Eutelsat OneWeb: Constellation - General Thread

[ChrisWilson68]

As well as getting the satellites they get the bandwidth rights. Creating a completely new constellation would mean that they go to the back of the queue (and its quite a long queue now) for frequency allocation.

But a lot of the rationales proposed here for the UK government to own OneWeb don't really rely on it owning that spectrum.  An observation constellation doesn't need it.  A replacement for a military communication system can use the military frequencies already allocated for the previous version of the communication system.

Buying OneWeb (at 20% of the total investment) is a really good deal for the UK Government from a financial point of view.

That 20% figure was a rumor in some new media before anything official was announced.  The official announcement only listed the UK government and the Indian telecom.  It seemed to be saying the two are equal partners with no other parties involved.

The UK apparently has control of OneWeb.  I don't see why a group of investors would let them have control while only putting up 20% of the money.  If they don't have control of OneWeb, they don't get all the benefits that have been touted here.

It's possible that the $2.5 billion figure is the total cost over several years and that the $500 million is only what the UK is putting up right now.  So the cost to the UK long term could be half that $2.5 billion.  And if they want to make modifications to add laser links or imaging that will just be even more cost for the UK government.

Assuming that about half the investment is spent in the UK, that total initial investment is £2.5 B and that the UK government investment is £500 M, and that 40% of whatever is spent in the UK comes back to the government in taxes: the net UK government spend is ZERO.

That's a very common kind of fallacious argument that is made to support government spending.  The truth is that this sort of reasoning is only valid if the resources being employed in the program wouldn't have been put to any other use and 100% of the value-add is done within the UK.  Neither of those is realistic.  The engineers hired for OneWeb in the UK likely wouldn't have been idle if they hadn't bought OneWeb -- they would have been doing something else.  And the supply chain likely includes overseas suppliers, so the $500 million spent isn't just going to go 100% toward increasing the tax base by that same amount.

Yes, they do have to create a second generation satellite with inter-satellite links developed, but that is small change to the $6B for Skynet 6. One possibility is the implied threat to the Skynet 6 bidders: keep your prices low and make sure you deliver on time, or else we will cancel the project and go with OneWeb.

They could do exactly the same thing with an LEO alternative to Skynet 6 that isn't based on OneWeb.

[MikeAtkinson]

Buying OneWeb (at 20% of the total investment) is a really good deal for the UK Government from a financial point of view.

That 20% figure was a rumor in some new media before anything official was announced.  The official announcement only listed the UK government and the Indian telecom.  It seemed to be saying the two are equal partners with no other parties involved.

The UK apparently has control of OneWeb.  I don't see why a group of investors would let them have control while only putting up 20% of the money.  If they don't have control of OneWeb, they don't get all the benefits that have been touted here.

It's possible that the $2.5 billion figure is the total cost over several years and that the $500 million is only what the UK is putting up right now.  So the cost to the UK long term could be half that $2.5 billion.  And if they want to make modifications to add laser links or imaging that will just be even more cost for the UK government.

I could be wrong, but I take it to mean that there is also $1.5B of borrowing.

[MikeAtkinson]

Yes, they do have to create a second generation satellite with inter-satellite links developed, but that is small change to the $6B for Skynet 6. One possibility is the implied threat to the Skynet 6 bidders: keep your prices low and make sure you deliver on time, or else we will cancel the project and go with OneWeb.

They could do exactly the same thing with an LEO alternative to Skynet 6 that isn't based on OneWeb.

OneWeb has spent about $3 B and taken 5 years to get to this point. Presumably the UK government could spend a similar amount to get to a similar position about 2025 if they started from scratch, but the history of government programmes is not great and it would probably be too late to influence a Skynet 6 GEO based solution.

This is what viasat (https://corpblog.viasat.com/how-the-private-sector-can-help-britains-skynet-6-program/) (Feb 2019) says:

“By moving to an interoperable network that combines the power of government purpose-built systems with the rapid technological advancements being driven by the private sector, the MoD can easily transition to the high-speed, secure, resilient and ubiquitous system required to adopt new and emerging technologies and deter both current and future threats,” Peterman says.

Viasat believes that if the MoD were to empirically analyze commercial SATCOM services in a defense context, the results would reveal that the most reliable, secure, user-friendly and cutting-edge services available to meet the needs of defense forces are readily available today. This means offering capabilities such as network layering and resiliency, rapid scalability, cybersecurity, real-time awareness of network threats, and the ability to quickly incorporate the latest technology and practices.

So there is a definite push from industry in a similar direction.  The main problem seems to be that LEO satellites are not compatible with legacy UHF mil comms (e.g. https://www.afcea.org/content/crisis-pending-military-satellite-communications).

[ChrisWilson68]

Yes, they do have to create a second generation satellite with inter-satellite links developed, but that is small change to the $6B for Skynet 6. One possibility is the implied threat to the Skynet 6 bidders: keep your prices low and make sure you deliver on time, or else we will cancel the project and go with OneWeb.

They could do exactly the same thing with an LEO alternative to Skynet 6 that isn't based on OneWeb.

