Wyler plans a constellation of about 650 satellites in low-earth orbit (about 1,200 kilometers). He said that they plan to launch satellites in 2017 and hope to begin offering service in 2019. (It seems that OneWeb is ahead of the SpaceX schedule).
They will offer 50 mbps, 30 ms latency connectivity to $250 ground stations that will also serve as hot-spots, providing WiFi, LTE, 3G or 2G connectivity.
As shown below, a terrestrial route between Los Angeles and the tip of Chile requires 14 hops. The same route via satellite may require only five low-latency hops. (The figure is drawn to scale).
Think about the possibility of a WiFi network with a low-latency, 50 mbps back-haul link to the Internet in every school or rural clinic in the world.
Wyler showed a prototype of one of his ground-stations and also showed how easy it is to set up. The operator just spreads the solar panels and turns it on -- five seconds install time. Here we see one on the corrugated roof of a building:
This ease of deployment would be terrific for establishing ad hoc communication in the wake of disasters that had disrupted terrestrial communication.
While I have focused on OneWeb's primary goal of providing Internet connectivity in developing nations and rural areas, Wyler also spoke of providing connectivity in aircraft (and ships at sea).
Of course, all of this is speculation for now. Some conference attendees and presenters were skeptical about Wyler's project, pointing out that his low-cost satellites would have to be replaced every five years or so -- a recurring expense. Critics also pointed out that much of the time, the low-earth orbit satellites will be over oceans, polar regions and other sparsely populated areas.
That being said, Wyler has been able to attract backers and partners, each of which brings money and expertise to the table:
Like a modern Internet company that follows the dictum "do what you do best and link to the rest," OneWeb will focus on the backbone and market through local retail Internet service and cell phone providers.
One can also imagine OneWeb providing competition for conventional terrestrial ISPs in developed nations. I can dream of going over to Best Buy, picking up a OneWeb ground station, installing it on my roof and escaping the clutches of my ISP monopolist Time Warner Cable. I am not holding my breath till that happens, but I will be keeping my eye on OneWeb's ambitious project.
For some background on Wyler's previous satellite company, O3B Networks, and more on his plans for OneWeb, check out this video:
Wyler says "We've got a pretty clear path. It's not just a technology problem. It is a technology, regulatory, implementation, education problem. It's kind of a little bit of everything." In the interview, he talks about terminal design, their business model and spectrum.
As mentioned above, he stresses ease of installation and low cost for the terminals. OneWeb has the rights to the Ku and Ka spectrum they will use and patent-pending technology to assure non-interference with geo-stationary satellites in those bands. Scale is critical to their business model -- once the constellation is operating, they marginal cost of a new customer is very low.
I've not heard about this effort until now, but former Schlumberger executives Cliff Anders and Phil Marlar have been developing the network architecture, spectrum plan and satellite payload since 2013, and they just hired satellite industry veteran Vern Fotheringham as CEO.
Leosat will not be marketing to individual end users, but will target government and business -- maritime applications, oil and gas exploration and productions, telecom back-haul and trunking, enterprise VSAT, etc. Their market seems closer to Wyler's former company O3b, but Leosat plans to cover the entire Earth, while O3b is restricted to locations near the equator.
They plan to offer encrypted connectivity at up to 1.2 gbps with latency under 50 ms using a constellation of 80 to 120 small satellites, with launches beginning in 2019 or 2020.
While SpaceX and OneWeb have focused their publicity on end users and developing nations, they will also have the ability to deliver low latency service over long distances. As shown below, a terrestrial link from my home in Los Angeles to La Universidad de Magallanes in Punta Arenas, Chile required 14 hops whereas a satellite route could be achieved with five hops. (The following illustration is drawn to approximate scale assuming a satellite altitude of 700 miles).
The Ping time for the terrestrial link averages around 224 ms, considerably slower than the sub 50 ms latency Leosat hopes to achieve.
Like many Americans, I am served by a monopoly Internet service provider. Might these folks actually be able to provide competition -- at least in the developing world -- some day?
Update 12/4/2017
Leosat seems to be planning a mix
of polar and inclined-orbit satellites.
