India's Bharti Invests Further $500 Million in Satellite-Internet Company OneWeb
29 Giugno 2021 - 5:48PM
Dow Jones News
By Adam Clark
India's Bharti Global Ltd. has invested a further $500 million
in OneWeb Global Ltd., backing its push to rival Elon Musk's
Starlink in the provision of internet via satellites.
OneWeb said Tuesday that Bharti exercised a call option for the
investment, raising its stake in the company to 38.6% on
completion. The investment takes OneWeb's total current funding to
$2.4 billion.
Bharti Global is an arm of Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal's
corporate empire. Mr. Mittal teamed up with the British government
to invest $1 billion in OneWeb in late 2020 to rescue it from
bankruptcy. The U.K. is set to have a 19.3% stake in OneWeb after
the latest investment, equal to fellow backers SoftBank Group Corp.
and France's Eutelsat Communications.
OneWeb is planning a low-Earth-orbit network of 648 satellites
and aims to be able to provide wholesale services to much of the
northern hemisphere before the end of the year and globally next
year. The rival Starlink project--owned by Mr. Musk's Space
Exploration Technologies Corp.--has more than 1,500 satellites in
orbit. Mr. Musk has talked about potentially taking Starlink public
when revenue has become predictable, as it seeks to compete with
traditional internet providers.
OneWeb Chief Executive Neil Masterson said Tuesday that the
company had a significantly lower entry cost than rival projects,
having benefited from $3.4 billion of investment before it filed
for bankruptcy protection in March last year.
The company said it is now fully funded with the Bharti
investment, which is set to complete in the second half of
2021.
Starlink and OneWeb are the most advanced LEO projects globally.
A rival project by Amazon.com Inc., named Project Kuiper, is yet to
launch any spacecraft. The European Union and China are working on
plans for their own satellite constellations.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 29, 2021 11:41 ET (15:41 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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