There are more than a few ‘rivals’ to Starlink, but only Eutelsat’s OneWeb has a full fleet of satellites in orbit with which to challenge Elon Musk’s broadband satellite service. The other major potential rivals are Jeff Bezos-backed Amazon Project Kuiper and Canada’s Telesat and its Lightspeed fleet. But Kuiper has only just started launching its craft, and Lightspeed is still several months away from launching its first satellites.

But OneWeb is very much up and running with 650 satellites in orbit. The French state recently invested more than €1.35 billion into Eutelsat in order to secure its future, and was very much predicated on using Eutelsat as a “strategic asset” and an independent source of orbital bandwidth. The French state now owns 29.9 per cent of Eutelsat.

However, there are some major differences between Starlink and OneWeb. Starlink is already serving domestic users around the plant, and hikers and RV and boat users. It is in use on Cruise ships and airlines. Some of its 7,600 satellites can handle direct-to-consumer messages and are promising voice and data calls to remote cellular users.

OneWeb is not focused on individual consumers, but uses a hub modem device to send out wireless signals to communities and professional users. This makes the terminal expensive to manufacture. It will be fine for military and governmental users. Eutelsat has also freely admitted that it would be hard-pressed to replace Starlink in some markets, not least Ukraine. Eutelsat is also committed to building improved ‘Second Generation’ satellites and has ordered 100 of these to back up the fleet and replace craft that will start failing in orbit.

Meanwhile Project Kuiper is Amazon’s low Earth orbit satellite broadband network, and is catching up. Its mission is to deliver fast, reliable internet to customers and communities around the world. Kuiper is promising small terminals for use by home-owners, and not deliver speeds of up to 400 Mb/s. Kuiper says its terminals will be cheaper to produce than Starlink, and more efficient. Its initial aim is to have at least half of a planned 3,236 satellites in orbit by July 2026.

Other posts by :

1. Could Amazon buy into AST SpaceMobile?
2. Orbex in trouble?
3. Musk planning investment in South Africa
4. Bank: SES target price of €9.60
5. Bank give $55 target to AST SpaceMobile
6. Musk updates on Ship 26 explosion
7. Market reacts to fresh Eutelsat capital
8. France, Germany resists ESA plan for high-res satellites
9. Stream, stream, stream

Categories: Blogs, Broadband, Inside Satellite, Satellite

Tags: eutelsat, france, OneWeb, starlink