Bharti Enterprises proposes collaboration with India’s space agency to help develop user terminals for OneWeb and provide broadband across the country. Bharti Enterprises and the British government are buying OneWeb and have agreed to each invest $500 million to revive the bankrupt venture.
OneWeb has 74 satellites in orbit and will need many more launches plus the rollout of several ground stations before it is eligible to provide global service. OneWeb was targeting global service in 2021, before it filed for bankruptcy.
According to a report by SpaceNews, Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises Mittal said during a webinar hosted by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), that they expect OneWeb to be the world’s first LEO satellite constellation flying about 648 satellites at 1,200 kilometers. He added mentioned that they are planning for OneWeb to start to deliver these services in the early part of ‘22 once the constellation is going to be up.
Mittal also mentioned that they have already assigned a lot of areas in India where the benefits of this LEO constellation broadband connectivity will be made available. They seek to build a very strong cooperation agreement with ISRO to see the combination of a GEO-LEO constellation specifically for Indian territory.