Leosat, which recently received an investment by Japanese geosynchronous satellite company SkyPerfectJsat, has announced rough milestone dates for their LEO project. They plan on offering store-and-forward service using two "early bird" satellites in 2019. In 2021 they will begin launching the rest of their 108-satellite constellation. Completion of the constellation and full worldwide service is planned for 2022. (Their initial store and forward connectiivty is reminscent of VITAsat, which offered 38.4 kbps email service in Africa in the 1990s). Judging from this illustration, they seem to be planning both polar and inclined orbits like Telesat.
In this interview (5:31), CEO Mark Rigolle says they will focus on point-point connections rather than linking to terrestrially connected ground stations. Doing so will cut latency -- he estimates 119 ms between Singapore and London. These point-point links will also be more secure than those using the terrestrial Internet. These features will appeal to enterprises needing to synchronize databases, financial trading firms, firms with a lot of sensitive data online, etc.
Thales Alenia Space will develop the relatively large, 670 kg satellites will have four optical links to other satellites, 10 Ka-band steerable antennas, each providing up to 1.6 Gbps of symmetrical data connectivity and two steerable high-performance antennas, each providing up to 5.2 Gbps of symmetrical data connectivity. With their emphasis on speed and security, they are focusing on a premium market in contrast to OneWeb or SpaceX, which hope to provide affordable connectivity to homes, schools, community centers, etc. as well as long-distance links like the one illustrated above.
I also found their patent application for a "System and method for satellite routing of data" on Google, but could not find one in the US Patent Office database. I am not sure why that is nor am I sure what patent-worthy unique invention they claim.
Update 12/21/2017
Leosat has updated their Web site -- it has a rotating image gallery at the top with illustrations and the following captions:
Faster Than Fiber
Secure Data Communication
Instant Infrastructure
From Anywhere to Everywhere
This, along with their recent SkyPerfectJsat investment is an indication that they are making progress and focusing on high-end, fast, secure links.
In a talk at the opening of the SpaceX office in Seattle, Elon Musk predicted that they would get 50% of the long-haul Internet traffic. It seems like Leosat will be a strong, focused competitor. (Note that Musk also based his prediction on inaccurate assumptions).
Update 11/14/2019
LeoSat, unable to raise capital, has shut down. I guess investors assumed they would not be able to compete with SpaceX once they begin service with inter-satellite laser links.
I've been studying and working on the Internet in developing nations since 1991 when only a few nations had any sort of Internet connection, as shown in Larry Landweber's 1991 connectivity map:
Every nation is connected today, but the digital divide remains as deep as it was in 1991. Both Facebook and Google are working to bring the 3-4 billion people who do not have Internet connectivity online and they described their efforts at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Google
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps at Google Inc., updated the audience on two projects -- Project Loon and Project Link.
Project Loon seeks to deploy a constellation of balloons at an altitude of around 20 kilometers -- above the mountains, air traffic and weather.
The balloons will be airborne routers able to communicate with end users, each other and Internet back-haul locations.
Pinchai said the balloons now average more than six months in the air and keep nearby smartphones operating at 4G or LTE speeds, around 10 megabits per second. “We are well on our way to a platform that, by the end of the decade, will touch 4 to 5 billion people.”
He also gave a progress report on Project Link in Kampala, Uganda where they have installed over 800km of fiber, creating an urban backbone.
As is often the case with municipal networks (as in Stockholm), Google is not a retail Internet service provider, but provides wholesale connectivity to retailers. Pichai said they would be expanding Project Link -- installing fiber backbones "many more" African cities this year.
For more on the Kampala deployment and a thoughtful analysis of the reason for its success, see this post by Steve Song.
Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about Internet.org, which hopes to make basic internet services affordable, so everyone with a phone can join the knowledge economy.
While Google is working on long range projects (including an investment in Elon Musk's SpaceX project to provide Internet service using low-earth orbit satellites), Internet.org is already up and running in Ghana, Columia, Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia and India.
Facebook and their Internet.org partners are focusing on improving traditional terrestrial cell phone technology by improving mobile infrastructure, mass producing cheap, powerful cell phones and caching and compressing data. Their partners reflect this orientation – phone manufacturers, Opera, a Web software company, and Mediatek, a fabless semiconductor company.
Facebook also has a Connectivity Lab lab working on more exotic, long-range solutions.
