OneWeb Plans Network of 600 LEO Satellites

A massive low Earth orbit (LEO) constellation of Ku-band OneWeb satellites is planned to be put into orbit starting in 2016 that will tie into Intelsat's geostationary orbit satellite network to create a worldwide high-throughput network. OneWeb announced the planned network of more than 600 satellites Thursday. It said it hired Arianespace to do 21 Soyuz launches of its satellites and Virgin Galactic for another 39 using its LauncherOne. It also said it has raised $500 million from a group of companies to help develop broadband technology including the terminals that will allow its LEO satellites to interoperate with Intelsat's GEO satellites. Those investors are Airbus Group, Bharti Enterprises, Coca-Cola, Grupo Salinas, Hughes Network Systems, Intelsat, Qualcomm and Virgin Group.