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Satellites Providing Internet To the 'Under-Connected'
Taco Cowboy writes "Today, a Russian Soyuz rocket shot the first 4 of 12 satellites in a new constellation that are designed to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to people in nearly 180 'under-connected' countries. The orbiters, part of a project dubbed O3b for the 'other 3 billion' people with restricted Internet access, were built by the Franco-Italian company Thales Alenia Space. They will orbit at 8,062 km and will weigh only 650 kilogrammes (1,400 pounds) each. 'There are already geostationary satellites providing this type of services, but at a prohibitive cost for many end-users. Existing satellites generally obit at an altitude of some 36,000 kilometres (22,000 miles) above Earth, weigh in at a hefty four to six tonnes each, and take much longer to bounce a signal back to Earth—about 500 milliseconds to be exact, according to an O3b document.
"It is such a long delay that people speaking over a satellite link will shorten conversations, interactive web has an extremely poor experience and many web-based software programmes just won't function." Crucially, they will communicate with Earth four times faster, said the company, and six would be enough to assure permanent coverage. "O3b's prices will be 30 — 50 percent less than traditional satellite services," said the document. ... Launch company Arianespace, which will put the satellites in orbit, said the O3b constellation will combine "the global reach of satellite coverage with the speed of a fiber-optic network." ... The next four satellites will be launched within weeks, according to Arianespace, and a final four "backup" orbiters early next year.'"
Here's another similar plan hatched by a Canadian company .
Satellites Providing Internet.. man That's So Cool.. Wish our country would able to get that service ..
Teledesic, Iridium, Globalstar, Orbcomm
Have gnu, will travel.
I was wondering when bandwidth would be available to those of us that live south of downtown.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Do the "Other Three Billion" really not have TV and radio? It seems like it'd be a lot more reliable to license space at existing antenna sites. Yeah you have to visit a lot of mountains and towers; but the whole thing isn't riding on a few space shots, and local companies could do it for you then you just grow by acquiring the local companies. I knew a guy who was doing this in rural Maryland. It's called a WISP. He did it for a few $100 to cover a few dozen people. It might have even made a small profit; but AFAIK he was more concerned about just getting connectivity for himself and his neighbors. He was a bank official and had bigger fish to fry.
Or highly successful ones like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesat
Google is trying something similar. Not from space though, but the stratosphere. Project Loon www.google.com/loon.
The private investors are just the public face of this venture.
Their accounts receivables are insured against loss by the French government. This is a way for the French government to partially subsidize its own aerospace industry (in this case, the satellites are made by a French and an Italian joint effort), and at the same it's a way to control which war lords/governments in Congo, Ivory Coast, Mali, or Syria get free satellite internet access, and which war lords/governments in those parts of the world do not.
In other words, this infrastructure is a way to buy yourself some influence in those parts of the world (where French influence has been slowly shrinking otherwise).
Today, a Russian Soyuz rocket shot the first 4 of 12 satellites
Well that's not a good start. Unless, of course, you meant "launched."
They will orbit at 8,062 km and will weigh only 650 kilogrammes
Science fail!
about 500 milliseconds to be exact
Well, which is it? About 500ms or exactly 500ms?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers from but europasat in the UK lists offers for sattelite internet on a pay as you go basis for £7 per gigabyte and you can get a lower cost per gigabyte by committing to a certain number of gigabytes per month. That seems to be in the same ballpark as cellular services.
Maratime and mobile sattelite internet services are far more expensive but afaict they are still not anywhere near the prices you give.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The former. Each ground station will have (at least) 2 antennas that will track the O3b satellites as they pass overhead.
Teledesic, Iridium, Globalstar, Orbcomm
If God wanted us to communicate via satellites, he'd give us faster photons.
Ezekiel 23:20
Geostationary sats are exactly what they're trying to avoid.
Ezekiel 23:20
Objects "in orbit" around the Earth are actually falling freely to the Earth. But thanks to the very large horizontal component in their motion, orbiting objects always overshoot the horizon and thus stay in orbit.
Such objects have no "weight", because weight is defined as, F=mg, a force F exerted by an object with mass m in a gravity field g, resting on a surface preventing the object from falling freely.
The mass of an object is thus independent of gravity, but it's "weight" is just an artifact imposed by surface constraints, and can vary greatly.
In theory round trip latency should be 53ms. ( (8062km *1000) / 299792.458 = 26.8ms one way). That is almost a factor of 10 better than current satellite offerings. It may even make games playable.
Silence is a state of mime.
I actually RTFA and couldn't find a list of the "180 under connected countries" but as a satellite internet customer for several years the US should be on the list.
My Stats: ~900 ms latancy, 1.5 MBit, daily cap of 300 MB download, all for 3x the price of the lowest cable or DSL plan not available in my area.
It's amazing how all the telecom companies talk about providing great service until you live a mile and a half down a dead end road they have no plan to ever run lines down (Cable), or you are too far from the nearest DSLAM for DSL.
Hmm... since when do we use lasers for uplink/downlink?
Why would you use lasers when you have microwaves?
Ezekiel 23:20
Let's not exagerate.
French government indeed probably helped its industry through an export insurance scheme that somehow, in certain conditions, will allow Thales (the sat builder) not to die if the exchange rate become very wrong -but that's all they did, and the US are doing exactly the same now (they just started this kind of change insurance trick after France)
So, "yes and no": yes French gov.t (like now the US) found a way to insure export change rates, which helped Thales winning the O3B contract here. :-D
But no, there just isn't such a think as hidden french influence bought in Africa: O3B is simply not a french company -indeed I think the CEO is american: actually it may well turn into an US way of influencing Africa if any
And back to Thales, they also didn't just miraculously win thanks to their gov.t help: they are also the *only* company having developed, and deployed, three other constellations: Globalstar 1, Globalstar 2, and Iridium. So, they know the art, and the others don't.
You can call this almost a monopoly if you hate France so much, but it's a monopoly they managed to build. By themselves.
Herve S.
Well I'm a bit more optimistic, based on the current offers from geostationary satellites in Europe.
Like you I remember the times when having a sat connection meant both a sci-fi hardware à la James Bond and a terrible monthly rate, but being a camper van user I've carefully kept an eye on this these last years and, considering for instance the Eutelsat offers in Europe (which admittedly have a very bad lag, coming from GEO orbits), their cost lies around no more than twice the ordinary ADSL city connection here: something definitely accessible for almost anyone living in "the remote farm".
Based on this, I somehow expect O3B costing to lie in a relatively close area: too high for switching when living in a city, but actually reachable "in the outland" --or else they'll just push customers to Eutelsat...
Herve S.
I'm pretty sure he was referring to latency due to speed of light limitations. Satellite internet has very high latency, and there is no fixing it. 22,000 miles up, then 22,500 miles down