OneWeb: The Enterprise-Focused Architect of Global LEO Connectivity

In the high-stakes arena of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite internet, where megaconstellations are reshaping global communications, OneWeb stands as a unique and strategically focused player. While often mentioned in the same breath as its high-profile competitors, OneWeb has carved out a distinct path, prioritizing a different market and employing a specific architectural philosophy. It is not a direct-to-consumer service aiming to place a dish on every rural home, but a global wholesale network designed to be the connective tissue for governments, businesses, and entire communities.

Founded in 2012 with the mission to connect every unconnected school, OneWeb's journey has been one of both pioneering ambition and significant challenges. The project has weathered financial storms, including a high-profile bankruptcy and a subsequent strategic rescue, emerging with a refined focus and a powerful coalition of state and corporate backers. The core of its vision remains unchanged: to leverage a large LEO satellite constellation to deliver low-latency, high-speed connectivity. However, its business model, which centers on selling capacity to distribution partners like telecommunications companies, internet service providers, and aviation and maritime specialists, sets it apart. OneWeb is building a global utility, an internet backbone in the sky, for enterprise-grade applications.

The Orbital Architecture: A Polar Strategy

The design of OneWeb's satellite constellation reflects its mission of providing truly global service. While other LEO networks began by focusing coverage on populated mid-latitudes, OneWeb adopted a different and powerful orbital strategy from the outset.

High Altitude LEO and Polar Orbits

The first generation OneWeb constellation is designed to operate from a nearly circular Low Earth Orbit at a relatively high altitude for LEO.

• Altitude: Approximately $1,200 \text{ kilometers}$ ($~750$ miles). This altitude offers a compromise. It is significantly higher than Starlink's primary shells (around 550 km), which gives each satellite a larger coverage footprint on the ground. This means fewer satellites are required to achieve continuous global coverage. The trade-off is a slightly higher latency compared to the very lowest LEO orbits, although it is still dramatically lower than that of geostationary (GEO) satellites.
• Orbital Inclination: The defining feature of the OneWeb constellation is its use of near-polar orbits, with an inclination of approximately $87.9$ degrees. In a polar orbit, the satellites travel over or very near to the North and South Poles on each pass around the Earth.

The Advantage of Going Polar

This choice of a polar orbit is deliberate and strategic. As the satellites orbit from pole to pole and the Earth rotates beneath them, their combined paths naturally provide coverage for the entire surface of the planet. This means that from the very completion of its initial constellation, OneWeb was able to offer service everywhere, including the critical and traditionally hard-to-reach polar regions. This makes the network immediately valuable for key markets like trans-polar aviation routes, maritime shipping in the Arctic, and scientific and government operations in both the Arctic and Antarctica, regions that GEO satellites cannot serve.

Constellation Size and Manufacturing

The initial, or "Gen 1," OneWeb constellation consists of 648 satellites. While this is a large number, it is significantly smaller than the thousands planned by its direct competitors, a direct consequence of the higher operating altitude.

To produce this fleet, OneWeb pioneered an innovative approach to satellite manufacturing. It formed a joint venture with aerospace giant Airbus, called OneWeb Satellites, to create a state-of-the-art, high-volume satellite production facility in Florida. This facility was one of the first in the world to apply automotive-style assembly line techniques to spacecraft manufacturing, allowing it to produce multiple satellites per day at a fraction of the cost of traditional, bespoke satellite construction.

Technology and System Operation: The "Bent-Pipe" Approach

The way signals travel through the OneWeb network is defined by a specific and well-established satellite communication architecture.

Communication Payload: The Ku-Band

OneWeb's satellites operate using the Ku-band for communication between the satellites and the ground terminals. This is a mature frequency band widely used in satellite communication, particularly by GEO satellites, offering a good balance between bandwidth capacity and resistance to atmospheric effects like rain fade.

The Missing Link: No Intersatellite Lasers in Gen 1

One of the most significant architectural decisions that differentiates the first generation OneWeb constellation from its main competitor, Starlink, is the absence of Intersatellite Links (ISLs), or "space lasers". OneWeb's Gen 1 satellites are not designed to communicate directly with each other in orbit. This leads to a fundamentally different data routing paradigm.

This design is known as a "bent-pipe" architecture. In this model, the satellite acts as a simple, non-intelligent relay or mirror in the sky. It receives a signal from a user terminal on the ground and immediately reflects that signal down to a gateway ground station that is within its line of sight, without any processing or routing in space. It is like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard operator who simply takes a call on one line and physically patches it through to another line.

