What Eutelsat’s 2-Day Outage Says About LEO Satellite Service Resiliency

This post was originally published on Network Computing

A ground system software bug caused a two-day outage last week of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite operator OneWeb’s broadband service. This comes as the company begins to expand its portfolio of services to enterprise and government customers internationally this spring.

OneWeb, which also operates a fleet of higher-flying 35 geostationary (GEO) satellites, said the disruption was caused by a failure to account for 2024 being a leap year, according to parent firm Eutelsat. The disruption began Dec. 31.

To worsen matters, OneWeb could not redirect traffic to the GEO satellites because customers did not have terminals to support LEO/GEO functions. All active OneWeb customers were affected by the extended outage.

EchoStar’s Hughes Network Systems is the supplier of the software for OneWeb’s terminals and key operational hubs at more than 20 teleports and Earth stations around the globe.

OneWeb expects to have the remaining four out of 42 of the remaining gateways completed by midyear. As far as compensation for the outage, the spokesperson said, “some customers with minimum service level clauses in their contracts will be eligible for compensation.”

What’s next for Eutelsat?

LEO satellites fly closest to the planet, followed by older Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) birds and the highest-flying Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO)

Read the rest of this post, which was originally published on Network Computing.

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