Short videos on Project Loon and Internet.org
Project Loon:
Internet.org:
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Update 4/10/2015
Mark Zuckerberg spoke at a business conference being held in conjunction with the Summit of the Americas in Panama City yesterday. He announced that Internet.org would be available in Panama and stated that eventually expanding into Cuba “definitely fits within our mission.” (Recall that Internet.org provides “basic Internet services" -- access to leading Web sites -- not access to the open Internet).
(See the related post on constellations of Internet service satellites).
Sunday February 8 at 6:10 EST (two minutes after sunset), a SpaceX rocket is scheduled to launch. Previous SpaceX satellites delivered payloads into low-Earth orbit, but this one is destined for the Lagrangian Point nearly 1 million miles from Earth.
At the Lagrangian point 1 (or L1), approximately one
million miles from Earth, the gravitational forces between
the sun and Earth are balanced, which provides a stable
orbit that requires fewer orbital corrections for the
spacecraft to remain in its operational location for a
longer period of time.
Source: NOAA
SpaceX will attempt, for the second time, to recover the rocket. The first time they tried to recover a rocket they failed, but they understand the reason for the failure and hopefully will succeed this time.
The satellite, called "DSCOVR," has scientific and symbolic goals. At the Lagrangian Point, DSCOVR will remain stationary with respect to the Earth and the Sun, enabling it observe the Sun and serve as an early warning system for potentially disruptive solar flares.
Being stationary relative to the Earth will also enable DSCOVR to serve as a distant "Web cam" providing us with a feed of the entire, fully-lit Earth -- an ever changing version of the famous "Blue Marble" picture taken from Apollo 17. (Al Gore called for this space cam while Vice President and, after a long political struggle, his vision is about to be realized).
With a bit more than two minutes to go, the Falcon 9 launch was scrubbed -- there was an apparent problem with part of the telemetry system as well as at an Air Force radar tracking station.
They may try again tomorrow about two minutes earlier than today.
The picture below is from the launch live stream just after it was scrubbed.
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Update 2/9/2015
Weather conditions are not favorable for a Monday launch and so NASA, NOAA, the U.S. Air Force and SpaceX have made the decision to postpone the launch until Tuesday, February 10 at 6:05pm ET with a backup date of Wednesday, February 11.
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Update 4/14/2015
Elon Musk tweets the bad news -- SpaceX failed again to recapture a rocket after launch.
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Update 4/15/2015
A Boeing-Lockheed joint venture is also working on a reusable rocket engine to compete with SpaceX and to reduce dependence on Russian rockets. That will increase the competitive pressure on SpaceX, leading them to cut costs of a potential satellite Internet offering.
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Update 4/21/2015
SpaceX reports that their latest failure to retrieve a rocket failed because of a "slower than expected throttle valve response." The next attempt will be in two months. They are learning from their mistakes and rocket reuse will eventually be routine.
NASA launched a new website Monday so the world can see images of the full, sunlit side of the Earth every day. The images are taken by a NASA camera one million miles away on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force.
Once a day NASA will post at least a dozen new color images of Earth acquired from 12 to 36 hours earlier by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). Each daily sequence of images will show the Earth as it rotates, thus revealing the whole globe over the course of a day. The new website also features an archive of EPIC images searchable by date and continent.
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Update 11/27/2015
Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, has succeeded in landing a rocket for reuse. Here's a schematic of the flight:
and here is a video showing the takeoff and slow, controlled landing:
This is a bit of a publicity win over SpaceX, which has failed in attempts to safely land a rocket, but it also shows that it can be done.
Elon Musk used Twitter to congratulate Jeff Bezos on the Blue Origin achievement:
Then he tweeted a reminder that you have to go a lot faster and use a lot more fuel to put a satellite into orbit, as SpaceX has done often, than to go up 100 kilometers to the arbitrary "start" of space and come back down.
Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. The energy needed is the square, i.e. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.
The latest SpaceX launch put 11 satellites into low-earth orbit and safely landed the booster rocket. This is good news for the prospects of low-cost, world-wide satellite Internet service.
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Update 1/6/2016
On December 31, 2015, Elon Musk said "Falcon 9 back in the hangar at Cape Canaveral. No damage found, ready to fire again." Could it have been thoroughly inspected so quickly? Regardless, SpaceX says this one will not be reflown. It will be retired for display -- not sure where, but there are a number of possible locations.
