Eutelsat OneWeb more enterprise and defence focused than Starlink, India exec says-OxBig News Network

A Eutelsat OneWeb executive said on Wednesday that the company’s service offering is primarily oriented to enterprise customers, unlike SpaceX’s Starlink, which she termed as a conventional home broadband substitute. “OneWeb provides enterprise led connectivity with security layers built in it, and defence becomes an important use case,” Nishtha Kapoor, the regional director for India, SAARC countries and Africa said at a panel discussion at the Convergence India summit here. Aside from the French satellite firm Eutelsat, OneWeb has shareholding by Bharti Global Ltd and the UK government.

OneWeb, like Starlink, provides Internet access anywhere on the earth’s surface using a network of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites that can provide Internet access with better speeds than previous generations of satellites. Unlike Starlink, OneWeb has already secured a Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS) authorisation from the Department of Telecommunications. However, since spectrum pricing for satellite communications for Internet have yet to be finalised by the government, the company cannot yet begin operations for retail and enterprise customers.

Ms. Kapoor said, however, that OneWeb was being provided to defence personnel under a “provisional license”. “Imagine my soldier is sitting and using LEO connectivity absolutely at the border,” she said. “Until we provided that connectivity, they didn’t have anything. They had to come to the base to talk to their family. Now soldiers are having video calls with their families.”

‘Delays hurt’

Ms. Kapoor rued the lack of progress in regulatory clearances for satellite internet firms to begin operations. “There’s a cost to delay,” Ms. Kapoor said. “There’s an unfortunate bit because this company has its biggest shareholder as an Indian. And in India only I’m not able to launch my LEO connectivity. 

“We don’t have an answer [on pricing]. How can we price if we don’t know what the government will charge us [in spectrum fees]? I have put millions of dollars in putting up infrastructure, I have two gateways, and it takes huge— we have to think from a business perspective, how can we put that money back, put it in research and development, give employment? We get stuck.”

However, with the “DoT’s support,” Ms. Kapoor said, the company hoped to launch soon. Starlink has not yet obtained a GMPCS authorisation, but it has arrived at distribution deals with Bharti Airtel Ltd and Jio Platforms Ltd, which will kick in as soon as the service is allowed to begin operations. Vodafone Idea Ltd is also in talks with the Elon Musk-owned company, the telco said in a filing to bourses on Wednesday.