SoftBank said that it will offer eight service plans for businesses and government agencies
Japanese telecom operator SoftBank has struck a deal with Eutelsat Group to offer satellite connectivity services. The carrier said that it plans to launch those services this December, leveraging Eutelsat OneWeb’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network.
SoftBank expects to offer eight different service plans with “high communication speeds and low latency,” under the Eutelsat OneWeb name, to businesses, government agencies and local governments in Japan.
SoftBank said that the plans will include options with both bandwidth and speed guarantees, along with best-effort services that will feature downlink speeds up to 195 Mbps and uplink speeds of up to 32 Mbps.
SoftBank noted in a blog post that as of early July, it had acquired a blanket license for operating infrastructure including Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) earth stations and mobile earth stations, which it said was a first for a Japan-based telecom operator. Eutelsat OneWeb also was granted a gateway station license from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ (MIC) in early August, setting the stage for operations.
“Eutelsat OneWeb will help SoftBank promote digital transformation for businesses and local governments in Japan. The service will herald a new era in secure, ubiquitous connectivity services,” said Masakatsu Kawahara, head of the Communication Service Division at SoftBank’s Enterprise Unit, in a statement on the launch.
Eutelsat Group, which took over OneWeb in 2023, intends to be a LEO rival to Starlink, with the bonus of GEO satellite capabilities. When the company announced its most recent results in early August, Eva Berneke, CEO of Eutelsat Communications, said that despite the operational roll-out of OneWeb LEO services being “more challenging than anticipated,” the company was “now on track in terms of target coverage” and expected to see continued growth from OneWeb in the coming year.
For SoftBank’s part, the move into NTN services is in line with its comprehensive “Ubiquitous Network” strategy to build a network with non-terrestrial reach that can provide connectivity “anywhere in the world.” Softbank has steadily built NTN assets over the past few years, particularly in the HAPS space.
HAPS stands for High-Altitude Platform Station, although they are also sometimes referred to as High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites. HAPS carry telecom payloads and can provide stratosphere-based connectivity to devices on the ground. So far, HAPS have been used largely for temporary coverage, such as during disaster recovery, but companies working in the space hope to use them for more enduring and reliable coverage in unconnected areas.
In the last several years, SoftBank has started a joint venture known as HAPSMobile, acquired Project Loon intellectual property when parent company Alphabet wound down that stratospheric communications initiative, and has participated in various tests to prove out HAPS-based capabilities, including a test of 5G HAPS connectivity in Rwanda in late 2023. The mobile network operator also acquired Cubic Telecom in late 2023, with an eye to connecting vehicles via NTN technology.
