This coming Friday, 26 June, is the deadline for bids for OneWeb, which went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of March – followed by one of its shareholders, Intelsat, which took the same path in mid-May. Meanwhile its original main supporter, SoftBank, is also financially challenged and trying to raise money to save itself.
Unless successful bids are lodged by Friday – with a 10% deposit – then OneWeb’s assets will be auctioned off the following week, on 2 July.
Satellite Intel Report says that Amazon and SpaceX have decided against bidding. A potential joint bid from Eutelsat is seeking support from outside France. The same source says that four Chinese companies are also considering bidding.
But the UK satellite industry has livened up the market over the weekend following a story in the Financial Times (FT) that government ministers are considering a US$1 billion plan to modify OneWeb to offer a global positioning service.
The UK lost its role in the EU-backed Galileo project to build a rival to the US Department of Defense’s Global Positioning System (GPS) following the UK’s departure from the EU in January 2020.
The country considered a £5 billion project to build its own rival, but the FT is saying that the Boris Johnson government is looking a scheme to adapt 80 of the planned 648 satellites for a positioning service. That would allow the UK to cancel its own expensive rival.
OneWeb would also be able to offer commercial or military communications under its existing UK-based licence.
The US state of Florida has subsidised a vast factory close to Cape Canaveral to build most of the satellites.
