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OneWeb files for bankruptcy

oneweb.world

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Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#101

Post by leesalminen »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #89
reportingsjr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will always be the case, unless rural subsidies are increased even more drastically (not really a good thing). Infrastructure in cities is far cheaper than rural areas, so this is kind of a cat and mouse game for rural areas where internet will be x times slower than in cities.

Rural internet is expensive because no PRIVATE company wants to put up a tower or run fiber for a couple dozen people. A satellite covers a much wider area. We'll see how it plays out, but as a person living out here, I'm excited.

It worked for our neighborhood. A retired engineer down the road did exactly this- started a private company to provide good wireless P2P internet to our rural, mountainous community.

He’s about 7 years in and now serves 70% of our area. It ain’t cheap, but he’s been profitable enough now to be able to buy additional bandwidth from his upstream. We’re about to get 50/25 in the coming months.

I offer my services to him for free just to help contribute and make sure he doesn’t go out of business. It feels like a community effort! I set up the online billing portal and recurring payments, another guy goes on people’s roof to install the ubiquiti receiver, etc. we all chip in.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#102

Post by Amygaz »

fludlight wrote: post #86
shantara wrote: post #16

I don't think it's exactly fair of them to blame "financial impact and market turbulence related to the spread of COVID-19" for their bankruptcy. The history of space industry is full of companies that ran out of money when attempting to launch massive satellite constellations. And let's be frank, an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail.

Almost all bankruptcies in the next two years are going to blame COVID-19. "It wasn't us, it was the $external_factor" is a way for management to avoid blame. In some cases (restaurants especially) the health crisis has wrecked businesses that have been profitable for many years and the external factor is legitimately the main cause. In other instances, the company was already headed toward bankruptcy and the virus i…

This is highly opinionated, since I don't know Greg Wyler at all, but I do remember his Terracom broadband satellite effort in Rwanda, which looked noble at first, but was more a pretext to pay himself a generous salary, than doing anything.

So when he started OneWeb and then Ob3 (or vice-versa) I was skeptical. Now, reading about OW, and how it was mostly a middleman, I would say I am not surprised at all that he would pull this one and blame a virus. With chapter 11 he gets to protect his equity and compensation

I expect him to rebound, with even better compensation.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#103

Post by bryanlarsen »

csboyer wrote: post #93
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an attempt to out-compete SpaceX on mass satellite production and cheap launches was doomed to fail Not necessarily. SpaceX has an advantage in owning the rails. It isn’t, however, decisive. OneWeb failed to bring any advantages of its own to the table. It compounded its launch and first mover disadvantages by launching with ArianeSpace. It gave away any satellite advantages by using Airbus to make the birds. There…

It seems that they outsourced almost everything to different companies rather than taking expertise in house. SpaceX seems to be doing everything themselves. Amazon seems to be doing a lot but will likely outsource launching of the birds. Wouldn't be surprised if they fly on SpaceX rockets in part....

The default assumption is that Amazon's Project Kuiper would launch on Bezos' Blue Origin rockets.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#104

Post by Robotbeat »

greglindahl wrote: post #88
Robotbeat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ALL companies who attempted to launch massive satellite constellations ran out of money, often pushed by financial markets around the dotcom bubble bursting. Many of them ended up being salvaged afterward and many are still operating today (some at a profit) after going through bankruptcy: ORBCOMM, Iridium, Globalstar. All three have launched second generation satellite constellations. Bankruptcy doesn't have to mean…

OneWeb is more likely to end up like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic -- not much value has been created yet, just a partially launched constellation with costs still rising.

Unfortunately.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#105

Post by arijun »

erwinh wrote: post #39

So this will be the final OneWeb constellation: https://space-search.io/?search=OneWeb (shamelessly plugging my own website here) Such a shame about OneWeb though, met some of them at a conference in Spain just a month ago, where the elephant in the room was StarLink already.

Really cool website! Makes it much easier to visualize the difference between different types of orbits.

One suggestion would be to either disable panning or give a snap to center button. I found it too easy to pan by accident when zooming out and then the rotation could flip the earth out of view

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#106

Post by gpm »

fragmede wrote: post #90
gpm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like Oneweb first received funding in January 2015. It looks like they had started working on the idea in 2014. (Per Wikipedia) SpaceX's first propulsive landing attempt was September 2013, by the end of 2014 they had twice succeeded at controlled descents over the ocean. Their first landing on a solid surface (i.e. actual recovery of the booster) was late 2015. So yes, there weren't yet reusable rockets, bu…

> the writing was very clearly on the wall. With the gift of hindsight that's true, but I disagree, it wasn't clear back then . Keep in mind that the concept of reusable rockets has been around ever since the first rocket launch around the 1960's, and we (humanity) threw away the entire thing. It took SpaceX to make reusable rockets real, but not for lack of trying on the part of Lockheed Martin and other defense con…

SpaceX was already profitable by the time they were trying for propulsive re-use, they could afford to throw away as many first stages they needed to (after delivering payloads with them) to figure it out. The "one more failure and we go bankrupt" stage of SpaceX was well before that, when they were initially trying to launch a rocket.

Tesla's success is relevant to Elon Musk maintaining full control of SpaceX and funding mars mission research. It wasn't at all relevant at that point for whether or not SpaceX would continue to exist as a company, or succeed at re-use.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#107

Post by mrarg »

lonelappde wrote: post #92
brandmeyer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies pass through a time where the current business is marginal, but sustainable growth is just around the corner. COVID-19's worldwide supply and transport disruption coming at just the wrong time can absolutely sink a business that was skirting too close to the edge.

And this includes Elon Musk's Tesla who was once a week from bankruptcy and wouldn't have made it through a crisis like this one.

Though that was actually during the last crisis like this one (financial crisis of 2008).

https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-history-of-crisis-201...

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#108

Post by ericd »

ghaff wrote: post #96
tialaramex wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if the offer was $1000 plus $10 per Mb/s and the maximum is 10Mbps ? You would switch because you've imagined this service is magically cheaper and better, but now I say it'll be expensive and worse are you still enthusiastic? Providing network service is a utility, and so yes razor thin margins are typical and that's too bad. It does make very high capital investment (such as launching huge numbers of sate…

>These projects (whatever Musk says about them when hyping his company) deliver expensive network access to places where it's otherwise not practical to offer service at all. They aren't going head-to-head with Comcast, or even with AOL, they're competing with "Physically take a day's / week's work to the A site where they have network access". Yeah, there are a lot of places in the US--some of which aren't even real…

I’d be careful about comparing current satellite internet with what Starlink is promising. The latency and total throughout differences are huge.

Re: OneWeb files for bankruptcy

#110

Post by ghaff »

ericd wrote: post #108
ghaff wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>These projects (whatever Musk says about them when hyping his company) deliver expensive network access to places where it's otherwise not practical to offer service at all. They aren't going head-to-head with Comcast, or even with AOL, they're competing with "Physically take a day's / week's work to the A site where they have network access". Yeah, there are a lot of places in the US--some of which aren't even real…

I’d be careful about comparing current satellite internet with what Starlink is promising. The latency and total throughout differences are huge.

That's why I specifically referred to current satellite. Of course, future satellite could be much better. (Although we'll have to see.)
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