The British company says its targeting enterprise customers.
After launching 36 satellites on March 26th, OneWeb’s satellite constellation is finally large enough to service a global market. OneWeb now has a total of 618 satellites in low Earth orbit, with several backup satellites scheduled to deploy in May and June.
OneWeb will “be ready to roll out global coverage” by the end of the year. It still needs to build some ground stations, and the newly-launched satellites need to reach their final orbital positions via onboard thrusters.
But OneWeb already offers service in regions north of 50-degrees latitude. It has several clients spanning 15 countries, and according to Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal, it generates a few million dollars each month in revenue. (That said, OneWeb is currently operating at a loss.)
The satellite broadband market is growing at an incredible rate, with Starlink, Amazon Project Kuiper, Inmarsat, and OneWeb all making major strides in 2023. But all of these companies have unique goals; OneWeb, for its part, is primarily focused on enterprise clients.
SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Project Kuiper take a more residential approach to broadband internet—this is partially due to the U.S. FCC’s interest in expanding internet access to under-served areas. (Yes, Starlink also works with businesses. But the way that it appeals to residential customers is very unique.)
Again, OneWeb’s global coverage should be “ready to roll out” by the end of 2023. The company claims that its global constellation offers 1.2 Tbps of usable capacity.
