In one of his first public appearances as OneWeb’s new CEO, Neil Masterson emphasized OneWeb’s B2B go-to-market strategy — working with telcos and local ISPs rather than going direct-to-consumer. Masterson came to the satellite industry from Thomson Reuters, joining OneWeb in November when it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy under the ownership of the U.K. government and Bharti Global.
“In some ways, I come to this with a degree of humility, I don’t have a lot of depth in the engineering,” Masterson said. “But I can smell a strong B2B opportunity when I see one.”
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Masterson provided an update on OneWeb’s “Five to 50” program — five launches bringing connectivity to all regions north of 50 degrees latitude by mid-2021, with global coverage targeted by end of 2022. He confirmed three more launches by end of June and a total of 10 launches in 2021. The company is also seeking another $1 billion to fully fund the first-generation constellation.
OneWeb is targeting enterprise use cases — community broadband, corporate Wi-Fi extension, cellular backhaul, emergency services — with most interest coming from that sector. On competing with Starlink: “We think the best way to meet end users and customer needs is by the existing telco industry, Internet Service Providers and so forth.”
On user terminals, OneWeb will offer a community broadband terminal at around $6,000 covering a village or site, and a compact ESA priced around the cost of an iPhone for individual users. Masterson said he expects terminal economics to improve with scale: “The volumes of samples that we are seeking to put in the field are such that scale will start counting.” On the second-generation constellation, he wants to hear from customers first: “What are the use cases people actually want?” VS
