The satellite network market is not immune to consolidation: the French satellite operator published a press release aimed at “confirming that it has entered into discussions with its co-shareholders of OneWeb concerning a possible combination of all the actions to create a world leader in connectivity with complementary GEO/LEO activities. »
Rumors of a merger between the two entities had been rife for several days, but Eutelsat indicates in its press release that the operation under negotiation aims to create a new group whose shareholding would be shared between Eutelsat and the current shareholders of OneWeb. . The objective is to create an operator with networks of geostationary (GEO) or low orbit (LEO) satellites, in the hope of establishing itself in a market that Eutelsat estimates at 16 billion dollars by 2030. .
OneWeb is a British company specializing in the deployment of satellite constellations. The latter carried out its first launches in February 2019 and hoped to be able to put a little more than 600 satellites into orbit before the end of 2022. But the company has experienced many difficulties in recent years that have led it to to place itself in insolvency proceedings in 2020. To bail out the company, a conglomerate of investors had been created including Eutelsat, the British government and the Indian company Bharti Global. As part of this conglomerate, Eutelsat therefore already owned 23% of the shares of OneWeb. The operation allowed OneWeb to resume deployments of its satellites, although the deployment schedule was modified to target the end of 2023. In February 2022, the company announced that it had deployed 428 satellites in orbit. .
The objective of the merger operation is to allow the new entity to compete with the American company Starlink, a subsidiary of the SpaceX company and which already has more than 2000 satellites positioned in low orbit around the earth.