Liquid Partners Eutelsat in Competition with Starlink
With one stroke of a pen, Liquid can claim to cover 100% of Zimbabwe and all the other countries it operates in.
Liquid Partners Eutelsat in Competition with Starlink
It took a while for Zimbabwe to get on the satellite internet bandwagon (low earth orbit) but the door is ajar now. In the space of a week we got Liquid Intelligent Technologies announcing their partnership with Eutelsat and Starlink getting licensed.
We talked about the Starlink deal and there is still more to discuss there. Would Liquid have partnered OneWeb had Starlink not applied to operate in Zimbabwe? Probably, but I’d wager that deal was years away. I believe this deal was rushed to get in front of the Starlink announcement.
OneWeb solves the coverage problem for Liquid. Laying fibre networks is expensive and time consuming and to date, most Zimbabweans do not have access to fibre internet. OneWeb’s LEO network has global coverage and that’s huge for Liquid.
Liquid Partners Eutelsat in Competition with Starlink
Satellites are more expensive, Elon Musk said it would take about $10 billion to fully deploy and operationalise Starlink’s LEO network. Estimates say OneWeb’s network cost around $3.4 billion.
We don’t know exactly how much Liquid has spent on its infrastructure but we can be confident it’s not that high. However, when you consider that the satellite options have a global coverage, they turn out cheaper per region.
So, with one stroke of a pen, Liquid can claim to cover 100% of Zimbabwe and all the other countries it operates in.
OneWeb has always been different from Starlink in that it primarily seeks out business to business opportunities, like the Liquid one. OneWeb partners intermediaries that distribute and resell its services.
