4 ms·
from another article in the more reputable FT (https://www.ft.com/content/a1da90e8-8869-4740-b5eb-d8c6339d8e2f https://www.ft.com/content/a1da90e8-8869-4740-b5e
by kmlx 6y ago
from another article in the more reputable FT (https://www.ft.com/content/a1da90e8-8869-4740-b5eb-d8c6339d8e2f https://www.ft.com/content/a1da90e8-8869-4740-b5eb-d8c6339d8...)
> The company, which originally intended to offer affordable internet services to the remotest parts of the planet, has 74 satellites in orbit and plans for several hundred more. OneWeb also has a significant advantage in that it has priority on broadcast spectrum over SpaceX’s Starlink, a rival low-earth satellite internet service, people close to the subject said.
In April, OneWeb approached the UK government for a £500m loan as part of a wider $2.2bn financing from private investors. However, the government has decided on an equity investment to preserve its influence. The company is regulated by the UK’s Ofcom, but its management is largely American. Its satellites are also manufactured in Florida in a joint venture with Airbus. It has promised to repatriate manufacturing to the UK.
The government’s potential participation in a OneWeb bid has been the focus of fierce opposition in some parts of the space industry, which had hoped to win positions on a Galileo-style navigation project. Critics have dismissed the low-earth technology as unproven and fraught with risk.
However, a deciding factor appears to have been support from US defence officials who have told the government they do not want the UK to develop a replica of the GPS system. A low-earth navigation service would complement the US system and offer extra resilience to US allies, say several parties close to the subject.
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so yeah, as always, it's actually more complicated than it seems.
this is why i usually tend to steer far away from the guardian or other general purpose newspapers, they never offer the full picture.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago>However, the government has decided on an equity investment // Presumably a choice to invest in a private company would go through parliamentary debate, or have public study papers. Can anyone link them?
- pjc50 6y agoGood luck with that, this government is allergic to accountability. There are three references in Hansard: https://hansard.parliament.uk/search?searchTerm=oneweb&partial=False https://hansard.parliament.uk/search?searchTerm=oneweb&parti... - previous reference to investing £18m in March 2019 (Chris Skidmore, under Theresa May, mentions ESA; before the "cut all ties to Europe" moment) - same page https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-03-19/debates/E3FCCEE9-CB5F-4D1A-A2E4-581F129AFE40/UKSpaceIndustry?highlight=oneweb#contribution-141ADEEB-3169-4E6A-AF13-2ADFEF1A2104 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-03-19/debates/E3F... references £92m for a "domestic alternative to Galileo", not specifically linked to oneweb - Vicky Ford mentions them in the context of "my local company Teledyne e2v is working in Leeds, where it is making the highly engineered filters, switches and converters that are critical technology for the OneWeb group of satellites" https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-01-15/debates/634CCF88-39CE-429A-9850-FCFD5D386376/SpaceIndustryBill(Lords)?highlight=oneweb#contribution-C13BC628-85F4-4E36-9F87-2356B5521AA2 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-01-15/debates/634... - brief namecheck from Ed Vaizey I suspect the actual "tender" process will be resistant to FOIA under grounds of "commercial confidentiality".
- dmurray 6y agoIt's definitely one-sided reporting. The UK has an ironclad military alliance with the US and can expect to rely on GPS. Getting centimetres-resolution navigation right now is not a strategic necessity: why not fund the local firm doing something unproven and different but potentially valuable?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoBecause the odds of the technology working are really not high. And neither the company nor the managers have any record of successes they can point to. And because there are a lot of others firms doing work which is more obviously different and potentially valuable. And because the net loss to those businesses working on Galileo in the UK will likely be higher than the net gain from this idea. And because Johnson has a despicable record of wasting public money on useless projects which inevitably raise questions about where the money actually went. (See also cable car, garden bridge, test and trace app, etc.) Apart from that - sure, why not?
- vincvinc 6y agoCurious if the FT fails to mention this one very important fact that the Guardian mentions, or if you left it out: > OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March in the US, where most of its operations are located, after failing to secure new funding.
- growlist 6y agoThe guardian has got worse under its current editor.
- Mvandenbergh 6y agoSeems logical. If the alternatives are to either build another medium orbit navigation constellation (it would be the fifth!) or to try and build something different and then trade access to that to the US for guaranteed GPS access, then that makes sense. If they just built a GPS/Galileo/Glonass/Beidou clone then they'd have nothing of strategic interest to trade access to (and it would be horrifically expensive). A regional solution like NavIC or QZSS would also not be of use to trade and wouldn't provide service over the whole operational footprint of the Royal Navy. On the other hand, since the US military does not have a low earth orbit GNSS system (nobody does), it becomes tradeable for privileged GPS access. The same way that the UK can genuinely trade the US access to a small number of specialist military assets that the US either does not have or has a shortage of but cannot trade on total force capacity (since obviously the UK military is vastly smaller).