This week Eutelsat confirmed it would invest $550 million in broadband constellation OneWeb in return for a 24 percent stake in OneWeb. Ratings agency Fitch has given a “BBB” rating for Eutelsat with a “Stable Outlook”. The ratings report comes as investment bank Exane/BNPP also slightly modified its view of the deal, saying: “This initial […]
Eutelsat is taking a 24 per cent stake in UK/India-owned low Earth orbiting business OneWeb. Eutelsat will invest $500 million (€455.4m) in the company, which “almost” fully funds the satellite venture. Eutelsat will use its FCC-granted ‘incentive’ payment for giving up its C-band frequencies over the US to fund its stake. In a press statement, […]
Eutelsat is taking a 24 per cent stake in OneWeb. Eutelsat’s fresh cash values OneWeb at $2.3 billion. However, Eutelsat is paying a significant premium to enter OneWeb. When the UK government and India’s Bharti Global invested their cash into OneWeb they placed their $500 million into the business and received 42 per cent of […]
Elon Musk is getting closer to winning FCC approval to fly some of his Starlink low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellites at even lower heights. Acting FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has asked her board colleagues to formally vote on the plan having herself endorsed the idea. SpaceX is already licensed to operate 1,584 of its Starlink […]
An Arianespace Soyuz rocket successfully placed 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit, and OneWeb says that contact has been made with each satellite and that they are healthy. The launch took place from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome on April 25th at 23.14 BST. It took almost four hours to dispense the satellites in nine batches. The success […]
A few days ago the press was full of stories of a near collision between two orbiting satellites, one from SpaceX’s Starlink and the other from OneWeb. There was talk of barely 60 metres between the two satellites. “Not so,” stated SpaceX in a submission to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), insisting that there was […]
OneWeb, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) global satellite communications company, has confirmed plans to launch a further 36 satellites into LEO on April 26th as part of its sixth launch. The launch will be conducted by Arianespace and the mission to insert the satellites into initial orbit – prior to raising to operational orbit – […]
An Arianespace Soyuz rocket is being prepared to carry the next 36 satellites into orbit for the mega-constellation from OneWeb. The launch is currently scheduled to take place from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Far East of Russia on April 26th. Once completed, the launch will mean that OneWeb will have 182 satellites in orbit […]
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, reports that the past week had seen two of Elon Musk’s Starlink craft have re-entered the atmosphere and burned up. McDowell says two Starlinks – which were already ‘retired’ from the fleet – came down at about 14.30 UTC on April 17 and another at […]
Just days after OneWeb signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kazakhstan, SES has done the same. SES has signed a MoU with Kazakhstan for its O3b mPOWER satellite fleet. The agreement has been signed specifically with the country’s Republican Center for Space Communications (RCSC), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and […]