OneWeb’s constellation of 700 low-altitude satellites will be built by Airbus

Airbus, the European aerospace giant, has won a contract to build 900 communications satellites for OneWeb's global high-speed satellite internet service. OneWeb appears to be on target to launch 700 of the satellites in 2018. Both Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Qualcomm are still on board as major investors, with the project expected to cost somewhere between £1.3 and £1.9 billion ($2-3 billion). SpaceX (with funding from Google) is also looking to compete in this same space, but its constellation isn't due until at least 2020.

If OneWeb doesn't sound familiar, don't worry, you're not going crazy: the company used to be called WorldVu. OneWeb was founded by Greg Wyler, who previously founded the satellite internet company O3b.

Where O3b provides access via eight satellites in medium Earth orbit (an altitude of 5000mi/8000km), OneWeb will use 700 satellites in low Earth orbit (500mi/800km altitude). The primary advantage of low-altitude satellites is that round-trip latency is much lower: O3b round-trip latency is about 240ms, while OneWeb could be as low as 50ms (just about comparable to your home ADSL connection).

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