Eutelsat OneWeb is a subsidiary of the French group Eutelsat providing broadband satellite Internet services in low Earth orbit (LEO). The company has offices in Paris (France), London (UK) and Virginia (US), and satellite manufacturing facilities in Florida and Toulouse – Airbus OneWeb Satellites – that is a joint venture with Airbus Defence and Space. The company was founded as WorldVu by Greg Wyler in 2012 and later, as OneWeb, launched its first six satellites in February 2019. It entered bankruptcy in March 2020 after failing to raise the required capital to complete the build and deployment of the remaining 90% of the network. The company emerged from the bankruptcy proceedings and reorganisation in November 2020 with a new ownership group. As of 2021, Indian multinational company Bharti Global, France-based satellite service provider Eutelsat and the Government of the United Kingdom were the company's largest shareholders, while Japan's SoftBank retained an equity holding of 12%. In March 2023, the number of satellites reached 618, enough to provide global coverage. In September 2023, Eutelsat announced the completion of its merger with OneWeb and the creation of a new Eutelsat Group company, with subsidiaries Eutelsat and Eutelsat OneWeb.
History
The company was founded in 2012 under the name WorldVu, and was based in Britain's Channel Islands.
Google participation and transfer of the spectrum Early reports of Google entry into broadband internet services emerged in February 2014, when Greg Wyler, along with two collaborators— Michael Tseytlin, who led engineering, and Steven Fay, who oversaw finance - developed and popularised the concept of a mega-constellation with as many as 1600 satellites. In May 2014, the early concept had been to have at least 20 satellites operating in each of 20 orbital planes to provide consistent internet coverage over the surface of the Earth. By June 2014, WorldVu (later to be renamed to OneWeb) had acquired the satellite spectrum that was formerly owned by SkyBridge, a company that went bankrupt in 2000, in a much earlier attempt to offer broadband Internet services via satellite. By September 2014, the WorldVu company had 30 employees, and several Google employees who had joined Google as part of the acquisition of O3b Networks in 2013 — Greg Wyler, Brian Holz, Michael Tseytlin and David Bettinger — left Google to become a part of WorldVu Satellites Ltd. They took with them the rights to a certain radio frequency spectrum that could be used to provide Internet access. At the time, WorldVu was working closely with SpaceX and SpaceX's founder Elon Musk to explore satellite internet services, although no formal relationship had been established and no launch commitments had been made in 2014.
SpaceX, initial manufacturing plans By November 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk and Wyler were considering options for building a factory to manufacture high-volume low-cost satellites, and that "initial talks had been held with state officials in Florida and Colorado" about potentially locating a factory in those states, as well as that SpaceX would likely launch the satellites. Also in November 2014, WorldVu issued a tender "to satellite manufacturers for 640 125-kg satellites", asking for responses by mid-December 2014, having secured regulatory approval for use of the requisite electromagnetic spectrum communication frequencies in mid-2014. The 2014 OneWeb solicitation to satellite manufacturers was for a total build of approximately 900 small Internet-delivery satellites, including ground and on-orbit spares. Responses were received from both European and American manufacturers including Airbus Defence and Space, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, OHB SE, SSL and Thales Alenia Space, and discussions focused on how each of these companies might "escape their status-quo histories as major space hardware contractors and remake themselves into producers capable of producing multiple satellites per month, each with a cost of fewer than US$500,000". OneWeb announced that it planned to form a joint venture with the winning bidder and open a new facility for manufacturing the new smallsats.
Funding from Virgin Group and Qualcomm In January 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that WorldVu, now operating under the name OneWeb Ltd, had secured funding from Virgin Group and Qualcomm to build and launch the constellation. OneWeb also divulged that the planned satellites would weigh approximately 125 kg and that the plans were to deploy approximately 650 of them in low Earth orbit to operate at 1,200 km (750 mi) altitude. Just a few days later, Elon Musk announced the rival Starlink venture, with the opening of the SpaceX satellite development facility in Seattle, Washington, with the intent of taking SpaceX itself into the business of internet provision and internet backhaul services, initially announced as aiming to build an approximately 4000-satellite constellation, with the first generation becoming operational in approximately 2020. The satellites for the OneWeb constellation were initially announced to be in the 110 kg (240 lb) class, about the same size as the two Earth-imaging satellites that were then operated by Skybox Imaging, which Google acquired in August 2014. However, by the following year, sources put the satellites nearer 150–200 kg (330–440 lb) in mass.
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