OneWeb founder Greg Wyler sat down Nov. 10 with SpaceNews Silicon Valley correspondent Debra Werner to discuss OneWeb’s audacious plan to deploy a 720-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit for global broadband delivery.
“We are the cleanup crew of connectivity. Hopefully fiber and everything else runs all over the place. But it’s only going to run so far,” Wyler said. “Everyone else will do their part. Together, we have set sort of an internal goal of 2025, every village connected. I think humanity together can accomplish that and OneWeb will play a role.”
It’s been less than a year since OneWeb emerged on the scene. But in that time, the company has raised more than $500 million, announced strategic partnerships with Coca-Cola, Totalplay, Intelsat and others, and signed contracts with Airbus Defence and Space to build the satellites and with Arianespace and Virgin Galactic to launch them.
“It’s been kind of fun moving from, ‘That can’t work’ to ‘Hey, wow, this really can work.’ And it’s become almost expected in a lot of ways. We really feel that expectation. We take it very seriously,” Wyler said. “We want to be good space citizens and we also want to be good communication citizens to help people around the world.”
The interview took place at the NextSpace Investor Conference in San Francisco.
