Britain and India’s Bharti win auction for OneWeb satellite company

Britain has joined forces with India’s Bharti Global to buy the collapsed satellite operator OneWeb, with the two sides pledging $1 billion between them to develop a constellation that could boost broadband and other services.

Under the deal announced on Friday, Britain will invest $500 million and take a significant equity share in OneWeb while Bharti will invest the same amount and provide commercial and operational leadership.

The deal means the two sides will be pitted against Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the race to build low earth orbit satellites to provide high-bandwidth and low-latency communications services.

“Our access to a global fleet of satellites has the potential to connect millions of people worldwide to broadband, many for the first time,” Business Secretary Alok Sharma said.