O3b 'fibre in the sky' project wins financial backing
Credit: BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
By Jonathan Amos
o3b hopes that its satellites will provide broadband services to three billion people
The financing has been secured for one of the most ambitious commercial space projects of the decade.
O3b Networks has raised $1.2bn (£700m) for a series of satellites to support super-fast broadband connections to Africa and other emerging markets.
The spacecraft will act as backhaul, linking the traffic of local telecoms and internet service providers to the global fibre infrastructure.
O3b has its headquarters in Jersey, Channel Islands.
The company informed the markets early on Monday that a collection of investors and banks would provide the money it needed to launch the venture's first eight satellites.
These will be constructed by Thales Alenia Space at its manufacturing facility in Cannes, with the first platforms ready to go into orbit in the first half of 2013.
Russian Soyuz rockets will launch the satellites from the new Sinamary spaceport in French Guiana.
O3b's largest debt facility, some $510m, is being provided by HSBC, ING, CA-CIB and Dexia. This is underwritten by the French export credit agency, Coface, which has been extremely active recently in supporting big space projects involving Thales Alenia.
O3b stands for "other three billion", a moniker for the number of people in the world said to have inadequate broadband internet access.
One of the reasons for this inadequacy is the absence in many regions of a backbone of super-fast fibre-optic-cable connections. O3b's vision is to provide a "fibre in the sky" alternative with a constellation of high-throughput satellites.
This constellation will be put in a Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) about 8,000km above the equator, providing coverage around the globe to a latitude of plus and minus 45 Degrees.
Each 700kg satellite will operate in the high-frequency Ka-band of the radio spectrum.
They will sport 12 steerable antennas to link customers to O3b's eight ground stations from where traffic can be fed into the fibre network that underpins the internet in the developed world. O3b's intention is to put 20 satellites in orbit eventually.
Announcing the new equity, Mark Rigolle, the chief executive of O3b Networks, said: "This has allowed us to secure our funding and to achieve our goal of reaching the billions who have so far been poorly served or completely cut off from the internet - the greatest business and information resource of our time."
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Credit: BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
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