Airbus & OneWeb to kick off new satellite

A rocket carrying six satellites built by Airbus SE and partner OneWeb blasted off from French Guiana, the first step in a plan to give millions of people in remote and rural areas high-speed internet beamed down from space.

"Some people won't be able to pay for it. But if they have the internet, maybe they will be able to start their own business and get themselves on their feet" Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group said.

A successful launch could mark a new era in the satellite services industry. Companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX, LeoSat Enterprises, and Canada's Telesat are working to enable data networks with hundreds or even thousands of tiny satellites that orbit closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, a radical shift made possible by leaps in laser technology and computer chips.

The growth in satellites will spur demand for rocket launch services, and a handful of venture-backed rocket companies are developing smaller boosters to deploy the smaller satellites at lower cost.

The Arianespace Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying satellites made by the Airbus-OneWeb joint venture called OneWeb Satellites in Toulouse, France.

The refrigerator-sized satellites were expected to reach an altitude of 1,000 km (620 miles) more than an hour after launch. It could take 24 hours to fully assess the health of the satellites.

OneWeb and others aim to expand the availability and speed of satellite-based internet compared to existing providers such as Hughes Network Systems, whose network is in a higher-altitude geostationary orbit. Hughes is also an investor in OneWeb and helping to build out its ground infrastructure.

OneWeb has raised more than $2 billion from investors including Airbus, Coca-Cola , Virgin Group, Qualcomm Inc and SoftBank. It aims to have global broadband coverage in 2021 from about 650 satellites.

OneWeb plans to begin launching more than 30 satellites at a time every month starting as early as September so its constellation is nearly 25 percent complete by year-end, a person with direct knowledge of the project said.

Other firms say they are not far behind. Telesat, backed by Loral Space & Communications Inc , is targeting 2022 for broadband services from nearly 300 satellites.

Washington, D.C.-based LeoSat Enterprises says it has already signed more than $1 billion in pre-launch provisional agreements for secure data transfers for global banks, telecoms providers and governments beginning in 2022.

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