Episode 11: OneWeb bought by HMG, and goodbye Huawei.
I’m afraid there’s no audio this week. Life has been getting in the way recently but I promise the audio will be back very soon.
In this episode, episode 11, we discuss how one of the UK’s most promising start-ups, OneWeb, got bought by the government, and we take a look (again) at Huawei in the UK.
OneWeb
They’re a company that you probably haven’t heard of before but they were, or I should say are, one of the UK’s most promising start-ups. With over £3bn in funding OneWeb promises to provide high speed broadband to every inch of Earth through a huge satellite constellation. With Elon Musk’s StarLink as competition it will be no easy feat.
In 2019 they launched their first set of satellites and now have over 70 in orbit after launching another 34 in March this year. In early demos they managed to get 400Mbps to users on the ground. When compared to the UK where the average fixed line broadband speed is only 22Mbps this is pretty impressive.
However, also in March the company filed for bankruptcy. I guess that building and launching satellites is quite expensive. They did manage to blame COVID-19 for this too. To be fair though I suspect that a large investor pulled out or reduced funding as the reality of the pandemic started to become clearer through March. This bankruptcy filing allowed OneWeb to put itself up for sale.
Video: How OneWeb’s system works
In the last couple of weeks a consortium of companies and the Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) a.k.a the UK Government came to their rescue with a purchase. HMG paid $500 million (around £400 million) for 45% of the company while Bharti Airtel, a major Indian telecom operator, took another 45%.
With Britain’s imminent exit from the EU it’s likely that the UK Government interest comes from the need for a sovereign satellite capability not only for communications but also navigation. The EU is pressing ahead with Galileo, a more accurate and version of GPS, without the UK meaning we’re unlikely to be able to make use of the system in the future. No doubt too there are use cases in the Defence and National Security domains which make the purchase of OneWeb a no-brainer for the government.
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Huawei
Yes we’re back on this topic again. This time it’s expected that the UK will announce that Huawei equipment will be completely banned from UK telecoms networks in the future.
A statement is being released tomorrow (Tuesday) by the government where it is expected to announce that no new Huawei equipment can be used after 2021 and any existing equipment must be removed by 2025.
The implication of this could be significant. All of the UK’s mobile operators use Huawei equipment to varying extents and many use it to get broadband to our homes. This comes at a time when operators are quickly rolling out new 5G networks which are making use of Huawei’s technically superior and better value for money kit.
This could be a real kick in the teeth for operators who have made significant investments in the UK over recent years, particularly after the government announced that Huawei equipment would be allowed to be used in some parts of the network.
My understanding is that due to US sanctions against Huawei they are not able to use chipsets from reputable US companies and so are forced to make use of others which is presenting security risks in their equipment. This causing further concern for security services in the UK who already take a dim view of the company’s security practices.
Taking equipment out of networks is by no means easy though. There is often vendor lock-in meaning that you can’t simply replace one box with one from a different supplier, you likely need to re-engineer much of your network. Depending on the extent of the ban, both BT and Vodafone have warned that there could be signal blackouts across the country as equipment is removed to meet strict deadlines.
I still can’t help but feel that this is largely a political move and when you research the origins the pressure appears to be coming from back-bench Conservative MPs supported by the US.
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