OneWeb exec: ‘$1 billion p/a in revenues’
March 29, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Sunil Bharti Mittal, executive chairman of OneWeb and Bharti CEO, speaking at a media briefing, said that OneWeb’s revenue prospects promised $1 billion of annual revenues flowing from its orbital capacity 1.2 Terabits/second – even if the wholesale cost of that bandwidth is discounted by around 20 per cent.
Mittal said that OneWeb was already generating “several million [dollars]” per month in revenue, and should get to “hundreds of millions of dollars” when it moves to full deployment of OneWeb’s constellation later this year.
OneWeb itself is in the process of merging with Eutelsat and the deal should wrap this summer.
Mittal added that the revenue prospects for OneWeb meant that it was able to fund the development of its planned – and more powerful – 2nd Generation satellites, and said that it was not likely that the division would need to call on any further funding cash from existing OneWeb shareholders.
OneWeb had a batch of 36 satellites seized by Russia as a consequence of retaliation over the Ukraine war and sanctions on Russia. Mittal said that the overall impact of the Russian losses amounted to $315 million made in advance launch payments to the Russians.
OneWeb, because of Western sanctions, has also lost Russia as a potential customer and Mittal added that other countries such as China and North Korea might also be out of the equation.