{"id":19394,"date":"2019-09-04T11:34:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T10:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=19394"},"modified":"2019-09-04T11:38:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T10:38:38","slug":"oneweb-pledge-fibre-like-satellite-broadband-speeds-to-arctic-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2019\/09\/oneweb-pledge-fibre-like-satellite-broadband-speeds-to-arctic-region.html","title":{"rendered":"OneWeb Pledge Fibre Like Satellite Broadband Speeds to Arctic Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

British registered space company OneWeb<\/a> has announced that the first area to be covered by their new compact Low Earth Orbit (LEO) ultrafast broadband satellites will be those above the 60th parallel North (Arctic), which might possibly include some of Scotland’s remote north isles.<\/p>\n

So far OneWeb<\/a> has only launched 6 trial spacecraft (here<\/a>) into orbit but if all goes well then they hope to “embark on the largest satellite<\/a> launch campaign in history<\/em>” from Q4 2019. The plan is to launch 30 satellites at a time each month, which would create an initial constellation of 650 to enable full global coverage by 2021 (adding more as demand requires).<\/p>\n

The first “successful<\/em>” tests of this new satellite<\/a> network took place in July (here<\/a>) and appeared able to deliver peak speeds of more than 400Mbps, with network latency times averaging just 32ms for a single connection (incredibly impressive for a satellite network where latency performance is usually many times worse).<\/p>\n

The fast latency is due to the fact that LEOs orbit much closer to the Earth (c.1200km LEO vs 35,000km+ for large GSO satellites) and will thus decay into the atmosphere after a few years (i.e. design to be easily replaceable).<\/p>\n