The Race To Put The Internet In Orbit

OneWeb has sent the first of its small signal-beaming satellites into space

- Jeff Muskus

Richard Branson had snuck off into the corner of the room to buy a peaceful moment, but his scraggly blond mane and thick goatee are the opposite of a disguise. One by one, people approach, apologize for approaching, then rotate their bodies into a hug as they raise their phones for their obligatory photos. Branson can’t escape the steady stream of selfie takers, even at another company’s rocket launch.

The other company is OneWeb, a satellite maker that’s raised more than $2 billion from Branson’s Virgin Group and the likes of SoftBank, Coca-Cola, and Airbus to build a “space internet.” The idea is to fire an estimated 1,980 satellites into orbit to beam signals below. On Feb. 27, Branson was one of a couple hundred spectators who joined OneWeb founder Greg Wyler at the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Kourou, French Guiana, to watch the first six satellites leave Earth.

Wyler started OneWeb in 2012 and persuaded Branson to help bankroll it soon after, when the two were palling around on the British mogul’s Necker Island. While satellites have been used to relay internet data for decades, the existing services are slow and expensive, because the conventional sedan-size models are unwieldy, run on outdated technology, and orbit the Earth at about 18,500 miles up, making coverage spotty. Wyler’s pitch: Use more advanced gear to put thousands of cheaper satellites the size of washing machines into orbit 750 miles above the planet. In theory, the larger network of satellites should cover everybody, including the more than 3 billion people who can’t yet be reached by high-speed fiber optics.