This "bent-pipe" approach means that for a user to have a connection, both the user's terminal and a gateway ground station must be simultaneously visible to the same satellite. This places a much greater emphasis on a widespread and strategically located ground segment.

The Critical Role of the Ground Segment

Given the lack of an in-space mesh network, OneWeb's ground segment is the linchpin of its operation.

• Satellite Network Portals (SNPs): These are the OneWeb equivalent of gateways. An SNP is a heavily secured facility that hosts multiple large tracking antennas, typically 10 to 20, along with the necessary network equipment to connect to the terrestrial fiber internet backbone.
• Global Distribution: To achieve global service, OneWeb has had to build or partner to build dozens of these SNP sites in strategic locations around the world, from Alaska and Greenland to Australia and South Africa. This extensive ground network is essential to ensure that wherever a satellite is serving users, it also has a connection to the internet.
• User Terminals: OneWeb offers a range of high-performance User Terminals (UTs) designed for its target enterprise markets. These are typically more robust and advanced than consumer-grade dishes, and include flat-panel electronically steered antennas as well as mechanically steered parabolic dishes, optimized for aviation, maritime, and land mobility applications.

OneWeb's Unique Business Model: A Wholesale Approach

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of OneWeb is its go-to-market strategy. Unlike competitors who sell directly to individual consumers, OneWeb operates on a strictly business-to-business (B2B) or wholesale model. OneWeb itself does not offer internet service to end-users; instead, it sells its network capacity in bulk to Distribution Partners. These partners are established companies in various sectors who then integrate OneWeb's connectivity into their own service offerings and sell it to their customers.

Target Markets and Use Cases

This B2B focus allows OneWeb to target specific, high-value markets where its global, low-latency service provides a unique value proposition.

• Cellular Backhaul: One of the largest target markets. For mobile network operators like AT&T or BT Group, connecting cell towers in remote and rural areas with fiber optic cable can be prohibitively expensive or impossible. OneWeb offers a satellite-based solution for cellular backhaul, allowing these operators to rapidly and cost-effectively extend their 4G and 5G coverage to unserved communities.
• Aviation: Providing high-speed, low-latency in-flight Wi-Fi to commercial airlines and private jets. This allows passengers to have a genuine broadband experience in the air, including video streaming and VPN access.
• Maritime: Delivering connectivity to the maritime industry, including large cargo ships, cruise lines, and luxury yachts, enabling everything from critical operational data transmission to high-speed internet access for passengers and crew on the open ocean.
• Government and Enterprise: Providing secure and resilient communication links for government, defense, and emergency services. It also serves large enterprises in sectors like energy and mining, which often have operations in remote locations far from terrestrial infrastructure.

The Tumultuous Journey and Geopolitical Significance

OneWeb's path has been marked by significant adversity. In March 2020, facing high capital costs and the economic uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Its rescue came later that year through a joint acquisition led by the UK Government and the Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Global. This move was highly geopolitical. For the UK, reeling from Brexit, investing in OneWeb was a strategic decision to secure a sovereign stake in the critical satellite communication sector, providing capabilities in positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) as a potential alternative to the EU's Galileo system. The addition of other major investors, including the French satellite operator Eutelsat and Japan's SoftBank, turned OneWeb into a powerful international consortium. In 2023, Eutelsat and OneWeb completed a merger, combining OneWeb's LEO constellation with Eutelsat's fleet of GEO satellites, creating the first multi-orbit operator with a fully integrated GEO-LEO service offering.

The project also faced significant launch challenges. It was heavily reliant on Russian Soyuz rockets, but this partnership was abruptly severed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This forced OneWeb to pivot and secure new launch contracts with competitors like SpaceX and India's ISRO to complete the deployment of its constellation.

The Future of OneWeb: Gen 2 and Beyond

OneWeb's journey is far from over. The company is actively planning its "Gen 2" constellation, which is expected to bring significant enhancements. While details are still being finalized, the next generation will likely offer much higher throughput, greater capacity, and may incorporate new technologies such as inter-satellite links to further reduce latency and increase network efficiency and resilience.

In the new multi-orbit paradigm of satellite communications, OneWeb has firmly established its position as the premier B2B provider. Its strategy of partnering with, rather than competing against, existing telecommunications companies has made it an essential enabler for extending the reach of global mobile and fixed networks. By focusing on the high-value enterprise, government, and mobility markets, and leveraging its unique polar orbit architecture for truly global coverage, OneWeb is playing a vital and distinct role in the ongoing quest to connect the world.