The TikTok ban in context

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei.What is our long-run goal with respect to China?

Donald Trump recently issued an executive order banning TikTok on the grounds that it was necessary to deal with the national emergency he had declared in an earlier executive order. He says he is concerned that TikTok might turn user's "information such as location data and browsing and search histories" over to the Chinese government.

Trump does not site evidence of TikTok having shared data with China and TikTok says they have never shared user data with the Chinese government or censored content at its request. Furthermore, Kevin Meyer, CEO of TikTok and COO of its parent company Byte Dance, is an American, and TikTok US user data is not stored in China.

TikTok publishes a transparency report on government information requests and the report ending the second half of 2019 shows that the US government made 100 requests for information on 107 accounts, and 82% of those resulted in the transfer of data. Only India, with 302 requests on 408 accounts 90% of which made data transfers, requested more than the US. (Facebook received 51,121 US requests during the same period).

The format of the data TikTok reports to the police is shown below and its terms of service note that the company may also send law enforcement logs of a user's videos, comments, and interactions (source) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security actively monitored TikTok for signs of unrest during the George Floyd protests. It seems they are cooperating with the US government.

This background and Trump's track record convince me that the TikTok ban was politically motivated -- he wants to seem "tough" on China and get revenge for the way TikTok users tricked his campaign into projecting huge crowds for his disastrous Tulsa campaign rally.

Regardless, let's zoom out.

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei. What is his goal for US-China relations in general and for the Internet in particular? Is he seeking total self-sufficiency and independence from China? A bifurcated Internet?

When one considers the cost of reciprocal tariffs, the supply chains for manufactured goods, and the Chinese market for US goods like iPhones, it is clear that financial and industrial disengagement from China would be an economic disaster for both China and the US. 

The Internet is already bifurcating.  China already has more Internet users than the US, Russia, Mexico, Germany, UK, France, and Canada combined, and the US trade war on Chinese technology has accelerated its push toward self-reliance. China is also innovating --  Huawei, Tencent, and Xiaomi are among Derwent's  top 100 innovators and China has passed the US as the top scientific publishing nation in the world.

The Internet was conceived of and has served as a tool for collaboration, and existential global threats of economic inequality, climate change, pandemics and biological and other weapons require global collaboration. We need them and they need us.

Let me be clear -- there are no good guys here. China bans Facebook and Twitter, plays dirty tricks on the Internet, and imprisons and surveils citizens, but we seem to be caught in a prisoner's dilemma game in which both sides have defected and that could be fatal. 

There may not be a way out of our dilemma, but our recent relations with Cuba suggest a strategy worth considering. President Obama published a new Cuba policy and began rapprochement negotiations. He visited Cuba and made several Internet-related announcements, but the response was disappointing while Raúl Castro was in charge. His successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is a pro-Internet engineer and there may have been an opportunity for change when he replaced Castro if Trump had continued President Obama's policy, but that did not happen. Trump has made no substantive Internet-related policy changes regarding Cuba, but his politically-motivated rhetoric and Cuba Internet Task Force have assured continued hostility. 

We will never know how Díaz-Canel would have reacted had Trump continued President Obama's policy, but the outcome could not have been worse for the Cuban people or better for the expansion of China's Digital Silk Road. 

Whether we try the sort of engagement Obama tried with Cuba or something else, we cannot do it alone -- we must work with like-minded allies, which is surely not Trump's way. 

It's time for a change.

Update 8/26/2020

TikTok has answered Trump's executive ban and filed a law suit challenging it on the grounds that they were denied due process. They say they have never shared data with the Chinese, opened their publishing algorithm to show there has been no censorship, employ many Americans, provide a platform that is used by Americans for expression and income, and more.

While the suit asserts that TikTok was banned without due process -- claiming that the Administration has "ignored their extensive efforts to address its concerns," I wonder about the First Amendement guarantee of press freedom. TikTok is a publisher. What is the essential difference between banning TikTok without presenting evidence that it posed a threat to national security and banning the Washington Post because it had publishhed or might one day publish fake news that undermined national security?

In another twist, it turns out that Microsoft had been negotiating to purchase TikTok, and shortly before issuing the ban, Trump said the U.S. Treasury should collect a “very substantial” portion of the sale price. That sounds like a mob shakedown -- if you don't sell your company and give me cut I will shut it down leaving you with nothing. I can see the tweet -- "I got the Chinese to sell their company to Microsoft, created THOUSANDS of American jobs, stopped espionage and got a cut for the taxpayers as well."

