SpaceX and OneWeb bury the satellite constellation hatchet A letter has been filed with America's communications watchdog confirming that SpaceX and OneWeb, which are building mega-constellations of broadband satellites, are content to play nicely. The letter sweeps all the unpleasantness between the two neatly under the rug "after extensive good-faith coordination discussions." …
I always thought it was to support Roscosmos. Roscosmos had a large number of Soyuz rockets under construction to launch OneWeb satellites but the money to pay for them evaporated when OneWeb went bankrupt.
For GPS to work, the receiver must be able to see at least four satellites each sufficiently above the horizon to avoid the signal going through lots of atmosphere and each in very different parts of the sky. This means the satellites must spread their signal over almost half the planet instead of just the area beneath them. A broadband satellite concentrates its signal on the area beneath it. A broadband receiver focuses its antenna at the patch of sky with the nearest satellite in it. A GPS receiver needs to receive signals from most of the sky.
The wide spread and lack of focus means that GPS requires more power than a satellite can practically provide. The extra power comes from amplification by the atmosphere - which only works in some narrow frequency bands. If OneWeb had got a world wide allocation for a GPS band it would have hit the news.
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