Google’s ambitions to deploy universal internet services across the world appear to have taken a blow with the reported departure of Greg Wyler, a key employee understood to be behind a satellite broadband venture called WorldVu.
Wyler took…
Google’s ambitions to deploy universal internet services across the world appear to have taken a blow with the reported departure of Greg Wyler, a key employee understood to be behind a satellite broadband venture called WorldVu.
Wyler took WorldVu’s spectrum rights with him when he left the search giant, reported the Wall Street Journal citing a source.
According to regulatory filings seen earlier by SatelliteFinance, WorldVu initially aims to launch a near-polar Ku-band constellation of 20 satellites in 18 planes. According to various reports, the satellite system is budgeted to cost in the region of US$3bn, based on a plan to construct 360 small satellites weighing 100kg each.
The Channel Islands-registered start-up was seen as an important part of Google’s space ambitions, which saw it buy Earth observation operator Skybox Imaging in June for US$500m.
Bringing the internet to unserved populations has been a long-standing goal for Google. It has also been experimenting with a balloon-based system, and earlier this year snapped up British drone-maker Titan Aerospace to add expertise in this area.
Wyler is well known in the space industry for founding satellite broadband provider O3b Networks, which said on Monday it was ready to launch global services after in-orbit tests of it latest batch of four birds.
Former O3b CTO Brian Holz and Dave Bettinger, a former CTO of satellite-based IP communications technology specialist iDirect, have also recently left Google, added the Wall Street Journal.
The report claimed Wyler has been spending a lot of time with US rocket launcher SpaceX since leaving Google, although he is not employed by the company and its relationship with WorldVu remains unclear.
Google and SpaceX were unable to comment on the speculation.