OneWeb has spent about $3 B and taken 5 years to get to this point.

No, they haven't.

The $3 billion number comes from funding announcements from OneWeb.  Just because they announced that much funding doesn't mean they actually received it.

I've spent many years working for start-ups.  I know very well how funding announcements work.

When a company announces a large amount of funding, it very rarely means that the company has been given a check for that large amount.  Instead, the number announced almost always means that the investors have a plan to give that much money over a period of years if certain milestones are met.  These milestones can include getting more funding from other investors.  Often, the investors have the option of pulling the funding even if there's aren't any unmet milestones if the investor just decides they've lost faith in the company.

So we don't really know how much money OneWeb actually spent.

Presumably the UK government could spend a similar amount to get to a similar position about 2025 if they started from scratch,

If the needs of the UK government don't perfectly align with what OneWeb already has, they don't have to spend as much as OneWeb spent because they don't need everything OneWeb produced.  If they're going to develop a substantially different communication payload, for example, they don't need to recreate the original OneWeb payload.  They're setting up a factory in the UK and they'll have to pay for that whether they have OneWeb or not.  The money spent by OneWeb on that Florida factory is not helpful to the UK.

So the question is how much of what OneWeb spent is what the UK needs for its own plans.

but the history of government programmes is not great and it would probably be too late to influence a Skynet 6 GEO based solution.

This is what viasat (https://corpblog.viasat.com/how-the-private-sector-can-help-britains-skynet-6-program/) (Feb 2019) says:

“By moving to an interoperable network that combines the power of government purpose-built systems with the rapid technological advancements being driven by the private sector, the MoD can easily transition to the high-speed, secure, resilient and ubiquitous system required to adopt new and emerging technologies and deter both current and future threats,” Peterman says.

Viasat believes that if the MoD were to empirically analyze commercial SATCOM services in a defense context, the results would reveal that the most reliable, secure, user-friendly and cutting-edge services available to meet the needs of defense forces are readily available today. This means offering capabilities such as network layering and resiliency, rapid scalability, cybersecurity, real-time awareness of network threats, and the ability to quickly incorporate the latest technology and practices.

So there is a definite push from industry in a similar direction.  The main problem seems to be that LEO satellites are not compatible with legacy UHF mil comms (e.g. https://www.afcea.org/content/crisis-pending-military-satellite-communications).

That quote from Viasat is self-serving -- they're basically just saying that the government should buy what Viasat already has to sell them.  It's hard to get a more biased assessment than that.

[gongora]

It looks like OneWeb ended up borrowing $30M under the original DIP loan agreement, and all further money will be coming from the new ownership group.

[john smith 19]

Having a constellation of LEO communication satellites might just be insurance against Skynet 6 running late or being a complete disaster as many recent UK government procurements have been, but I think there is more than that.

Adding intersatellite links would be essential for any military use, allowing communication back to the UK without using foreign ground stations. So that implies using second generation OneWeb satellites.

A worldwide sensor suite could be created either by using a secondary payload on the satellites or by using the bus with a dedicated payload. This is more likely than using it for a navigation constellation IMO, that I think would require a whole new bus.

Again this only applies to satellites launched later.

IOW this is a pointless purchase of an existing asset which gives HMG nothing directly and won't for years to come. 

As to the cost of rural broadband that's another issue, and has a great deal to do with the contract they set up with the UK provider (Openreach I think they're called, but they are still part of the incumbent landline supplier BT).

[gongora]

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1281195704191463424

.@AlokSharma_RDG @beisgovuk: UK government purchase of @OneWeb was not driven by thoughts of a future global navigation system. @CommonsBEIS

An expanded version of another quote given in a tweet upthread:
[Via Satellite, July 6] UK Space Influencers React to UK Government Investment in OneWeb

Mark Garnier, a Conservative Member of Parliament, and vice chair of the All Party Space Group in the House of Commons, spoke with Via Satellite about why OneWeb holds such appeal and why he’s glad to see the government invest in space assets.

 “The British government can probably do more with OneWeb than maybe other operators can. Given that we can redesign 78 of the satellites to become a navigation system, that is an important thing that others might not necessarily want out of it. You are inevitably going to get people say that we paid too much. Time will tell in terms of what we get out of it. … It is not only internet 5G connectivity, but secure government communications, as well as a satellite navigation system. It shows proper commitment on behalf of the U.K.,” Garnier told Via Satellite.

It appears the current main goal for OneWeb is to complete deployment of the communications constellation.

[Kaputnik]

What has OneWeb got to do with 5G?

[gongora]

What has OneWeb got to do with 5G?

It seems every new satellite these days has something to do with 5G.  I've never really figured out what that would be.

[ChrisWilson68]

What has OneWeb got to do with 5G?

This tweet is from a politician, not an engineer.  To many people who aren't technical, "5G" is just a synonym for "fast wireless internet".  I doubt most politicians know or care exactly what 5G actually technically means.

EDIT: I count it as a win whenever someone refers to 5G without claiming it's causing some health problem or reprogramming their brain.

