Dozens of satellites shoot Elon Musk into space every month. On Sunday, SpaceX, the space company of the Tesla founder and billionaire, launched another rocket that orbited nearly 50 satellites the size of a large dining table.
The Florida launch was the fifth in July and 33rd in 2022. For example, Musk is rapidly building a network of thousands of satellites called Starlink. He is now at 2,700. Together they should provide broadband internet in remote places. Think: video calling at the North Pole, in the desert, on the high seas.
Also read: Amazon also wants to offer fast internet from space
Musk isn’t the only billionaire looking to build such a “mega constellation.” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also has that plan. He named his project Kuiper Systems, after the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper (1905-1973).
Against the background of immense investments by tech billionaires, the French satellite provider Eutelsat and the British competitor OneWeb are merging. Tuesday both companies announced exactly how they want to merge.
Eutelsat pays the owners of OneWeb in shares. These include the British state – which saved OneWeb from bankruptcy in 2020 – and Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal. Eutelsat is part of the French state; a Chinese government fund has a smaller stake. The merged company will be owned 50 percent by the OneWeb owners and 50 percent by the Eutelsat shareholders.
The British government reported Tuesday that it has negotiated guarantees in the acquisition related to state security – Chinese access to Western technology, employment and the establishment of a headquarters in London.
According to Eutelsat (1,200 employees) and OneWeb (600), the merged company will achieve a turnover of 1.2 billion euros in 2022-2023 and a gross profit of 700 million.
Elon Musk’s name is nowhere in the Eutelsat and OneWeb announcement, but the whole deal exudes a desire to stand stronger together against Starlink and other competitors.
GEO and LEO
One way is by cleverly combining the two forms of satellite communications provided by the French and British. The merged company is one of the few providers with so-called GEO and LEO satellites.
Eutelsat has 36 larger satellites located approximately 35,000 kilometers from Earth. Those are the GEO satellites: they follow a geostationary orbit. They rotate with the earth and have a fixed position above the earth’s surface. Eutelsat distributes 7,000 TV channels to 1 billion TV viewers.
Anglo-French company must quickly invest in modern ‘low’ satellites to hook up with the tech billionaires
Where Eutelsat owns GEO satellites, OneWeb has satellites closer to Earth. This one low earth orbit (LEO) orbit the planet – sometimes around the poles, sometimes around the equator – at a few hundred to 1,200 kilometers altitude. Due to the shorter distance, the LEO satellites have much less delay in communication. You need a lot more of it to build a network that can span the earth. SpaceX and Kuiper also use LEO satellites.
Also read: No longer in space with the Russians
OneWeb has 428 LEO satellites in space. There should have been about 500. However, in March, the launch of a Russian rocket carrying OneWeb satellites from Baikonur base in Kazakhstan was canceled at the last minute. OneWeb saw that as punishment for the British support for Ukraine.
The satellites will now be launched at the end of this year by competitor SpaceX. It takes OneWeb time that it actually doesn’t have. The fleet is relatively old. Modernization to keep up is a necessity. Partner Eutelsat sees that: it would like to invest 3 to 5 billion euros in the LEO fleet. Eutelsat has already said it will not pay a dividend for the next two years.
Investors in Eutelsat were Monday and Tuesday not amused about the acquisition. On the Paris stock exchange, the share plunged from 10.41 euros (closing price Friday) to around 7 euros on Tuesday.