Internet satellite company OneWeb — the poster child for SoftBank 's pledge to President Donald Trump to invest billions of dollars in the U.S. — will open a "high volume" factory that will build three satellites per day, CEO Greg Wyler told "Squawk Alley" on Friday.
The factory will be on NASA property in Florida, and start operating this year, Wyler said.
SoftBank said in December that it would invest $1 billion in OneWeb, taking a 40 percent stake. With that investment, Wyler said the company would create 3,000 new high-tech, highly skilled manufacturing and engineering jobs.
At its new facility, the company will produce satellites to expand internet access in the U.S. and globally, he said.
The U.S. would do well to emulate Japan when it comes to building sophisticated infrastructure, he said. Getting internet access everywhere should be a priority or the country will end up with "rural brain drain," he said.
"If you don't have internet you can't build a company, you can't have a good education and the kids just leave," he said.
Getting a high-speed broadband pipe which OneWeb is also building to all the rural areas in the U.S. — including far-flung parts of Alaska — will give rise to new opportunities for Americans and improve U.S. manufacturing jobs, he said.
"It also elevates people so that they can create their own jobs and their own small and local manufacturing opportunities," he said.
Wyler is not concerned about potential changes to net neutrality rules or how the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will handle broadband regulation since the company is aimed at providing internet access to the more than 50 percent of the U.S. with no internet access as well as other nations, he said.
"OneWeb is about connecting rural populations in rural America," he said. "They're now sitting with zero options."
Correction — The headline to this article misstated the source of the investment in OneWeb. It was a direct investment from SoftBank Group.