But can it replace the functionality of Starlink, which is easy to use and has ample capacity?
Enter Eutelsat
OneWeb has had a long and tortured history, involving bankruptcy, multiple changes in ownership, surviving the confiscation of some satellites by Russia, and much more. The company received a jolt of stability in 2023 when the French satellite operator Eutelsat acquired OneWeb at a valuation of $3.4 billion. The British and French governments each own a bit more than 10 percent of the company.
For the first two months of this year, the publicly traded Eutelsat’s shares were trading at historic lows, at times as low as 1.15 euros a share ($1.25). However, since the threats about Starlink service in Ukraine emerged, the stock has soared, increasing in value fourfold.
To understand whether the smaller OneWeb constellation could replicate the Starlink service being offered in Ukraine, Ars spoke with Caleb Henry, the director of research at Quilty Analytics, who is also writing a deeply researched book about the history of OneWeb. The constellation is functional but not optimal, he said.
“Each sacrifice that was made over the years for the sake of the survival of the company in the present hurt them in the future,” Henry said of OneWeb.
The constellation was originally intended to be 900 satellites and include many more gateways on the ground, both of which would provide more capacity. OneWeb also has not been able to reach a high scale of manufacturing for its user terminals, which in some cases cost thousands of dollars in addition to a monthly subscription fee.
These terminals are also more clunky and less easy to use. For example, Henry said, Ukrainian soldiers have been able to mount Starlink terminals on drones, but the OneWeb terminals are too large for that.
