OneWeb, a UK-based company building a network of satellites that will provide internet connectivity worldwide, secured $500m in funding yesterday from a consortium of corporate investors.
The investors were aerospace company Airbus, conglomerates Virgin Group and Bharti Enterprises, technology business Qualcomm, beverages producer The Coca-Cola Company, satellite communication company Intelsat, Hughes Network Systems, which operates as a satellite communications subsidiary of satellite service provider EchoStar, and Totalplay, a subsidiary of conglomerate Grupo Salinas.
OneWeb intends to establish a network of low earth orbit satellites with a total of 10 terabits of new capacity that will potentially be able to provide internet connectivity to billions of people worldwide.
The funding will support the development of new technology to support internet provision in rural and undeveloped places, as well as ships, planes, trains and oil platforms, including solar-powered user terminals.
In addition, OneWeb is forming strategic alliances with several of its investors. Its technology will provide interoperability with Intelsat’s Ku band satellite fleet, and the company is set to design and manufacture 900 microsatellites as part of a joint venture with Airbus.
Virgin, which along with Qualcomm announced it was funding OneWeb in January this year, had already agreed to provide assistance through its satellite launch initiative, LauncherOne.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti Enterprises’ chairman, and Airbus CEO Tom Enders will join Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Paul E. Jacobs, executive chairman of Qualcomm, and OneWeb founder Greg Wyler on the company’s board of directors.
Jacobs said: “Qualcomm has built the foundational technologies which spread mobile broadband systems worldwide. But there still remain un-served and underserved areas. Our investment in and work on OneWeb will extend broadband connectivity to everyone and everything, everywhere around the world.”
Enders added: “We are very excited to be part of OneWeb’s endeavour to provide global Internet access for everybody, everywhere.
“Whether at some remote place on earth or flying high on an Airbus aircraft, you will be connected: a grand proposition for mankind and a sound business opportunity for us! We are committed to giving our full industrial and space expertise to this mission.”
OneWeb expects to begin operations in 2019, but the market in which it operates could potentially be a good deal more crowded by that point in time.
Space Exploration Technologies, founded by Elon Musk, closed a $1bn round in January 2015 at a $12bn valuation, $900m of which was invested by internet company Google, which intends to leverage SpaceX’s satellites to provide its own internet connectivity service.
Google had already set up a programme called Project Loon in 2013 that aims to use hot air balloons to supply reliable internet coverage to isolated areas.
Social network Facebook is meanwhile reportedly working on a project that would use unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver internet services on the ground, and it intends to begin testing the drones in the US next year. Internet coverage will soon be guaranteed from above, the question now is which group will win the race to provide it to customers.