OneWeb, an French-owned company currently has 628 satellites in low Earth orbit, according to the website N2yo.com.
By comparison, Starlink has almost 7,000. OneWeb’s satellites, however, circle Earth in a somewhat higher orbit but could probably also integrate geostationary satellites from its parent company Eutelsat.
This allows them to cover a larger area per satellite than Starlink their U.S. competitors, but also causes a small loss in latency, which is the speed at with data travels between the satellite and the receiver.
Andreas Knopp, professor of information processing at the Bundeswehr University Munich, told Handelsblatt that OneWeb’s satellites are outdated. “Eutelsat can only provide limited assistance with time-critical satellite connections, which are urgently needed directly on the front lines,” Knopp said
