US DoD signs as OneWeb's first Polar customer

It's an extremely proud moment to announce OneWeb signing its first contract with a Government customer.

This major milestone in OneWeb's journey deserves a shoutout of thanks to all involved for their hard work in securing this historic deal with the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL)- an agreement which will see OneWeb delivering Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications to armed forces operating in the Arctic and beyond.

Partnered with Hughes Network Systems - OneWeb's partner and market leader in satellite and multi-transport technologies, the agreement will bring LEO SATCOM services to an area of the Arctic, an area of the World which has traditionally suffered from extremely poor levels in connectivity.

The contract is testament to the hard work of OneWeb’s Government Team and our partners, just months after the company was bought out by the UK Government, Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Global, Softbank and Hughes Network Systems in November 2020.

Our contract with AFRL will see armed forces in the Arctic connected to strategic locations around the World through OneWeb’s network of global gateways and user terminals designed by Intellian.

Hughes will be responsible for the testing and implementation of end-to-end services between selected US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) locations to prove high speed, low latency connectivity using Initial Operating Capability (IOC) of OneWeb’s Global Connectivity Platform- a 648-strong constellation of LEO satellites.

Working together with Hughes, we will bridge the gap in connectivity for NORTHCOM with an interoperable and secure solution, critical to the support of multi-domain operations in the Arctic and beyond.

OneWeb IOC is uniquely positioned to support the US Department of Defense’s 2019 Arctic Strategy which calls for the ability of armed forces operating above the 50th Parallel to rapidly “identify threats; respond promptly and effectively to those threats; and shape the security environment to mitigate the prospect of those threats in the future”.

It will ensure data throughput up to 195Mbps and latency levels lower than 50ms to armed forces operating on land, in the air and at sea in the Arctic- a capability which has up until now, proven almost impossible.

IOC will support armed forces conducting the full spectrum of mission sets ranging from intelligence-gathering and direct action through to humanitarian aid/disaster relief (HADR) and search and rescue (SAR), providing them with optimal levels in domain and situation awareness.

It will also support the theatre-wide connectivity of forward-deployed small unit teams; fixed and deployed operations centers; early warning system sites; and surface vessels throughout the region.

Support of our DoD customer will be further enhanced through OneWeb’s agreement on 10 May to acquire SATCOM application specialist TrustComm.

TrustComm, established in 1999 specializes in combining satellite and terrestrial communication systems into fully interoperable networks, providing customers with best-fit and customized end-to-end connectivity solutions.

OneWeb’s acquisition of TrustComm allows us to rapidly scale SATCOM services to the DoD as they look to integrate high throughput, low latency solutions to meet new connectivity demands.

We look forward to providing the DoD with truly game-changing levels in connectivity across the Arctic as we provide the armed forces with assured, resilient and mission-critical voice and data communications anywhere and at anytime.