A double blow for the Anglo-Indian company OneWeb, which intends to distribute broadband Internet everywhere on the planet by connecting isolated areas, sea and air routes. Monday April 26, a Soyuz rocket taking off from the Russian cosmodrome of Vostochny put into orbit 36 satellites, which joined the 148 others already revolving around the Earth. The next day, she announced the entry of French Eutelsat in her turn. The world’s third largest telecom satellite operator will invest 550 million dollars (455 million euros) to acquire 24% of its capital. He will be on par with the British government and Indian entrepreneur Bharti, each holding nearly a quarter of the shares.
For Eutelsat, the second attempt is therefore the right one. A year ago, the operator had studied the possibility of taking over OneWeb, created by the American Greg Wyler in 2012 and placed in March 2020 under the protection of Chapter 11 of the American bankruptcy law. He finally gave up making an offer, failing to find institutional partners for this recovery estimated at 2.5 billion dollars. The offer would have been European. But the risk of going alone was considered financially too high because of uncertainties both on the potential of the envisaged market and on technological development. The Anglo-Indian proposal was then accepted.
However, there is no question of giving up being present in this constellation which is the first, along with that of Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX, to be deployed in space and the only one that will have global coverage of the planet. end of 2022. In addition, from the end of 2021, OneWeb will offer the first services for professionals, local authorities or governments in already connected areas such as northern Europe, the United Kingdom, Alaska and the Canada.
The low altitude, between 550 and 1,200 kilometers, offers the double advantage of a very high flow rate and, above all, a minimal latency time
Discussions were therefore initiated very quickly with the new owners of OneWeb. They lasted six months, after which Eutelsat obtained co-control of the company alongside the British government and Bharti Global. “And this in terms of capital, but also operational”, underlines Rodolphe Belmer, CEO of Eutelsat. “We will be the benchmark industrial and commercial partner to help OneWeb in its development. Finally, we got to the point where we would have liked to have been at the end of chapter 11 ”, he rejoices.
You have 54.94% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.