What’s All the Fuss uss About?
Oneweb
What is it?
An ambitious project to beam broadband around the Earth from a fleet of 2,000 satellites. These will form a “mega-constellation”, creating a network that will deliver internet access to the 50 per cent of the world’s population without a reliable connection, including to 2 million schools.
When will they be launched?
April 2018, if all goes to plan. In June, Oneweb’s main partner, European aerospace giant Airbus, started making the first satellites in Toulouse, France. More will be built in a huge factory in Florida.
So all 2,000 will be in space this time next year?
No, only 10 to begin with. But if they work well, 720 further satellites will launch in 2019. Alaska will be the first area to receive coverage. Greg Wyler, who founded Oneweb in 2015, a year after leaving Google, said that its mission is to “fully bridge the digital divide by 2027, making internet access available and affordable for everyone”.
Will it provide access to the UK?
Maybe, though developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America will probably be prioritised. On its website ( http://oneweb.world) Oneweb says that its service will be able to address crises in infrastructure caused by “hurricanes, earthquakes and refugee situations”. Wyler has experience in this field, having spent four years developing internet access in Rwanda.
How fast will the broadband be?
Much faster than current services because the satellites will orbit nearer Earth – around 745 miles above the surface – which means the signal will shoot into space and back quicker. With today’s satellites orbiting at 22,200 miles, the signal takes 250 milliseconds to make a return journey. This may sound fast, but it’s actually half the speed of dial-up modems. This delay is called ‘latency’. The longer the delay, the higher the latency.
So what’s Oneweb’s latency?
About 30 milliseconds, only slightly slower than fibre broadband. It means that Oneweb should be able to deliver speeds of around 50Mbps. Current satellite services peak at around 30Mbps.
Aren’t Google doing something similar?
They were planning to, according to reports in 2014. Back then Wyler was said to be working on a $1bn project to launch 180 satellites. Facebook, too, was planning a satellite fleet. Both companies have since abandoned the idea, seemingly because it proved too expensive and technically challenging – even for them.
So why does Oneweb think it will succeed?
Because it claims to have found the secret of making cheap satellites. Existing satellites take months to make – they are “handcrafted”, to use Oneweb’s term – and cost many millions. But for the first time Airbus is using an assembly line to build them quickly, borrowing the production techniques of car factories.
It aims to make three satellites a day at less than a million dollars each, launching them every 21 days. It’s crucial that costs are kept down because Oneweb needs to keep its broadband prices low so that people in poorer countries can afford it. However, Google may still win this space race.
Why’s that?
Because it has invested $1bn in Spacex, the company run by tech pioneer and Paypal co-founder Elon Musk. He plans to launch the company’s first broadband satellites in 2019, aiming for a network of 4,425 by 2024. But his long-term goal is even bolder – a manned colony on Mars. Broadband coverage there is even patchier than in Alaska.
It’s a mega-constellation of satellites beaming internet access across the world