Frenemies

After bankruptcy and war, OneWeb turns to a competitor for help

OneWeb, as ever, is doing what it needs to do to survive.

Eric Berger – Dec 2, 2022 10:06 am | 124

OneWeb satellites launch on a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome earlier in 2022. Credit: OneWeb

There’s one thing that can be definitively said about broadband communications company OneWeb: It’s a survivor.

The company has persisted through several different owners, a bankruptcy, having its satellites taken as hostages amid a regional war, and nearly completing a satellite Internet constellation in low-Earth orbit. Now, the London-based company is set to take the next step in its meandering but persistent journey toward success.

As early as Tuesday, December 6, a batch of 40 satellites is due to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. SpaceX, of course, is a competitor in satellite broadband Internet.

From Russia, without love

OneWeb was founded a decade ago by a tech entrepreneur named Greg Wyler, who had a vision of bringing Internet access to everyone around the world. Then known as WorldVu, Wyler’s company attracted a variety of investors, including Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group.

The company’s plans have remained consistent over time. As early as 2015, OneWeb intended to build 648 small satellites and deploy them in low-Earth orbit to provide low-latency, high-speed Internet access directly to small user terminals. This was a similar business model to the one SpaceX would adopt around the same time with its Starlink Internet service.

One problem for such a business is that it is extremely capital-intensive. It requires a company to not only devise the technology needed to facilitate satellite communications but to build them and the ground terminals and procure more than a dozen launches to get the constellation into space. Costs for this can easily reach $5 billion before significant revenue is generated.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March 2020 and laid off more than 400 of its 500 employees. This seemed like the end as COVID-19 closed in on the world, but new owners led by the United Kingdom government and the India-based multinational Bharti Global stepped in and purchased the company. They organized new investors, and later in the year, OneWeb started to launch satellites again.

For this purpose, OneWeb had relied primarily on Russia’s Soyuz rocket, the cheapest commercially available alternative to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. After a dozen operational launches from spaceports in Russia and Kazakhstan, however, Russia invaded Ukraine. At the time, nearly three dozen satellites were stranded in a Russian processing facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, awaiting launch.

The chief of Russia’s space program at the outbreak of the war, Dmitry Rogozin, issued two demands that OneWeb must adhere to before he would launch the stranded satellites. One, he said, OneWeb must guarantee that its satellites will not be used for military purposes. And two, the UK government must give up its ownership of OneWeb. Needless to say, the partnership between OneWeb and Russia ended.

At the time, OneWeb had launched about 75 percent of its planned constellation.

From competition to cooperation

This forced OneWeb to once again adjust its planning, so the company surveyed its launch options around the world. With the Soyuz off the market, there weren’t many other choices of a medium-lift rocket to get its satellites into space.

In Europe, the Ariane 5 rocket neared retirement and had no launches to sell. The Ariane 6 rocket was probably not going to make its debut until 2024. In the United States, United Launch Alliance had sold all of its remaining Atlas V launches, and its new Vulcan rocket would have no spare capacity for a couple of years. Japan was also transitioning from the H II to H III rocket, which was not ready.

Realistically, that left only a medium-lift rocket in India, the Launch Vehicle Mark-3, and SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The Indian rocket was a desirable choice given the Bharti group’s interest in OneWeb. But the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 had only made three orbital flights in its lifetime and had not flown since 2019. So OneWeb hedged its bets. Needing five more launches to fully deploy the 648 satellites in the initial phase of its constellation, OneWeb bought two Indian launches and three on the Falcon 9 rocket.

Forty OneWeb satellites are put onto a rocket. — OneWeb satellites are integrated onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Credit: OneWeb

The first of those Falcon 9 launches is scheduled to happen next week. “The launch will enable the company to significantly expand service and initiate additional connectivity solutions soon for partners across the USA, Europe, and much of the Middle East and Asia, representing all points north of the 35th parallel,” OneWeb said in a news release issued on Friday.

It can be argued that OneWeb and SpaceX are not direct competitors. OneWeb has abandoned its original vision of providing Internet for all and is focused on selling services to governments and businesses. By contrast, SpaceX also sells its services directly to consumers. But both are very interested in providing communications services to national defense agencies, so there is definitely overlap in their interests.

For this reason, seeing OneWeb satellites launch on a Falcon 9 rocket next week will be surprising. But perhaps it shouldn’t be. As ever, OneWeb is doing what it needs to do to survive.

Listing image: OneWeb

Eric Berger Senior Space Editor

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

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