Per Borgklint (pictured), who left Ericsson four years ago, has moved to London to take up the new role.
He said: “OneWeb has a strong purpose-led brand and I’m looking forward to getting started. Success comes from providing a seamless, high-speed customer experience, so it’s exciting to see OneWeb’s innovative platform of easy-to-use digital products which distribution partners can fully leverage to monetise the opportunities of low Earth orbit communications.”
OneWeb is well through its launch programme that will see 648 satellites in its first generation provide global coverage by mid-2022. It aims to start commercial services between the 50° north parallel and the Arctic later this year.
Borgklint will head OneWeb’s strategies in enterprise, government, aviation and maritime, said the company.
Neil Masterson, CEO of OneWeb, said: “With this announcement, we pass another significant milestone. Per brings more than 20 years of transformative leadership to this role and I could not be more excited about the strong progress OneWeb is making to build, demonstrate and commercialise our innovative low Earth orbit network.”
Borgklint worked with Tele2 and other telecoms companies before joining Ericsson in 2011 as group chief innovation officer, to head its Silicon Valley operations. He stayed six years in that role, before taking a number of executive and non-executive positions.
OneWeb launched its latest 36 satellites two weeks ago and this week posted a picture of another set of satellites leaving its Florida factory for launch, planned for later this month, from eastern Russia.
OneWeb was rescued from bankruptcy last year by Bharti Global, part of the group that owns Airtel, and the UK government, with further funding from SoftBank.