In the hangar at Cape Kennedy
Closeup showing superficial damage
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Update 1/11/2016
SpaceX has twice tried softly landing a rocket on a barge so that it could be reused, but they will try again on January 17th. That launch will be from Vandenberg Air Force base in California and the recovery barge will be in the Pacific Ocean. If they can do barge landings reliably, they will have more launch-site options.
The SpaceX rocket that recently soft-landed on Earth had about 15 times the thrust -- it was about 15 time bigger -- than Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket that landed safely a few weeks earlier.
Musk's goal is a settlement on Mars, but a large reduction in launch cost will enable more scientific study of the earth, our atmosphere and the universe, enhanced national security and commercial applications like mining and space tourism.
SpaceX has twice failed at a soft landing on a barge at sea, but it is important that they be able to do so for safety and because there are not many landing pads. (They will try again this Sunday).
SpaceX has already reduced the cost of launches to low-earth orbit by about 75% -- from several hundred thousand to 60 thousand and with reusability of rockets and other components will achieve the 100x improvement that Musk has predicted.
The inscription on the landing barge, "Just read the instructions," is a reference honoring science fiction author Iain M. Banks, author of the novel Player of Games.
The coolest quote was from SpaceX investor and board member Steve Jurvetson, who said "Mars is great for some, but for a starter vacation, I think the moon is a much more interesting destination." He envisions flying around the moon in very low orbit -- just above the highest peaks.
The post also contains videos of the interview:
and the launch and soft landing of the Falcon 9 rocket:
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Update 1/16/2016
Here is a drawing of the soft landing SpaceX hopes to pull off tomorrow. After separation, the first stage will flip around, do a couple of burns to slow down, then adjust its trajectory using fins once back in the atmosphere and do a final burn as it softly lands on the barge. They have failed twice, let's hope the third times a charm.
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Update 1/18/2016
SpaceX's attempt at a soft landing at sea failed for the third time :-(. Evidently ice, not rough seas, caused the failure. Here is video of the landing and explosion:
@Elonmusk took it with humor, tweeting "Well, at least the pieces were bigger this time!". (Note that a big piece does end up on the barge -- for study and perhaps for spare parts).
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Update 1/23/2016
As mentioned above, Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origins, succeeded in soft landing one of their New Shepard booster rockets last November. Subsequently, Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved a vertical landing of a much larger booster that had flown higher and faster, stealing some of Bezos' thunder.
Now Bezos is back in the spotlight, because Blue Origin inspected their recovered booster, replaced the expendable parts, made a significant software improvement and relaunched and again recovered it. As Bezos says Launch. Land. Repeat.
Here is a short video (1:49) showing the soft landing last November and the launch and soft landing from yesterday:
Bezos is optimistic because greater inertia will make it easier to soft-land the larger rockets he plans for putting satellites and people in orbit -- comparing the difficulty of balancing a vertical pencil on your hand to balancing a broomstick and they will start full-engine testing of their first orbital booster this year.
The competition between Musk and Bezos is terrific -- let's see if Bezos tries to land a New Shepard on a ship next.
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Update 3/11/2016
Yet another cool selfie of the Earth. NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) captured an eclipse, with the shadow of the moon moving from the Indian Ocean to Indonesia and Australia and the pacific islands.
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Update 4/8/2016
SpaceX succeeded in landing a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge at sea! They will be able to inspect, repair and reuse the $60 million rocket, dramatically cutting the cost of space projects, including their effort to put a constellation of Internet access satellites in orbit!
Here are pictures of the rocket landing and standing on the barge after landing:
You can see the archived Webcast of the entire mission from launch to orbit here.
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Update 4/9/2014
Of Course I Still Love You, we have a Falcon 9 on board.
I am not sure how long the video with commentary (above) will remain on the SpaceX web site, but a video (46:18) of the mission without commentary -- just the radio traffic -- is archived on YouTube, below. The reentry and safe landing of the first stage rocket is shown at 35 minutes 34 seconds into the video.
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Update 5/6/2016
SpaceX does it again -- lands a Falcon 9 rocket on a barge at sea for the second time! If they can do this routinely, it will dramatically cutting the cost of space projects, including their effort to put a constellation of Internet access satellites in orbit.
