The UK Government has agreed to commit a further £140 million of public investment to help Eutelsat grow and expand its constellation of OneWeb ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The funding will be combined with other investments, such as €750 million from France (the French State), to support a total capital increase of £1.29 billion.
The OneWeb network was finally completed in March 2023, promising both ultrafast broadband speeds and fast latency times. But a further 15 satellites (plus one GEN2 prototype) were then launched in May 2023 to add resiliency and redundancy to the network and then another 20 more in October 2024.
The new funding is intended to help secure the execution of Eutelsat’s long-term strategic vision, including for its OneWeb based network of LEO broadband satellites, which have typically been more focused on business and government connectivity.
The expectation is that this will support the launch of new services, the development of future GEN2 satellites and also underpin Eutelsat’s position on the EU’s own LEO focused IRIS 2 programme – the public-private partnership aiming to build a multi-orbit constellation delivering secure communication services to the EU and its Member States.
“From checking the weather forecast on our phones to navigating with GPS in our cars, satellites underpin industrial activity worth £364 billion to the UK economy. But their critical role extends far beyond economic growth. As our adversaries increasingly use space technologies to harm us, resilient satellite connectivity has become essential to our continent’s national security. This investment reflects our commitment to support the development of these critical technologies and maintain an important stake in the global satellite communications sector,” said Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for DSIT.