Update 5/27/2021

Comparatech Editor Paul Bischoff points out that Trump’s executive order set a deadline of 45 days, but it was largely ignored and is techcally still in play. He reports that US national security officials are in talks with TikTok's parent company ByteDance about data security and preventing US user data from being accessed by the Chinese government.

In the meantime, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2021 and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill that would ban U.S. federal workers from downloading the TikTok onto U.S. government devices.

This puts President Biden in a political bind. Young voters like TikTok but the President is concerned about China's economic and political power. That being said, TikTok is insignificant in the long run -- we need to learn to cooperate and coexist with China in the face of global challenges like climate change, epidemics and economic inequality.

Trump wants to change the Communications Decency Act

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

The law was passed in 1996 in order to shield ISPs that transported content or platforms that hosted it from lability. Bloggers were not responsible for comments on their posts, YouTube and Facebook were not responsible for things users posted, etc. However, ISPs and content hosts have the right to set their own acceptable-use policies and can label or censor material that violates those policies.

For example, when Donald Trump posted unsubstantiated claims about mail-in ballots on Twitter, they added a fact-checking link reading "Get the facts about mail-in ballots" to the post:

(Note that Trump has tweeted the same claim about mail-in ballots on other occasions and those were not marked).

Trump's response to Twitter's labeling of his tweet was to file a petition requesting that the Federal Communications Commission clarify that the CDA "does not permit social media companies that alter or editorialize users’ speech to escape civil liability." Trump evidently wants to be able to sue Twitter for appending a fact-check link to his post.

This is a familiar Trump tactic, as made clear in the book "Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits" by former federal prosecutor James D. Zirin, a Republican. Click here for an American Bar Association review of the book.

Trump, the most powerful victim on the planet, tweeted the following, presumably to justfy his action:

I am not a lawyer or an Attorney General, but it seems clear to me that Twitter and others have the right to publish fact-checking material on their Web sites and I doubt that this petition will prevail if challenged.

OneWeb rises from the ashes -- maybe

A consortium of the UK Government and Bharti Enterprises bought bankrupt OneWeb, a company that had raised $3.2 billion and had acquired valuable spectrum rights, for $1 billion. That is a good start, but a BBC article says experts believe that at least $3 billion is needed to complete the OneWeb constellation.

Will they make it?

The UK government will be a source of further funding. OneWeb's primary goal is closing the digital divide by bringing broadband connectivity to rural areas around the world including, of course, the UK. That is obvious, but the UK government has other hopes for OneWeb. One frequently mentioned application is global positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT).

With Brexit, the UK lost access to the secure, encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS) of the European global navigation system, Galileo and the possibility of equipping OneWeb satellites for secure, encrypted PNT has been suggested as an immediate application. Tyler Reid and his colleagues showed that OneWeb satellites could provide excellent PNT performance if they reset relatively cheap atomic clocks once per orbit using the precise clocks of a civilian global navigation system and, while PRS is reserved for European Union governments and defense users, the UK retains access to Galilieo's public civilian service. (Reid is co-founder of Xona Space Systems which plans to offer precision PNT service using a constellation of small satellites).

The UK expects OneWeb to be profitable. Science, research and innovation minister Amanda Solloway said “This investment is likely to make an economic return, with due diligence showing a strong commercial basis for investment" and she added that "The deal contributes to the government’s plan to join the first rank of space nations, and signals the government’s ambition for the UK to be a pioneer in the research, development, manufacturing, and exploitation of novel satellite technologies enabling enhanced broadband through the ownership of a fleet of low-Earth orbit satellites.” Perhaps the OneWeb investment will encourage efforts like this potential ground-station service.

What about Bharti? Bharti Airtel is India’s second-biggest telecommunications firm, holding about a third of its market with 320 million customers and they are Africa's second-biggest mobile operator with more than 100 million subscribers across 14 countries. They also offer Internet service in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Channel Islands. They obviously bring marketing and operating experience and a distribution channel with terrestrial Internet partners and government regulatory bodies in underserved nations to the new OneWeb consortium.

They also bring deep pockets. Bharti Enterprises is a global conglomerate with interests in telecom, insurance, real estate, education, malls, hospitality, agriculture, food and other ventures. Their ISP business in India faces fierce competitor and they obviously believe in diversification. (They were previously an investor in OneWeb).