This landing was more difficult than the previous one because the rocket was launching a satellite into a higher orbit. That meant that it returned twice as fast -- 2 km/second rather than 1 km/second. That meant with 4 times the energy and 8 times the heat needed to decelerate it.
As shown in his before and after tweets, Elon Musk was not so sure this one would work out:
Elon Musk played it cool before the launch.
You can see the mission video, starting just before the successful landing, here.
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Update 6/3/2016
Cool pictures of latest Falcon 9 soft landing:
The rocket came down at an angle, yet they were still able to land it safely:
This is the rocket entering the port. I had not understood how small the barge is compared to the size of the rocket or how large the rocket is compared to the size of a person. It's amazing that they can land something so big on such a small barge.
On July 5, 2016, the moon passed between NOAA's DSCOVR satellite and Earth. NASA's EPIC camera aboard DSCOVR snapped these images over a period of about four hours. In this set, the far side of the moon, which is never seen from Earth, passes by. In the backdrop, Earth rotates, starting with the Australia and Pacific and gradually revealing Asia and Africa.
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Update 814/2016
JCSAT booster after recovery
It's getting to be a bit routine -- SpaceX once again recovered a booster after soft-landing it on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. Check out the following video (5m 37s) summarizing the launch and booster recovery. A SpaceX engineer explains the tradeoffs in a soft landing beginning around 3m 50s.
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Update 1/26/2017
SpaceX expects to launch only one or two more expendable rockets. They have also proposed construction of three booster landing zones. It seems rocket recovery and reuse will become routine, making satellite Internet service significantly more affordable..
Proposed expansion of landing facility to three zones.
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Update 3/30/2017
SpaceX has recovered 8 rockets after soft landings and they hope to reuse one of them for the first time today. A rocket that landed at sea last April will hopefully be successfully launched and recovered either today or Saturday.
The two and a half hour launch window opens March 30, at 6:27 p.m. EDT, or 10:27 p.m. UTC and the backup launch window opens April 1, at 6:27 p.m. EDT, or 10:27 p.m. UTC. Here is the approximate mission timeline:
The countdown, launch and deployment will be streamed online -- with the usual excellent commentary by SpaceX engineers:
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Update 5/9/2017
In 2015, Boeing announced that they were working on reusable rockets (see above). There was no mention of Internet service at that time -- the goal was simply reducing reliance on Russian and SpaceX rockets. As late as October 2016, Fortune published a long article without mentioning Internet service.
The week after the Fortune article was published, Boeing's FCC application to launch a constellation of 1,396 satellites operating at an altitude of 1,200 km and to subsequently increase the constellation to the total of 2,956 satellites was announced.
If so, we have three potential global Internet service providers -- SpaceX, OneWeb and Apple. I hope they all succeed, giving us some competition in the Intenet service market. That would be a boon for current Internet customers who have only one choice for their service provider (like me) as well as people without any terrestrial Internet access.
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Update 6/27/2017
SpaceX is on a roll. They just launched a re-used rocket from Cape Canaveral and recaptured it and, within 48 hours, launched and recaptured a rocket from Vandenberg Air Force base. The precision of the recapture is shown in the following time-lapse video.
SpaceX launched an SES satellite into geosynchronous orbit last week using a Falcon 9 Booster that had previously been flown and refurbished. They also soft-landed and retrieved the booster.
SES CTO Martin Halliwell called this a "major sea change" and spoke of the cost and time savings in an excellent interview following the launch. Here are a couple quotes from the interview:
I think in a couple years time you won’t even consider whether it’s a pre-flown rocket or a new rocket or a second-time rocket ... It will just be a flight and you will buy a service to get to orbit – and that will be that!
Its saving SES months of time and thereby tens of millions of dollars of real money to fly with a used booster rather than having their expensive satellite sit and languish uselessly on the ground.
The average launch delay we have right now is about 7 months ... until we have launch vehicle availability ... It’s just cash out and a very expensive wait ... tens of millions of dollars lost due to delays.
SpaceX has given marginal discounts from the advertised $61 million geostationary launch price for those using refurbished (Musk jokes that they are "flight-proven") boosters, but the price will go down once the roughly $1 billion spent to develop soft-landing capability is recovered. SES CEO Karim Michel Sabbagh expects the price to drop to around $30 million eventually, but Halliwell says the real benefit thus far is the earlier launch date and he does not expect such a dramatic price reduction. In the long run, the Falcons will be phased out and the BFR price will assume reusability from the start.
