Partnership provides for use of new satellite for corporate market
01/26/2023
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Rafael Guimarães — Foto: Silvia Costanti/Valor
U.S.-based Hughes will team up with British company OneWeb to offer a low-latency satellite communications service in Brazil, targeting the corporate market, starting in the second half of the year. The technology to be used is the same as that used by billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink: a constellation of low-orbit satellites. This is a group of satellites that orbit the Earth in sync. The technology makes it possible, for example, to offer mobile services via satellite, which in practice means Internet access on planes, ships, and buses.
Hughes was a founding investor in OneWeb and continues to hold a stake in the company. Other OneWeb’s shareholders include the British government, Japan’s SoftBank, and French satellite operator Eutelsat.
Hughes has been in Brazil for 55 years and uses three geostationary satellites to provide services in the country. This type of satellite rotates in the same direction and at the same speed as the Earth. Therefore, although it is in motion, it appears to remain stationary in an orbit 36,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. This distance causes the communication signal to take almost 0.5 seconds to travel to the satellite and back to Earth. It may not seem like much, but this time lapse is a deterrent to providing some types of services in the banking industry, for example.
Low-orbit satellites, on the other hand, are 600 kilometers away from Earth and therefore have a response time comparable to that of fiber optics, said Rafael Guimarães, CEO of Hughes do Brasil. “The OneWeb constellation will be complete and operational by the second half of the year,” the executive said. Last year, Hughes and OneWeb signed an initial partnership to serve the Indian market. And now, in a second phase, they have signed an agreement to provide service across the Americas, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.
Unlike Starlink, which offers Internet access plans for individuals, Hughes will focus its commercial efforts on businesses and governments. “We have no plans to use our constellation to serve individuals,” said Mr. Guimaraes. The executive said it would be “wasteful” to use the network to provide broadband access to residential customers, as it is prepared to meet the requirements and specifics of the enterprise market.
Since 2016, Hughes has offered a satellite broadband service for end users (B2C) in Brazil, but its customer base in this segment has been shrinking. At the end of November last year, the operator had 208,300 subscribers in this category (individuals), according to data from the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel), down 26% from November 2020, when it had 281,700 subscribers.
“We reached our maximum capacity very early on. In order to continue providing this service with quality, we reduced the number of subscribers,” said Mr. Guimarães, adding that each satellite has a fixed data transmission capacity. Broadband users, in general, tend to consume more and more data.
To continue growing in this segment, Hughes expected to launch Jupiter 3, the fourth satellite to help serve the Brazilian market, last year. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused the launch to be postponed. This is because the U.S. government now has priority in the launches.
Now Jupiter 3 is expected to be in space by the middle of this year. The satellite will have a total capacity of 600 gigabits per second to serve the Americas. Mr. Guimarães does not reveal how much of that capacity will be dedicated to Brazil. “It will be a big chunk,” the executive said.
*By Rodrigo Carro — Rio de Janeiro
Source: Valor International