political views that you share here whenever feasible correlate with his I’m sure.
Whoever did the QA on that code is for the high jump! That said, anyone who has worked on large scale technical projects will all too well recognise the case of a risk being accepted and code being pushed because the project manager or program manager doesn’t believe the risk is as high as it really is (mostly due to being insufficiently technical). I’ve experienced this more times than I care to remember on large projects, all in the private sector.
Anyone remember the debacle of the plus net billing system migration? Okay it didn’t cut off people but it was still a pretty massive muck up!
I don’t understand why these things need to know the date. Clearly the date discrepancy that started on 29th of Feb did no harm. OK there needs to be a timestamp on packets (am I out of date there?) coming in/going out but that could surely wrap around every hour (or much less). I’ll just add it to the long list of things I don’t understand.
I’d hazard a guess that the ground station transmitting packets from next year was the problem.
Its not quite the same thing but modern data systems really do need the right date and time to work properly. Set your PC to the wrong date and try running Google Chrome.
Oh dear. Another UK failure,
Why am I not surprised.
Well hardly just UK, and EU ‘company’ with UK operations a,d subcontractors, I’m sur eth EU base, the ‘management’ also missed something in governance of themselves and subsiduaries, no? Tose at the top taking the big € but not actually delivering the dilligence, not unique to the EU, UK, same over the world. But that doesn’t/should not make it acceptable.
And of course for the pro brexit crowd then of course we’d have our own sat sytems 8 years on from their gB DIY wouldn’t we, raotflmao in naïveté (being kind) at that one.
How is it British?
The British element is that we took it off life support and found a load of other investors to join in (before it was sold to Eutelsat). Of course this was during peak Borismania and so the UK govt had no business case to buy it other than “we can use it to create BritNav” after losing privileged access to Galileo. So much so a “ministerial direction” had to be issued, effectively a CYA letter for the civil servants who would otherwise be breaching rules on use of public money.
I believe all of this means we still retain a “golden share” similar to BAE and Rolls Royce where we can set conditions of ownership/control. I suppose the hope here is that it has a more conventional use for UK government and industry in sensitive use cases where the US govt might use Starlink.
Of course there was a load of nonsense about the boost to the British space industry, even though the heavy lifting (pun not intended though it is quite literal) was done in the US
So did the fault fix itself when January 2nd came & the faulty software rolled into 2025
If that’s the case then the tragedy is that onweb didn’t discover what the fault was till it corrected itself 36 hours after it started.