Would global Internet service providers require unique regulation and, if so, what should it be and who has the power to do it?
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who hopes to orbit a constellation of Internet-access satellites, recently gave an invitation-only talk announcing the opening of a satellite-design office in Seattle. (An attendee recorded the talk and posted it on YouTube).
Many invitees were engineers and Musk was recruiting, saying "it's a difficult problem so we need the smartest engineers in the world." Then, he joked "and at the same time to make sure we don't create SkyNet."
The audience laughed, but he was, perhaps inadvertently, alluding to a serious issue. Issac Asimov wrote of Gaia, a sentient planet, and, while the Internet may be the embryonic nervous system of our planet, I am less worried about Musk creating SkyNet than creating Comcast on Steroids.
Two companies, Musk's SpaceX and Greg Wyler's OneWeb, are competing to provide Internet connectivity in locations that are now unconnected -- as Wyler puts it, to connect "the other three billion." If one or both succeed, we might have have a monopoly or oligopoly ISP serving half the Earth's population.
As a Time-Warner Cable Internet customer, that worries me. They would be able to charge monopoly-level prices and offer the same last-place customer satisfaction as American ISPs. They would be global companies with political power and the ability to control half the world's information -- a combination of the Koch brothers, Fox News and Comcast.
Do these potentially global service providers require unique regulation and, if so, what should it be and who has the power to do it?
What might the regulation be? I can ask the question, but neither I nor anyone else knows The Answer; however, one suggestion is to keep both SpaceX and OneWeb out of the retail Internet service market -- restrict them to providing wholesale transport service on an equal basis to any would-be retail ISP. Even if only one of the two companies succeed, that would allow for retail competition and would help out with the monopoly price and crummy service issues.
A possible approach to avoiding political abuse would be to prohibit them from refusing service to any retail ISP in any nation.
Regardless of what we wish to do, who has the authority to create and enforce such regulations? Musk said SpaceX has the ITU's permission to launch the satellites and recognized that he will have to negotiate for the right to provide service on a country by country basis. SpaceX and OneWeb are both US corporations and therefore subject to US law, but is it right for global infrastructure to be regulated by a single nation?
Lest this sound too negative, I hope SpaceX and OneWeb both succeed in connecting the other three billion people on the planet -- the benefit to mankind will outweigh the difficulty of defining acceptable, effective policy.
Update 1/31/2015
Jason Koebler compares Elon Musk to the 19th century railroad barons, saying that being the first to develop technology to soft-land and reuse rockets will give him an unassailable first-mover advantage in space -- for imaging, communication and other applications.
(See the related post on cost savings from re-use of rockets used in launching satellites).
In the early 1990s, cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal founded Teledesic, with the intention of providing global Internet connectivity using low-earth orbit satellites. The satellite and launch technology were not good enough and the company failed.
Teledesic animation showing a satellite
constellation that would cover the planet.
But satellite and launch technology have come a long way since that time. In an earlier post, I asked whether Google could connect the "other three billion" in developing nations and rural areas. The post surveyed Google projects involving high altitude platforms like blimps, drones or balloons that hover or circulate in the stratosphere, low-earth orbit satellites used for imaging and telephony and medium-earth orbit satellites used for communications and navigation.
One of those projects was a collaboration with O3b (other three billion), a company founded by ex-Google executive Greg Wyler. O3b began with four satellites in 8,000-kilometer equatorial orbits and planned to serve all parts of the Earth within 45 degrees of the Equator. Wyler has left O3b when he went to Google and O3b and now has 12 satellites in orbit.
In describing the O3b project, I wondered "whether they are considering a low-earth orbit constellation" and it seems they were. Mr. Wyler subsequently left O3b to found WorldVu, which planned a constellation of 300 satellites at between 800 and 950 kilometers in altitude and has acquired Ku-band spectrum. Service will be marketed under the OneWeb brand.
That takes care of the improved satellite technology, but how about launch technology?
