SoftBank is Letting Internet Satellite Company OneWeb File For Bankruptcy (cnbc.com) 14
SoftBank has decided to let satellite internet provider OneWeb file for bankruptcy rather than pump billions of dollars into the start-up to save it. From a report: SoftBank, which has already invested $2 billion into OneWeb, was in talks to provide more capital to the satellite operator but ultimately backed down after making the decision it needs to save capital instead of spending more, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private.
OneWeb was in the early stages of launching its own global satellite internet constellation, which would have competed directly with the network SpaceX is building called Starlink. While SoftBank is its largest investor, OneWeb had raised about $3.4 billion in funding with investors including Qualcomm, Airbus, Virgin Group, Coca-Cola, Maxar Technologies, Hughes Communications and Intelsat. All 74 of the satellites OneWeb put in orbit so far are operating as expected. CEO Adrian Steckel told CNBC in a February interview that the company "is always raising" money.
OneWeb was in the early stages of launching its own global satellite internet constellation, which would have competed directly with the network SpaceX is building called Starlink. While SoftBank is its largest investor, OneWeb had raised about $3.4 billion in funding with investors including Qualcomm, Airbus, Virgin Group, Coca-Cola, Maxar Technologies, Hughes Communications and Intelsat. All 74 of the satellites OneWeb put in orbit so far are operating as expected. CEO Adrian Steckel told CNBC in a February interview that the company "is always raising" money.
Aperture Science (Score:1)
All 74 of the satellites OneWeb put in orbit so far are operating as expected.
Great success!
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Success is not the objective.
Profit is. I have seen many successful things removed even though they were successful.
Even if they turn a profit, they still get rid of it because it does not turn "enough" of a profit.
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It probably didn't help with clarity (or humor) that I got the quote wrong. Ah well, I'm just a customer anyway.
This was a triumph!
I'm making a note here:
Huge success!
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
Aperture Science:
We do what we must
because we can
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there's no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
'til you run out of cake.
And the science gets done.
And you make a neat gun
for the people who are
still alive.
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lol
my bad, I did not play the game so I missed the context.
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They just ran out of capital before they could build a functional network. I not sure why that surprises anyone - they were paying old-school launch costs, not using SpaceX.
SpaceX is uniquely positioned to launch their own sats cheaply, as they can use rockets that have flown a few times and they don't quite trust for commercial launch. Much better for them to push the limits of reusability by launching 60 Starlink sats than a dummy payload. But even at SpaceX's normal commercial prices, it's much cheape
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What was OneWeb thinking?
That venture capital was an unending source of funding?
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Wow, they wasted so much money on Soyuz. They should have used the modern Orbital platform if they didn't want to use SpaceX.
I wonder which money losing investments are next (Score:4, Interesting)
like maybe Uber and WeWork
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Great track record (Score:2)
SoftBank...was in talks to provide more capital to the satellite operator but ultimately backed down after making the decision it needs to save capital instead of spending more
I'm pretty sure this is Softbank's best investment decision since Alibaba.
Never quite understood the business model (Score:2)
Putting the satellites up costs billions, and that has to be recovered while they are operational. Because they are in a relatively low orbit that's not an indefinite amount of time, although I don't know how long they will survive. Meanwhile their customers are people who don't have internet today. Of that group, most cannot afford an expensive monthly subscription (if they could they would have internet already). I very much doubt that the group that remains is enough to pay for 1200 operational spacecraf
Space junk? (Score:2)
So, what happens with the 74 satellites they already launched (as per Wikipedia [wikipedia.org])?
Are they going to be repurposed by whoever buys the assets, are they going to stay up there as space junk?
An amateur astrophotographer would like to know.
Btw, just yesterday I saw one of those Starlink "trains". Very uncool for anyone who wants to do astronomy. And all this just because one certain country can't build up decent infrastructure, even when others with comparable dispositions absolutely can, profitably!
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Regarding starlink, don't know how it will be when there is a full constellation but the "trains" are worse because the satellites are still in a lower orbit, once they get to the final orbit the magnitude decreases by quite a lot.
The motivation to build these