When they filed for bankruptcy, OneWeb attributed their failure to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the handwriting was on the wall before that. In Senate testimony on October 25, 2017, OneWeb's Greg Wyler said they would launch their first ten satellites in May 2018, offer service throughout Alaska by 2019 and cover the entire US in 2020. While they had 74 satellites in orbit by the time of their bankruptcy and had signed an ISP distributor for Alaska and Hawaii, they were not offering service in Alaska or anywhere else let alone covering the entire US and were having problems with Russian launch and distribution partners. Furthermore, SpaceX was launching more satellites each month than OneWeb had in orbit and their launch cost was significantly lower. OneWeb was in serious trouble and having trouble raising capital with or without COVID-19.

Now OneWeb has the backing of a government and a strong developing-nations partner and I assume their deals in Alaska and Hawaii and other previous arrangements with maritime companies, airlines, and other nations remain in place. On the other hand, they need to launch satellites quickly and they face stiff competition. SpaceX has a clear launch advantage, Amazon and China have deep pockets, and Telesat has a geostationary-satellite base as well as assets in the north.

I don't know if they will make it, but I hope they do. Billions of people remain to be connected to the Internet, so there is room for all of these companies and competition is healthy.

Amazon Aerospace and Satellite Solutions -- integrating satellites and terrestrial services

At this time, Musk has a clear lead in launch technology and Bezos has superior terrestrial resources and is building the infrastructure to connect them to space.

Since its founding, Amazon has reinvested profit in building infrastructure. They began with retail sales and distribution infrastructure and later added Amazon Web Services (AWS) providing data center and hosting infrastructure. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also established Blue Origin, a company to provide satellite launch service and eventually to support space travel, and last year Amazon filed an application for a 3,236-satellite constellation of low-earth orbit Internet service satellites -- Project Kuiper.

Soon after filing the Project Kuiper application, AWS announced a new satellite ground station service, establishing a link between the two companies and now they have announced the formation of AWS Aerospace and Satellite Solutions. Aerospace and Satellite Solutions (I can’t bring myself to type “AWS ASS”) does not add new physical infrastructure but will be marketing and assisting on the design and implementation of complex space/terrestrial systems.

Organizations from space startups to government agencies like NASA and DOD should be able to save time and cost by building their applications on top of this integrated infrastructure. Recognizing the lucrative government market, Amazon has hired retired U.S. Air Force Major General Clinton Crosier, who was most recently the Director of Space Force Planning, to head the AWS Aerospace and Satellite Solutions. (Hiring General Crosier might also help Amazon in their battle with Microsoft over a ten-billion dollar Pentagon cloud services contract).

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos share a common goal -- making homo sapiens a space-faring, multi-planet species. Bezos stated that goal in his high-school valedictorian speech and believes that it is imperative that we do so because humanity is growing too fast and using too much energy to be sustainable in the long run and the SpaceX Web site states that "SpaceX’s family of launch vehicles and spacecraft were designed from the beginning to take humans to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond."

They both also have plans for an interim step of establishing broadband Internet-service constellations -- Musk's Starlink and Bezos' Project Kuiper. At this point in time, Musk has a clear lead in launch technology and Bezos has superior terrestrial resources and is building the infrastructure to connect them to space. Bezos and Musk could move faster toward their shared goal by collaborating, with SpaceX launching Project Kuiper satellites and Starlink satellites using AWS's terrestrial services. I don't know about Bezos, but Musk seems to be willing to share a market in pursuit of a long-range goal.

Questions on the impact of trees on SpaceX Starlink

The Starlink Web site says "Starlink is targeting service in the Northern U.S. and Canada in 2020, rapidly expanding to near-global coverage of the populated world by 2021," but the rollout will not be uniform. The initial coverage will be centered around 53 degrees latitude and locations with unobstructed views of the sky will have an advantage. Like many folks, I am wondering about coverage at my particular location which is in a wooded mountain area at 34.8462° N latitude.

Elon Musk says Starlink setup will be simple -- plug it in and point it to the sky and motors will find the optimal orientation for the antenna. That will work well if you are in the desert with a clear view of the sky, but as you see my house is surrounded by trees. I will have a clear view of satellites when they are directly overhead, but they will disappear over the irregular "tree horizon" as they orbit the Earth.

When might I have uninterrupted connectivity at my house and how fast will it be?

