Hughes, a company that’s involved in developing satellite and multi-transport technologies and networks has signed a distribution deal in the United States (US) with OneWeb, a Bharti backed satellite broadband company. The companies have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in India for offering distribution services to enterprises, small and medium enterprises, telcos, internet service providers (ISPs), and the government. OneWeb and Hughes plan to work together to offer enterprise customers and broad distribution globally. Both the companies can together effectively offer very low-latency and high-speed connectivity. This will benefit the government, telcos, and the other enterprise customers majorly.
Hughes Parent Company Already an Investor in OneWeb
For the unaware, Hughes parent company, EchoStar is an investor in OneWeb. But the agreement signed today between the companies will further enhance the relationship they share with each other. Hughes is already helping OneWeb with developing gateway electronics, core modules that will power the user terminal for the system and is also an ecosystem partner of the company. OneWeb very carefully decides its ecosystem partners in each of its core markets. With these new partnerships, the company is able to form new business deals and expand its operations. As of now, OneWeb is building its constellation of 648 low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and the services in the Arctic region including Canada, Alaska, and the UK will begin this year. By mid or late 2022, OneWeb will be able to offer its satellite broadband services throughout the globe. The company forming a partnership with Hughes is in line with what Mittal said. OneWeb will be focusing only on the B2B segment of the market initially and it won’t be working to provide services to the normal consumers or the B2C segment. This divides the strategy and market approach of Starlink and OneWeb substantially and honestly, OneWeb’s strategy sounds really good because not many consumers would be able to afford satellite broadband connectivity in India.
