London’s Telegraph newspaper reports that Amazon is understood to be among the entities sifting through the assets of OneWeb, a venture that began building a constellation of broadband internet satellites but filed for bankruptcy in March.
Amazon’s interest has to do with its plans to create its own broadband constellation, known as Project Kuiper. The most attractive assets that OneWeb has to offer would arguably be its rights to radio frequency spectrum and its access to the U.S. market — advantages that Amazon currently lacks.
Among the other entities looking at OneWeb’s assets, according to the Space Intel Report, are SpaceX, Eutelsat and the British government.
SpaceX is already building out its Starlink broadband constellation in low Earth orbit, using satellites that are being built at its facility in Redmond, Wash.
Eutelsat is a European satellite operator based in Paris, and the French government is said to be working with Eutelsat to assess OneWeb’s value. The Telegraph says the British government is looking into making a rescue loan to OneWeb in return for the venture moving more of its operations to Britain.
OneWeb has already put 74 of its satellites in orbit, but was forced to seek bankruptcy protection in March when one of its biggest backers, Japan’s SoftBank Group, declined to provide further support amid the financial turmoil sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.
The venture, which attracted billions of dollars in investments over the years, was cleared to take in $300 million in “debtor-in-possession” financing last week pending a sale. The deadline for potential bidders to declare their interest is Monday, which explains the timing of reports about who’s assessing OneWeb’s assets.
Tim Farrar, a satellite industry consultant who isn’t shy when it comes to expressing skepticism about proposed broadband constellations, tweeted that such reports may be aimed at priming the pump for the upcoming sale.
Strategic leaks are part of the process of ginning up flagging interest… (so I view it as mildly negative that this was leaked today)
— Tim Farrar (@TMFAssociates) May 3, 2020
Amazon’s plans for Project Kuiper first came to light more than a year ago. The Seattle-based company is seeking Federal Communications Commission’s go-ahead to put 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit to offer broadband access to billions of people around the world who are currently underserved.
SpaceX has the same stated objective, and has raised objections to Amazon’s requests for fast-track consideration of its application. OneWeb’s assets could conceivably provide a shortcut to regulatory clearance.
OneWeb had been targeting a broad market for satellite broadband services, beginning in the Arctic, but SpaceX and Amazon have specific applications in mind that could prove profitable on a relatively short time scale.
For SpaceX, such applications include military communications. The company is already working with the Defense Department to test Starlink’s capabilities in combat scenarios.
Amazon executives, meanwhile, have said that Project Kuiper could be used to facilitate sales in new markets, expand Amazon Web Services’ offerings in cloud computing and open up new frontiers for Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
For what it’s worth, Amazon has been ramping up its Project Kuiper operation in the Seattle area and is currently posting more than 100 open positions. We reached out to Amazon, but the company declined to comment on speculative reports.
Update for 2:40 p.m. PT May 5: After the deadline passed for potential bidders to register their interest, a spokesperson for OneWeb told us in an email that there would be “no comment on the confidential process.”