In the most recent publication of which I am aware (plans change), Spacex says that in the very early phases of constellation deployment, when they wish to expand coverage at the expense of capacity, satellites will be able to communicate with terminals at an elevation angle as low as 25 degrees and, as more satellites are launched, they will increase that to 40 degrees, as shown below.

Steerable service range at full deployment (left) and initial launch (right). Source.

A casual glance around my house and consideration of the coverage shown in Serge Eagleson's simulation late last year convinces me that I will not have continuous coverage at 25-degree elevation and quite possibly will not until well into the 40-degree phase. I can't say exactly when I will have coverage because there are too many variables and questions I don't have answers to, like:

• How quickly will satellite density increase at my latitude?
• How rapidly will the 10.7-14.5 GHz signals attenuate near the tree-top horizon?
• Will the satellites dynamically adjust transmit power or is it fixed?
• When the signal begins to weaken, will the satellite simply drop the link or will it maintain connectivity at reduced speed by retransmission of error packets or changing the modulation algorithm?
• Will the terminal motors dynamically re-orient the dish while tracking a satellite? (That sounds too expensive).
• Will the terminal motors automatically re-orient the dish when the constellation configuration changes? (That sounds reasonable).

The impact of trees is not just my personal concern. The economic viability of Starlink will depend upon revenue during the startup years and Elon Musk has stated that Starlink's greatest challenge is the "fully considered" cost of the user terminal -- the cost of hardware, setup and maintenance, and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell agrees, saying "hopefully we don't have to hire a million people running around in little white vans fixing or installing user terminals on folkses house."

I don't know what proportion of potential Starlink customers are in forested areas but if SpaceX wants to get us online soon, they might consider offering a mast-mount or rooftop alternative to the plug-and-play terminal -- something along the lines of this OneWeb prototype:

Update 6/26/2020

A reader asked about the effect of rain on Ku-band propagation from a satellite and I found this project, that concluded that "as air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, and wind speed increased or reduced there is no signal attenuation for weather parameters in both the wet and dry seasons under consideration. There were no statistical correlations between Ku downlink signal strength and the weather parameters under investigation". I'd take that as an optimistic quick answer, but I bet SpaceX engineers could give a more definitive answer.

I wonder how snow would affect the "flying saucer antennas".

Update 6/26/2020

For a discussion of some practical issues in installing a Starlink terminal in a forested area, click here and here.

Rural broadband subsidy -- what's the rush?

We are poised to give out $16 billion less than a week before election day ... This approach is not thoughtful policy, it’s rush-it-out-the-door electioneering.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted procedures for Phase I of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, which will award up to $16 billion in support over 10 years for the deployment of fixed broadband networks to homes and businesses in census tracks that are unserved by voice and broadband with download speeds of at least 25 Mbps. Successful bidders in the October reverse auction will have to provide a minimum of 25/3 Mbps up/download speed and the FCC will prioritize low-latency (sub-100 ms) networks when awarding funding. They are prioritizing high speeds and low latency so users will "be able to use tomorrow’s Internet applications as well as today’s."

The FCC considers geostationary satellite providers as high-latency and conventional terrestrial providers as low-latency and last month Ars Technica reported that the FCC planned to classify SpaceX and other low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite operators as high-latency, saying "the providers haven't proven they can deliver low-latency broadband." However, the FCC order issued on June 11 equivocated a bit, saying the FCC has"serious doubts that any LEO networks will be able to meet the short-form application requirements for bidding in the low-latency tier." (The short-form applications are due by July 15, 2020).

If the goal is to support applications that are in use ten years from now, it seems they should consider technologies that will be available ten years from now and the FCC is well aware of the LEO broadband projects of SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat, and several Chinese companies and the possibility that OneWeb will be resurrected. These efforts may turn out to be market failures, but we have both theoretical and experimental evidence to expect that, if successful, they will be able to deliver sub-100 ms latency.

For example, this simulation predicts latencies well under 100 ms even without the inter-satellite laser links that SpaceX plans to introduce in the future and Elon Musk has also reported low latencies with their initial test satellites.

More recently, Telefónica, a major Internet service provider in Latin America and Europe has completed tests with Telesat. (Telefonica owns the Movistar, O2 and Vivo brands). The test scenarios included high-definition video streaming, video conferencing with teams, remote desktop connection to seamlessly manage a remote computer, a VPN connection without any delay or outages, FTP-encrypted file transfers of 2 GB in both directions, and IPSec tunnel encryption with no reduction in the performance of the link. This was done without TCP acceleration or data compression and hey achieved round-trip latencies of 30-60ms with no packet loss.

