Start-up broadband provider O3b Networks’ first four satellites are delivering higher than specified performance but face a slight loss of life because of their onboard anomaly, according to CEO Steve Collar.
Heavy speculation has surrounded the…
Start-up broadband provider O3b Networks’ first four satellites are delivering higher than specified performance but face a slight loss of life because of their onboard anomaly, according to CEO Steve Collar.
Heavy speculation has surrounded the health of the birds since they were launched last year, and the group is rumoured to have made a partial insurance claim that is now being considered by the market.
Sources have also claimed that the spacecraft were suffering from a malfunction that causes them to provide intermittent “on and off” services.
The issue forced O3b to delay the launch of its second batch of four satellites while engineers at Thales Alenia Space ensured it did not exist on future spacecraft.
Collar declined to comment on whether it had made an insurance claim in an interview with SatelliteFinance after its second launch on 10 July, but dismissed rumours suggesting the first four satellites were providing inconsistent services.
“We might lose a little bit of lifetime on one or more of 1-4,” he said.
“It’s a predictable reduction in lifetime. The key thing is we’re never going to put customers in harm’s way. Our business relies on us supporting our customers and us having flawless performance.”
“In terms of the constellation, we’re pretty much the only satellite operator that can lose a satellite and customers may not even know about it. We’ve got an incredibly reliable and robust solution. If a traditional operator loses an old school geostationary satellite it’s a very different story. Everyone on that satellite would be out of luck or having to find alternative arrangements.”
Ready to scale up
O3b’s constellation is much closer to Earth than other satellite broadband providers and this is an integral part of its low latency solution. It sees customers using each satellite in the constellation several times a day and this also makes it easier to scale up the company’s business model.
“One of the nice things about our network is everything gets better the more satellites we have – the links get even higher throughput,” said Collar.
“We’re already up to 1Gbps per beam, we can probably increase the beam capacity by another 20% for every single beam – not just the new satellites that are being launched, but every single beam on the O3b system gets about 20% more efficient as we launch additional satellites.”
The company, whose largest shareholder is satellite fleet operator SES, already has funding in place for another four birds, and has called on Arianespace to launch them in December or early next year.
Collar said O3b could expand to more than 100 birds as it looks to provide internet services to “the other three billion”.
Competition heating up for internet everywhere
But another notable shareholder in the company is Google, which recently rocked the space sector by snapping up Earth observation start-up Skybox Imaging to help it provide universal internet access across the world.
Facebook has similar goals, and their moves into the satellite internet market could one day bring them into competition with O3b’s network.
Collar refused to be drawn into speculating about their plans, but said the debate currently surrounding them reaffirms his company’s own aspirations.
“The fact that they are thinking about using satellite technology to do it is important,” he said.
“And the fact that they are thinking about using satellite technology from orbits that are close to the Earth is also important.”
He said the company’s more immediate competition will be terrestrial fibre and microwave networks, rather than geostationary satellite broadband operators that have higher latency.
However, with demand for data continuing to rocket across the world, Collar is confident that the market will be big enough for all players.
“There’s space for everyone, although O3b probably makes it more challenging for marginal fibre business cases to be closed,” he added.
O3b’s customers to date include Digicel in Papua New Guinea and Samoa, Timor Telecom in Timor Leste and TCI in the Cook Islands. It has also signed up three ships owned by the Royal Caribbean cruise liner, including the Oasis of the Seas, which was the largest ship in the world when it was handed to the company in 2009.
According to Collar, O3b has around 30 customers lined up in total. Many are waiting for its latest batch of satellites to complete their testing phase successfully before signing their contracts.
With eight birds now in orbit and a further four readying themselves for launch, the company is looking to rapidly ramp up its customer base this summer.
“We’ve seen such fantastic potential, and had such amazing feedback from the customers on the network already,” said Collar.
“We know what we have is compelling. So now it’s all about making sure that we can continually put capacity up in the air, and that our customers can keep on relying on us to provide them with what they need.”
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