Bharti-backed OneWeb launches 36 satellites from Russian cosmodrome

OneWeb, a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications operator co-owned by Bharti Global and the UK government, has launched all 36 satellites by Arianespace from the Vostochny cosmodrome in Russia, paving the way for launching high-speed satellite broadband services in key global markets from late-2021, and in India by mid-2022.

OneWeb said the latest launch takes its total in-orbit constellation to 146 satellites. These, it said, would form part of OneWeb’s 648 LEO satellite fleet that will deliver high-speed, low-latency global connectivity.

Neil Masterson, OneWeb CEO, said the next launch in the series is scheduled for end-April, as the company continued its drive towards commercial service this year. “OneWeb is rising to the challenge of our mission to provide connectivity to everyone, everywhere, all the time,” he said in an official statement Thursday.


Last November, Bharti Global MD Shravin Mittal, the UK-based son of Sunil Mittal, had told ET that OneWeb is open to entering India either directly or through a commercial partnership, involving either the JV route or a bandwidth capacity leasing pact, even as it gears up to launch fast broadband services in the country by June 2022.

Bharti Global is the overseas arm of Bharti Enterprises -- the holding company of Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telco.

OneWeb will start commercial connectivity services from late-2021 initially in the UK, Alaska, Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, the Arctic Seas and Canada. The OneWeb constellation will enable user terminals capable of offering 3G, 4G-LTE, 5G and Wi-Fi coverage, providing high-speed access globally − by air, sea and land.