What's the rush?

Why not allocate $1.6 billion of the ten-year fund this year and the remainder a year or two later when we will have operational data from one or more LEO satellite ISPs? Doing so might require some bureaucratic adjustment and would complicate the planning and bidding process for potential ISPs, but if we are thinking ten-years in the future, why not consider technology that will quite possibly be important in ten years?

Sadly, the rush is political.

For a start, the FCC Chairman came from Verizon and I bet the terrestrial Internet service providers have contributed to Trump and their senators and lobbied the FCC to classify LEO satellites as high-latency.

Furthermore, three of the five FCC commissioners are Republicans and you can read their statements on the RDOF bidding process here. It turns out that the two Democrats were able to convince one of the Republicans to change the draft ruling to allow for the unlikely possibility that LEO satellites might qualify as low-latency providers as noted above.

However, the Democrats were unable to convince any Republican colleagues to postpone the funding until accurate coverage data could be collected and wrote "dissents in part." Commissioner Geoffrey Starks expressed concern over the decision "to spend such a large portion of the budget -- over such a long term of support -- based on broadband maps that are not accurate" and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel wrote a stronger dissent including suggestions for addressing the urban and rural digital divides and pointing out that "We are poised to give out $16 billion less than a week before election day ... This approach is not thoughtful policy, it’s rush-it-out-the-door electioneering."

Republican candidates will rush to take credit for bringing the Internet to millions of their rural constituents. Cunning.

Can SpaceX launch 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites? Maybe.

The bottom line is that success is not guaranteed, but neither is failure -- there is a non-zero probability of success.

On May 26th, SpaceX applied for permission to launch 30,000 "second-generation" Starlink broadband Internet satellites. (Note that the software on Starlink satellites is updated about once a week). The application narrative states that the second-generation satellites will be configured as follows:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

(The offsets of the single-satellite planes are set to form a uniform pattern so when a satellite crosses the equator another satellite in the adjacent plane will cross the equator a short, constant time later). The following snapshots from a simulation created by Richard Cole illustrate the coverage.

The application narrative describes the ground and space segments and addresses the problems of debris mitigation and interference with astronomical observation. Here are some points that caught my eye

• The second-generation satellites "will have three times the data capacity of SpaceX’s current satellites." 
• Polar regions are covered.
• The second-generation satellites will have optical inter-satellite links.
• Low altitudes "will enable smaller spot beams and greater satellite diversity, achieving the intensive frequency reuse needed to heighten capacity available anywhere in the world."
• Low altitudes will allow SpaceX to use high E-band frequencies for communication with ground stations.
• Low altitudes will reduce latency.
• Terminal setup will be plug and play -- "point it at the sky and plug it in."
• SpaceX promises to make sure that "Starlink has no material effect on discoveries in astronomy."
• SpaceX will extend its debris data sharing and collision-avoidance activities and "encourages all operators to follow these same practices."

Can they pull it off?

The FCC demands that half of the satellites for an approved constellation be launched within 6 years and all to be launched within 9 years. Can SpaceX manufacture, launch, and fund 30,000 second-generation satellites that quickly while continuing to launch first-generation satellites and replacements for those that are de-orbited after approximately five years of useful life?

When asked about Starlink during an interview at the Satellite 2020 Conference in March, Elon Musk said his goal for Starlink was to remain in the "not bankrupt category." If Elon is not sure, I can't be either, but they have a few positive things going for them.

Today, SpaceX is manufacturing about 120 satellites per month, which is far too few to satisfy the FCC. That being said, it is safe to say that Elon Musk knows more about modern, automated manufacturing than anyone alive today, having learned from his experience making cars, solar tiles, batteries, satellites, and rockets. He has learned the importance of building "the machine that builds the machines," which includes the factory, equipment, staffing, processes, and supply chain. SpaceX may already be able to make satellites faster than 120 per month and they will surely improve the manufacturing "machine" and the design of second-generation satellites for manufacturing ease. If that is not sufficient, they can open another factory -- maybe acquire OneWeb's.