The Wall Street Journal recently published an article saying that Mr. Wyler would be teaming up with Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX to provide global Internet access using a constellation of 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds. Musk confirmed the plan in a couple of Twitter posts, but also criticized the Wall Street Journal reporting.
I hope they will be able to realize Teledesic's 1990 vision using 2020 technology.
I concluded my earlier post on this topic by "wondering whether Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic are eyeing those other three billion people." I still wonder about Bezos and Branson.
Update 11/13/2014
After writing this post, I attended a session at Rand Corporation's Politics Aside conference and had a chance to ask Simonetta Di Pippo, the Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, about her take on this proposal. She did not give a direct answer, but said that Elon Musk is a very smart man and he has never failed to succeed at anything he committed to do.
A SpaceX executive overheard my question and said he could not comment, but he reiterated Elon Musk's tweeted statement that the Wall Street Journal article had errors and we would have to wait a couple of months for the full announcement of their plans.
I guess we will have to wait to see, but this could be a Big Deal.
Two Plane Labs satellites just after launch from the ISS
The satellites shown being launched are Planet Labs earth-imaging satellites. They are smaller and orbit at lower altitude than those discussed above, but might a constellation of more, smaller satellites in lower orbits and carrying routers rather than cameras be suitable for Internet communication? (That is not a rhetorical question -- I do not know).
Whoever builds the rockets, satellites and markets the service, it sounds like Teledesic is being reborn using modern technology and, if successful, it would be a major extension of the nervous system of the Earth and a significant enabler of Bill Gates' work in developing nations.
Greg Wyler wants to bring the Internet to the entire world.
Update 1/17/2015
Elon Musk announced that he plans to deploy a constellation of router equipped-satellites -- evidently in competition with the Greg Wyler's OneWeb project. Musk announced his plan at a closed meeting for potential employees of his new satellite office and state, local and federal government officials.
This effort is not an end in itself, but part of a larger plan to reach Mars -- Musk says he wants to die on Mars.
It is terrific to see two powerful groups competing to fulfill Bill Gates' original vision of global satellite connectivity -- Teledesic. Teledesic failed, but with modern launch capability, micro-satellites and communication equipment one or both of these efforts may very well succeed. If they do, it will be an historic achievement and a significant complement to Gates' current work in developing nations.
Elon Musk will compete with OneWeb
Update 1/19/2015
When this thread began last November, it seemed like Elon Musk and Greg Wyler would collaborate on an Internet satellite venture, but now it looks more like competition.
A post on Ars Technica quotes Musk as saying “Greg and I have a fundamental disagreement about the architecture -- we want a satellite that is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than what Greg wants. I think there should be two competing systems.”
They quote Richard Branson as saying that Musk doesn't have a chance because Wyler has spectrum rights and there is not enough space for two satellite constellations. He thinks the logical thing for Musk to do is work together rather than separately.
I can't wait to see where all this ends up in, say, five years.
Update 1/20/2015
SpaceX has confirmed an investment of $1 billion from Google and Fidelity for a reported 10% of the company. That leads to an evaluation of around $10 billion. (I may be old-fashioned, but I don't understand markets that evaluate WhatsApp at nearly double the value of SpaceX).
It also seems that SpaceX is considering the use of modulated laser beams to cope with OneWeb's advantage in spectrum holdings.
Regardless of the technology, OneWeb and SpaceX will have to deal with regulators in each nation they serve, which seems inefficient -- would it make more sense to establish some international regulatory rules?
Looking forward -- what if one of these companies pulls their plans off and ends up serving a billion or two billion customers -- should we worry about their power? It sounds like Comcast on steroids. Even if they both succeed and establish a duopoly, they will have immense power.
Update 1/26/2015
Business Week has published a background piece on Greg Wyler -- his biography and personality. It is interesting to read for general background, but has a few details that are new to me. He says he plans to orbit 648 satellites at an altitude of 750 miles and hopes to sell the user terminals for around $200. Since there will be several satellites within range of any point on Earth, he says their antennas will not need to be professionally installed or move to track satellites, as is the case with O3B.
The article is accompanied by a 4:33 video in which Wyler describes O3B and his plans for OneWeb -- here are a couple of stills from the video:
Wyler with a mock-up of a user terminal
Wyler illustrates the latency differences between
low, middle and geostationary orbits
Update 1/26/2015
Cell-phone video (25:53 min) of Elon Musk's talk at the closed-door announcement of the establishment of a satellite design office in Seattle. Many high-level details on the project.