[Nomadd]

“The British government can probably do more with OneWeb than maybe other operators can. Given that we can redesign 78 of the satellites to become a navigation system, that is an important thing that others might not necessarily want out of it.

I could redesign a pencil to be a doorknob too, but it wouldn't make much sense.

[Asteroza]

What has OneWeb got to do with 5G?

5G has unfortunately devolved into a marketing term, so context matters. For most practical cases, 5G is basically 4G frequencies being run by hardware that is software rather hardware defined, so you can do stuff like network slicing. The end goal is to get higher utilization of towers, so you can extract more money from carriers and MVNO's who operate on the tower (when they don't own the tower themselves). You can do fancy stuff like private cellphone networks for a big multinational (shades of the hidden cellphone networks operated by drug cartels actually), using more advanced timesharing and virtualization, plus with SDR radios you can do lots of weird stuff (one radio can cover many frequencies, including non-traditional ones, as well as using an existing frequency differently, examples being LoRaWAN and NB-IoT).

OneWeb could do certain specific 5G things. They could provide backhaul to remote 5G towers that have no fiber and poor line-of-sight for terrestrial relay (chaining 5G towers together, sorta like those rural WiFi mesh ISP providers). The other is (if the satellite radios are SDR and have high performance phased arrays), supporting NB-IoT which is technically not frequency specific but protocol specific, so you can operate satellite based IoT services (notably rural IoT sensors, which could also function for military purposes as backhaul for a terrestrial sensor layer, such as human/vehicle travel vibration traffic sensors disguised as a rock by a road or trail). The altitudes are not good, but in theory you could also do conventional cellular frequencies directly (similar to Lynk.Global) so conventional cellphones could have global 5G coverage (well, backup coverage in rural areas with no towers, otherwise it's far more worthwhile to connect as a MVNO on extant towers), but the altitudes really work against you on this due to the weak signal from a conventional cellphone.

[king1999]

What has OneWeb got to do with 5G?

This tweet is from a politician, not an engineer.  To many people who aren't technical, "5G" is just a synonym for "fast wireless internet".  I doubt most politicians know or care exactly what 5G actually technically means.

EDIT: I count it as a win whenever someone refers to 5G without claiming it's causing some health problem or reprogramming their brain.

In China, many reporters call Starlink 6G since China has started 5G service in some areas. 

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/bbcamos/status/1281675037439864833

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has heard the @OneWeb case today and "Project Lighthouse" (the plan by UK HMG and Bharti to pull the company out of Chapter 11) is approved. Statement just issued by Oneweb 👇

[Rondaz]

Rather than deploying an independent system @OneWeb's GNSS could depend on the existing GNSS dramatically reducing cost and complexity. Won't be a problem as the main threat to GNSS is local jamming and spoofing nearby receivers on the Earth, not in orbit.

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1282219246420922368

[Rondaz]

Study from 2016 coauthored by @XonaSpace CTO found #GNSS payload on @OneWeb sats feasible. If updated once per orbit small & cheap chip-scale atomic clocks will be precise enough to match #GPS accuracy as OneWeb's geometry is better than any existing GNSS:

https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1282456057609105408

[Rondaz]

.@OneWeb bankruptcy court gives initial OK for @beisgovuk, @BhartiGlobal purchase, frees funds to restart production at @OneWebSatellit1 in Florida; multiple contracts to be renegotiated before exiting Chapter 11.@ITU @Ofcom @anfr @Arianespace.

https://twitter.com/pbdes/status/1282689244713177088

[zubenelgenubi]

Looking ahead:

Do we know if any satellites had already been shipped overseas--say for the "next launch in April 2020" from Vostochniy?

Do we know if there are satellites at the Florida factory that are completed and ready for shipment?

Would the air transport and launch contracts be among those needing re-negotiation?

[matthewkantar]

Why would it be true that Oneweb's sat's "geometry is better than any existing GNSS?"

The Oneweb sats are there for a totally different purpose and they just happen to be in better orbits than the orbits specifically chosen by GNSS designers?

[Asteroza]

Why would it be true that Oneweb's sat's "geometry is better than any existing GNSS?"

The Oneweb sats are there for a totally different purpose and they just happen to be in better orbits than the orbits specifically chosen by GNSS designers?

I assume it's due to raw number of visible satellites improving the geometry of the calculation at the receiver (you want a nice wide spread over the whole sky, not clustered in one area)(generally you would like a sat nearly directly overhead to avoid concrete canyon issues), maybe distances as well. GNSS designers previously did not have the luxury of using a very large fleet of satellites, so minimizing total satellite count was an attempt to reduce cost balanced with visibility and orientation (plus primary areas of operation). Also, they were pretty big too. A lot has changed since early GPS/NAVSTAR sats hardware-wise.

Though to be honest, if the chip-scale atomic clocks plus daily sync really is enough, the barrier to entry has dropped a lot. Extreme cases being something in the 9U/12U flat pack sizing being possibly enough, especially with some of the new compact reflector antenna designs.