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Google To Spend $1 Billion On Fleet of Satellites
An anonymous reader writes "Google is planning to spend over $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions around the world. 'The projected price ranges from about $1 billion to more than $3 billion, the people familiar with the project said, depending on the network's final design and a later phase that could double the number of satellites. Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise. Google's project is the latest effort by a Silicon Valley company to extend Internet coverage from the sky to help its business on the ground. Google and Facebook Inc. are counting on new Internet users in underserved regions to boost revenue, and ultimately, earnings. "Google and Facebook are trying to figure out ways of reaching populations that thus far have been unreachable," said Susan Irwin, president of Irwin Communications Inc., a satellite-communications research firm. "Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access."'"
Only when they complete some sort of "giant data laser" will people wise up, maybe.
Kind of like a social network of satellites :)
Seriously, this makes a lot of sense. At the low altitudes that these will fly, the power necessary to reach the satellites will be much lower than geosynchronous or even Iridium satellites. Mass producing small satellites probably is cheaper than building a few big ones, as well.
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Said Elon Musk, perking up.
There are a lot of places here in the US, where even basic DSL or cellular service is fairly hard to come by, and if one goes with a conventional satellite provider, it becomes very expensive very fast.
This is something that I have high hopes for... done right, and assuming the uplink/downlink antennas are not too expensive, this would allow a baseline of Internet access in a whole region. Latency is "meh", but it is a lot better than what a lot of places have right now.
They've brought a surprising amount of electrical power - first wired, now often solar - to remote parts of the globe simply because refrigeration helps them sell enough more product to make the investment worthwhile. This can be quite a good thing if the infrastructure remains open enough.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
So I know where this might be going.
Have you read my blog lately?
Sounds an awful lot like Iridium satellites: cell phone connectivity in the middle of nowhere. Their business plan must have overlooked that there is hardly anyone in the middle of nowhere, so they went bankrupt. The primary result is satellite flashes (iridium flares) that are brighter than Venus.
A few companies have proposed this type of system, most notably ICO Global Communications. It hasn't ended well.
Granted, Google is a much more established company than some collection of venture capitalists, but manufacturing, launching and managing constellations of satellites is extremely complex. You can't do it alone and at least one company along the way will over-promise and under-deliver. That stalls the overall program and problems just snowball from there.
Google obviously has experience managing some mapping satellites, but scaling up to dozens and hundreds is not straightforward.
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Depends on the orbit, if it is a very low orbit, say 180km altitude, the latency will be 4*180000m/c=2.4ms. Note that this assumed that both the user and the ground segment station are covered by the same satellite. if the sat needs to relay to other satellites the latency will obviously increase, but thats not different than latency through fiber optic cables, you just need slightly longer distances since the satellite is at a higher altitude than the ground below it, but only little compared to the radius of the earth.
Their exclusive contracts with the existing infrastructure. Oh, we're an open town - I can change providers any time I like, but it requires moving to a new house.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I think you might be surprised at some of the case studies surrounding mobile/cell phone use in central Africa.
here's a study from Tufts showing farmers in Ghana establishing the market price for crops, and labourers searching for job opportunities.
There's lots of more recent coverage too if you do some Google searches.
Certainly not. These are very small satellites, probably will be launched something like 20 at a time. Maybe 9 orbital planes with 20 satellites each?
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I don't think a Billion is enough to do much more than a proof of concept. Google is going to have to pony up a few more bills or this will be a huge boondoggle. But if anybody has the money it's Google.
Next up will be the purchase of the spectrum space needed for this. I'm thinking LightSquared has some licenses they could get by talking to the bankruptcy judge..
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Why didn't they just buy ViaSat, their space and ground segments, and their Exede brand? Charlie Ergen isn't going to sell HughesNet anytime soon.
It must be nice for your stock to be so excessively overvalued to have so much money to throw around on all these ancillary projects.
Kriston
Some poor people are poor because they always buy what you're selling.
Most of Iridium NEXT will go up starting next year with ten per launch on a Falcon 9. The deal will be half a billion dollars for seven launches. There will also be a Dnepr launch of two more, probably the first two to go up. So half that billion for launch costs leaves you with another half billion at the low end for hardware. Plus, Iridium has been up 16 years, so the basic patents are going to expire soon.
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The cheap bastards. If they'd added a couple of billions, they could have gotten a headphone company.
Very unlikely to be in geosynchronous orbit, which is a long way away - about 20, 000 miles compared to Low Earth Orbit at 120 miles or so. Inverse square law means that both ends would need much more power. Handing from one station to another on the fly is a solved problem.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Google just bought Titan Aerospace, which builds and sells solar powered airplanes that can fly for 5 years straight. In theory they would intercept the satellite transmission and then beam the signal down to "the last mile", or in this case last 40,000 ft.
moox. for a new generation.
These satellites will orbit over the same areas served by the geosynchronous satellites used by Hughes Net and Wild Blue. If Google can beat their prices that's millions more potential customers. I know I'm sick of a 475 Mb daily cap for $80 a month.
The Iridium satellites do not offer high speed internet access. They were designed for very low data rate phone calls (they use AMBE encoding at 2.4Kbps) and SMS. They also offer data services but they operate at the same 2.4Kbps speed as voice. Globalstar does slightly better at 9.6Kbps.
Currently in the US, the best satellite internet service available is through the current generation of EchoStar geostationary satellites. Those offer speeds up to 15Mbps but suffer from the long latency that is inherent to geostationary orbit; packets have to travel at least 45,000 miles to go from Earth to satellite and back. HughesNet, WildBlue, and dishNET are all selling service on those satellites.
O3b Networks is currently in the process of deploying eight middle-Earth-orbit (8,000km, about 5,000 miles) satellites for Internet service; four are already in orbit and four more are scheduled to launch in July. Their main focus is on serving parts of the world with little or no internet access (the name is derived from "other 3 billion), and they offer their services primarily to local ISPs, not directly to consumers. I believe the cost of the earth equipment is too high for individuals though it might be acceptable for corporations. They claim to be planning to offer speeds up to 1.6Gbps. No price information is publicly listed.
Teledesic was a planned competitor to Iridium that never got off the ground (grin).
The Google satellite system will be useful if it happens and if the pricing is acceptable. Unlike O3B, I believe they plan to offer service directly to individuals; the low-earth-orbit satellites they plan to use should require less costly ground equipment.