Update 2/12/2015
Third time is closer, but still no cigar :-(. "Rocket soft landed in the ocean within 10m of target & nicely vertical! High probability of good droneship landing in non-stormy weather." — Elon Musk February 11, 2015
VIA SATELLITE: With industry verticals being served, and O3b connecting the other 3 billion people, where does OneWeb fit in to the communications landscape?
Wyler: O3b Networks does links around 150 Mbps and up, and this is about links that are much lower speeds than that. Our primary core competency will be sub 50 Mbps to small, inexpensive terminals.
VIA SATELLITE: How difficult was it to get investors like Virgin and QualComm to buy into this vision?
Wyler: Qualcomm knows more about communications chips, handover protocols and LTE then any other company. They also have a long background in satellite having built Globalstar and many other satellite communications systems. Virgin has Richard as the leader with a strong understanding of things that you can’t imagine he would have a sense of, and then this deep bench of players.
VIA SATELLITE: I understand an RFP is already out regarding the manufacturer of these satellites? When do you hope to finalize this?
Wyler: We are building satellites at high volume. They need to be done on a production line, rather than a one-off manufacturing process. We are going into a partnership where we will own a portion of the factory and the manufacturer the other portion.
VIA SATELLITE: Is 2017 a realistic timeframe to launch the first satellites? Wyler: I am an optimist. I think 2017 is a realistic time to have our test satellites up. I am not saying the constellation will be working then.
Update 3/18/2015
A third would-be satellite ISP, Leosat, has revealed plans for a constellation of Internet satellites. They will not be marketing to individual end users, but will target government and business -- maritime applications, oil and gas exploration and productions, telecom back-haul and trunking, enterprise VSAT, etc. They (and the others) hope to be able to provide low latency links over long distances. As shown here, a route from Los Angeles to southern Chile requires only 5 satellite hops as opposed to 14 terrestrial hops.
Update 10/7/2016
We have followed SpaceX's efforts to cut satellite launch cost by soft-landing and reusing rockets. Another way to cut launch costs is to use a single launch to place multiple satellites in different orbits and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully launched eight satellites into two different orbits. If rocket reuse and multiple-orbit launches become routine, the cost of creating constellations of Internet service satellites will be significantly reduced.
Single launch places eight satellites
in two different orbits.(credit: ISRO)
Update 11/17/2016
SpaceX has submitted a 102-page technical supplement to their application for permission to launch a constellation of Internet-service satellites.
SpaceX eventually plans to launch 4,000 communications satellites, which would be dozens of times larger than any other constellation, with the first phase of this possibly going online as early as 2018. SpaceX anticipates that the satellite business will become more profitable than the rocket business by 2020, generating tens of billions of dollars by the mid-2020s.
Another post on the same leak was more specific, saying that "SpaceX expects to generate more than $15 billion in profit by 2025."
Update 1/18/2017
Two of the updates to this post were triggered by SpaceX filing a request to launch 4,400 Internet service satellites last November and a leak of SpaceX financial data last week. Each of those events triggered in-depth, informative discussions on Reddit. The Reddit discussion of the request to launch the satellites (here) and the Reddit discussion of SpaceX finance (here) cover launch, radio and IP technology, markets, advantages and disadvantages compared to terrestrial networks and much more. Check them out and join the discussions.
Update 3/11/2017
A 2016 patent by Mark Krebs, then at Google, now at SpaceX, has several interesting figures like this one specifying two constellations, each at a different altitude. As shown here, the lower-altitude satellites have smaller footprints, but would have lower latency times than the higher altitude satellites.
The higher-orbit satellites will be launched in the first phase of the project, enabling SpaceX to bring the Internet to underserved and rural areas of the Earth. The second phase, lower-orbit satellites, will be able to offer faster service and possible compete with terrestrial networks in urban areas. I am not sure, but being at different altitudes might also simplify multi-satellite launches -- launch half at low altitude then proceded to the higher altitude and launch the second half. The high altitude satellites might also enable fewer hops on long, over-the horizon routes (as shown above) and make for smoother satellite handoffs during a session. The following is a neat video explainer of the SpaceX plan:
