"OneWeb customers say that when the service is working great, it's great."
Forty OneWeb satellites are put onto a rocket. Forty OneWeb satellites are put onto a rocket.
OneWeb satellites are intergrated onto a Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Credit: OneWeb
Lately, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has taken an aggressive posture toward Europe. He has called for the United States to exit NATO, a strategic alliance that has been the bedrock of trans-Atlantic cooperation since the end of World War II. Musk has also championed right-wing populism that seeks to topple existing governments on the continent.
And then there's Musk's increasingly antagonistic attitude toward Ukraine, a country viewed by many Europeans as a bulwark against further Russian aggression. This threatens the availability of a vital link in Ukraine's military, Starlink.
Musk's world-class satellite technology has provided life-saving connectivity to citizens and soldiers in Ukraine. It has increased that country's offensive capabilities. And yet Musk could shut off his Starlink service anywhere in the world with an email.
There were reports in late February that the United States, as part of its negotiations with Ukraine over a deal for the country's minerals, was threatening to shut off service to the country. Musk denied those reports. Earlier this week, Musk reiterated that he would "never" turn off Starlink in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, the unease within Europe about Musk's political activities and the desire to support Ukraine in its war against Russia has led officials to seek non-American solutions to some of the continent's needs. This includes high-speed broadband from space.
Europe has a plan to develop its own constellation to provide secure communications called IRIS², but this 290-satellite broadband Internet network remains in the planning stages and is unlikely to begin providing widespread services before at least 2030.
That really leaves just one non-Starlink option, the OneWeb constellation. Launched between 2019 and 2023, it presently consists of about 630 operational satellites. Although this constellation is less than a tenth the size of SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation, it nonetheless can provide high-speed connectivity from orbit.
But can it replace the functionality of Starlink, which is easy to use and has ample capacity?
Enter Eutelsat
OneWeb has had a long and tortured history, involving bankruptcy, multiple changes in ownership, surviving the confiscation of some satellites by Russia, and much more. The company received a jolt of stability in 2023 when the French satellite operator Eutelsat acquired OneWeb at a valuation of $3.4 billion. The British and French governments each own a bit more than 10 percent of the company.
For the first two months of this year, the publicly traded Eutelsat's shares were trading at historic lows, at times as low as €1.15 a share ($1.25). However, since the threats about Starlink service in Ukraine emerged, the stock has soared, increasing in value four-fold.
To understand whether the smaller OneWeb constellation could replicate the Starlink service being offered in Ukraine, Ars spoke with Caleb Henry, the director of research at Quilty Analytics, who is also writing a deeply researched book about the history of OneWeb. The constellation is functional but not optimal, he said.
"Each sacrifice that was made over the years for the sake of the survival of the company in the present hurt them in the future," Henry said of OneWeb.
The constellation was originally intended to be 900 satellites and include many more gateways on the ground, both of which would provide more capacity. OneWeb also has not been able to reach a high scale of manufacturing for its user terminals, which in some cases cost thousands of dollars in addition to a monthly subscription fee.
These terminals are also more clunky and less easy to use. For example, Henry said, Ukrainian soldiers have been able to mount Starlink terminals on drones, but the OneWeb terminals are too large for that.
Capacity and terminals
The main issues are capacity and the availability of terminals. In the best-case scenario, Henry said, OneWeb has about 4 percent of the global capacity that Starlink has. It also would not be easy for OneWeb to rearrange its constellation and software such that it could provide significantly more broadband service over Ukraine.
If Ukraine were flooded with users, it's likely that bandwidth would drain quickly.
"From my case study, OneWeb customers say that when the service is working great, it's great," Henry said. "But they run into network congestion much more quickly than Starlink. As more and more pile on, they share the same drink and run out of juice."
Eutelsat would also need to produce tens of thousands of terminals to replace Starlink dishes in Ukraine. And it would not just be replacing them but also refreshing the supply.
"These terminals are reportedly getting destroyed at a rapid rate," Henry said. "That means the conversation about replacing Starlink isn’t just swapping out 42,000 terminals, it’s also the thousands more needed to replenish terminals the Russians destroy. Word is the Russians find terminals of any kind, Starlink and others, quickly after they are turned on. After that, it’s just a matter of time until an attack that likely renders the terminal inoperable."
Eutelsat has previously announced plans to replenish and increase the size of its constellation with more capable satellites based on newer technology. The current satellites in service are based on technology that's about a decade old.
However, even with greater investments, it would take a lot of time and effort to replace what Starlink currently offers in Ukraine. Any service in the next couple of years would likely be less reliable, of lower quality, and more expensive. But it would be European-owned.