Mittal seeks Isro tie up for OneWeb LEO constellation

BENGALURU:

Industrialist Sunil Bharti Mittal

, whose Bharti Enterprises in July won the bid to pick up a 45% stake in Oneweb, a UK-based firm looking to put a

large constellation

of satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to deliver wireless internet services, on Thursday sought’s Isro’s partnership in building user terminals that will enable take internet to rural India.


“OneWeb will have the world’s first large constellation in LEO. We will have 648 satellites covering the whole world, and testing will begin next year. We desire to get landing rights (permission to use satellites in India) here and we’ve identified areas in the north, south and west for ground stations to start delivering services when the constellation is complete,” Mittal said at a webinar entitled “Unlocking India’s Potential In Space Sector” organised by Isro.

Bharti Enterprises bought OneWeb jointly with the UK government. Recollecting his meeting with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Mittal spoke of how India’s achievements in the space sector, despite being a developing economy, has been inspiring for many

“I remember the PM (Johnson) saying that ‘India was a first rate power in space and that it was the UK’s ambition to catch up with the prowess that India possesses’, which made me very proud,” Mittal said.

He also sought Isro’s cooperation in building user terminals designed specially for India. “We’ve realised that taking optical fibre to some of the remote parts of India is near impossible and we’ve earmarked several areas in India to deliver broadband connectivity, and hope to work closely with Isro,” Mittal said.

Arguing that a LEO constellation, unlike constellations in GEO (geostationary orbit) or MEO (medium earth orbit), offers low latency, he said this would enable near real time interactive services.

“We are already doing some latency tests on BMW cars and we’ve seen that compared to 560 milliseconds in GEO and 160-180 milliseconds in MEO, it is under 50 milliseconds (about 32) in LEO,” he said.

While Isro chairman K Sivan did not immediately respond to Mittal, Uma Maheshwaran, scientific secretary to Isro only said: “We are all very excited about OneWeb.”

Soon after winning the bid to acquire a stake in OneWeb, Mittal was quoted as having said in a statement that its platform will help to reduce the digital divide by providing high speed, low latency broadband access to the poor and hard-to-reach rural areas.

“...A low-earth orbit constellation is the only viable mechanism through which the ‘last billion’ can be connected. As one of the largest telecoms operators in India and Africa, I know what a powerful social and economic enabler this can be,” Mittal was quoted as having said.