Eutelsat finally disclosed a two-day outage on its OneWeb LEO satellite constellation that began on December 31. The outage may have been caused by software locking the timing between terminals and the satellite constellation.
Eutelsat Group rang in the new year with an extensive outage that began on the last day of 2024 and lasted two days.
Following requests for comment from Light Reading on December 31, Eutelsat finally replied this morning with the following:
"Eutelsat experienced a temporary, 48-hour outage on its OneWeb Low Orbit service, commencing on 31st December 2024," the prepared statement said.
"The root cause was identified as a software issue within the ground segment. Eutelsat was fully mobilized and worked with the vendor to restore full service while maintaining a constant dialogue with affected customers. The constellation is operating nominally once again."
A story in Space Intel Report on Thursday (January 2) said the outage was related to a software issue in which the ground network failed "to account for the fact that 2024 was a Leap Year."
A Light Reading source has said EchoStar's Hughes Network Systems is the software provider for terminals (modems) and hubs at Eutelsat's more than 20 ground stations.
During the outage, sources close to the situation say Eutelsat wasn't forthcoming about the severity of the issues and said that this constellation "has been plagued with technical problems" for a while.
Light Reading has contacted EchoStar for comment; we'll update this story if they respond.
'Subsequent issues'
One satellite industry vendor who asked not to be named in this story said the OneWeb low-Earth orbit satellites (LEOs) may be online, but not all are consistently passing traffic as of Thursday morning. "We are still seeing subsequent issues," the vendor said.
That's not a great look, given Starlink's and others' global competitive push into the LEO space. Due to the prolonged outage, it's also unclear how many paid service level agreements Eutelsat may now be responsible for resolving.
The Eutelsat Group was established in 2023 when Eutelsat merged with OneWeb. That brought together a single operator with geostationary (GEO) and LEO satellites in the same fleet. The company runs 35 GEO satellites and a LEO constellation with hundreds of satellites.
The company's shares have lost over 50% of their value in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, Eutelsat continues to upgrade and expand its LEO fleet to improve coverage and throughput and eventually unlock more connectivity revenue.
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