LONDON – OneWeb, the satellite communications company whose mission is to bring connectivity to governments, businesses, and people everywhere, starting with the Arctic and including Canada, announced Friday it has entered into a sale agreement with a consortium led by HMG (through the U.K. secretary of state for business, energy, and industrial strategy) and Bharti Global Limited.
The bid, filed in connection with its court-supervised sale process, is designed to “capitalize the company sufficiently as a going concern to effectuate the full end-to-end deployment of the OneWeb system,” reads the release.
Following a competitive process (which reportedly included Canada’s Telesat as a competing bidder), the consortium’s winning bid “represents a strong offer that will enable OneWeb to successfully emerge from the Chapter 11 process with a robust foundation on which to continue its progress towards commercial operations and secure OneWeb’s position as a global leader in low latency connectivity,” adds the release.
Bharti, through Bharti Airtel, is the third largest mobile operator in the world, with over 425 million customers and has its own mobile broadband networks and enterprise business, which will act as the testing ground for all OneWeb products, services, and applications, says the announcement.
Bharti will contribute significant contract value to OneWeb through its presence across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the terrain necessitates the use of satellite-based connectivity, providing a near-term anchor customer for large-scale global deployment of OneWeb’s services, reads the release.
The transaction remains subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, as well as regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2020. Financial terms weren’t disclosed in the press release, but a BBC report says the U.K. government is contributing US$500 million to the deal.
For more, please click here.
