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Facebook May Have Secret Plans To Build a Satellite-Based Internet (ieee.org)
Public filings suggest the social media giant is quietly developing orbital tech to rival efforts by SpaceX and OneWeb to deliver Internet by satellite. From a report: A filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week revealed details of a multi-million dollar experimental satellite from a stealthy company called PointView Tech LLC. The satellite, named Athena, will deliver data 10 times faster than SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites, the first of which launched in February. However, PointView appears to exist only on paper. In fact, the tiny company seems to be a new subsidiary of Facebook, formed last year to keep secret the social media giant's plans to storm space.
Many technology companies believe the future of the Internet is orbital. Around half the people on the planet lack a broadband Internet connection, particularly those who live in rural areas and developing nations. SpaceX aims to put nearly 12,000 Starlinks into low Earth orbit (LEO), to deliver gigabit-speed Internet to most of the Earth's surface. Rival OneWeb, funded by Japan's SoftBank, chipmaker Qualcomm, and Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans similar global coverage using perhaps 2,500 LEO satellites. Further reading: Facebook's free walled-garden internet program ended quietly in Myanmar, several other places last year.
Many technology companies believe the future of the Internet is orbital. Around half the people on the planet lack a broadband Internet connection, particularly those who live in rural areas and developing nations. SpaceX aims to put nearly 12,000 Starlinks into low Earth orbit (LEO), to deliver gigabit-speed Internet to most of the Earth's surface. Rival OneWeb, funded by Japan's SoftBank, chipmaker Qualcomm, and Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans similar global coverage using perhaps 2,500 LEO satellites. Further reading: Facebook's free walled-garden internet program ended quietly in Myanmar, several other places last year.
Now instead of merely sharing SOME of our personal data with FB, we can share EVERY BYTE of it with FB. I know *I'm* stoked...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This could be the end of national firewall based censorship. You can't keep Facebook out of a country if citizens can pull data from the sky.
Global gig speed internet is all well and good, but no self-respecting yak herder is going to accept sky high ping times.
Nothing posted to
Is there any way they can be shot down without exacerbating Kessler Syndrome? Even if not, if the alternative is Facebook becoming the defacto owner of internet access, a few centuries without spaceflight might be worth it...
Yeah right. 2500 satellites, even at ten-per-launch, is 250 launches. Even at "only" $20 million a launch, that's $5 billion...not even counting cost of the satellites.
Plus 25 launches a year forever after just to replace the ten percent of satellites in the constellation that one can bank will go on fritz annually. And upgrades. Oh boy. Everyone 8G or whatever on the ground? Time for another...2500 satellites.
How that's cheaper than fiber endpoint -> cellular I don't know.
Then what? *all* traffic goes through Facebook servers. I don't see anything wrong with a company whose whole reason for being is to sell as much data about the public as it can having the capability to sniff all traffic at a provider level. Do you?
I can't wait for the law to catch up to this bullshit and finally start breaking apart the media/internet stovepipes.
SkyNet anyone?
Be or ben't
Global deployment of Band 72?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I thought Elon scuttled Facebook's evil satellite internet plans when he scuttled their satellite.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't want to used a walled and fenced spying network.
Sure it may be what we are forced to use in the future regardless but I don't want it.
You can donate money to your own campaign, yes. In fact Trumps entire campaign was financed by his own money and he didn't accept any donations... oops, sorry I forgot that was just one of his lies. There are just so many, it can be hard to keep track of them.
So, anyway, yeah, you can donate to your own campaign. Having a third party do it undeclared through a special corporation the set up for one payment, then paying them back through structured, deniable, undeclared partial payments is a bit more dubious. Especially when you feel the need to lie about the payment.
... with blackjack, and hookers.
... or at least, farmVille blackjack, and targeted ads with the promise of hookers but actually only subliminally delivering politically suggestive ideas based on mined data of unsuspecting users.
... actually forget the blackjack, and the hookers.
Given what we have learned recently of how FB datamines you and most everything on line via app that captures ur text's and links on pages that let them track you. Is anyone really willing to use internet provided by them so they can now watch EVERYTHING you do regardless if you use their site anymore? They loved the tid bit that data they have on people belongs to them less it wasn't associated to them yet which means FB owns it and you have 0 say if and when its deleted. This question could be asked of google fiber users now given how much both those companies impacted elections far more then Russia could ever hope to dream of.
Band 72 would be terrestrial.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The problem with satellite internet is that you can either provide access to the service to everyone on earth or no one. There is no way to do cost saving and make service available to US or China. This means that initial cost will be very high. But then you get global coverage as well. In the past, the cost would have been too high compared to number of users, but now it is not so. With 4 billion plus mobile phones, the market is ready if you can provide affordable service. Even if 10% of these people pay 500 USD/yr, you get 200 billion USD/revenue. So it is definitely possible to make money. Sooner or later someone will get into this. The question is how soon.
The climate heats up and tens of thousands of satellites will be put up that collect solar energy and beam microwaves down on us.
And that's just a few companies of 1 country, 193 other countries may have the same ideas.