How about launching the satellites? SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a recent interview that if their Starship was not ready to take astronauts to the International Space Station within three years, it would be "a major company fail" and in an earlier interview, she said that Starships will be able to carry 400 satellites at a time. In his Satelite 2020 interview, Elon Musk set a goal of three launches per day with Starships landing back at the launch sites within a few days of launch. If they can achieve that cadence, launching will not be a problem.

Can they fund the project? It will take around three years for SpaceX to complete the first phase of the first-generation satellites and Shotwell and Musk have both recently said that low-cost end-user terminals are critical for global success and those are perhaps three years away. During those three years, SpaceX will have income from their launch business, government contracts, and Starlink customers as well as private investment.

They have been collaborating on Starship with NASA for six years and recently flew two astronauts to the International Space Station. Colonel Eric Felt, head of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, characterized that as the "culmination of perhaps the most successful private-public partnership of all times” so it seems safe to say they will be getting funding from the Defence Department as well as NASA.

How about private investment? SpaceX has succeeded in attracting Starlink investors recently, but Starlink's financial performance during the first three years of operation will impact their ability to continue raising capital. During the next three years, the majority of the satellites they launch will be at latitudes that deliver the most capacity in the relatively affluent regions of North America and Europe, and Internet service in the US and Canada is relatively expensive. Hopefully, they will be able to serve those markets without losing too much on expensive terminals while improving terminal technology. (They may also be interested in acquiring OneWeb antenna technology).

Debris is my biggest worry. The SpaceX application says their propulsion system will allow them to autonomously avoid collisions with tracked objects. Furthermore, over 85% of their satellites will be lower than the International Space Station and will be relatively quick to burn up in the atmosphere. They also promise to share all ephemeris data and encourage others to do the same.

But, what about objects that are too small to track? What if another operator is actively trying to avoid collisions -- don't they need to coordinate with SpaceX? What about other companies that are planning to launch low-Earth orbit satellites? With the numbers of satellites being launched, it seems that international regulation and coordination are required and even then a debris solution is not obvious. Orbiting debris is clearly a global (not US) tragedy of the commons.

The bottom line is that success is not guaranteed, but neither is failure -- there is a non-zero probability of success.

Public and private infrastructure investment alternatives

Electrifying rural South Dakota

The strategic goal of infrastructure is not to derive economic benefit from the asset itself, but to generate economic benefit by maximizing the use of the asset. Steve Song.

Eric Yuan, CEO of the Zoom teleconferencing service, stated that the average number of daily meeting recipients increased from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March 2020 in a webinar last month. I've been teaching 21 students using Zoom as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the audio and video are smooth and switching between speakers is seamless. Offhand, I cannot think of any technology that has scaled so well so fast.

When I teach, I use transport offered by Charter, Amazon, and others to reach Zoom’s application on a server in an Amazon data center in Virginia. (Zoom has servers in 16 data centers around the world). Zoom's rapid expansion would not have been possible without the transport and application-service infrastructure provided by private investment. 

It is a remarkable success story, but imperfect.

Two of my students have been unable to participate in our Zoom meetings because they cannot afford fixed Internet access at home, the campus labs are closed and data caps limit their participation with mobile phones.  I can afford home connectivity, but Charter is the only broadband provider on my block, so I must pay whatever they decide to charge me. That is the situation in Los Angeles and there are rural areas in the US and many locations in other nations where broadband connectivity is not available at any price. (Amazon has competition but their dominant infrastructure position provides them with opportunities to be "be evil" if they are not monitored). 

The Federal government funded the research, development, and procurement that led to the Internet then turned to private companies like Amazon and Charter to create the infrastructure Zoom and others use. The COVID-19 pandemic with its attendant substitution of communication for transportation highlights the fact that Internet access is as much a necessity today as access to sidewalks, roads, and highways. 

Can publically-owned infrastructure fill the Internet infrastructure gap? 

Singapore ISP equity, June 2000

We have some municipal broadband in the US, but it is roadblocked or outlawed in 22 states, and the states with restrictions have higher Internet prices on average than the others. Public Internet infrastructure planning and investment are found in other nations as well. For example, Stockholm has provided municipal fiber as a service for over 25 years and around the same time,  the Singapore government decided Internet infrastructure was strategic and therefore took equity positions in the nascent Internet service providers. (Internet service in Sweden and Singapore costs less than half of what I pay in Los Angeles today.) 

China seems to follow a semi-public strategy of funding private companies and allowing them to compete against each other while retaining political control rather than equity. They followed this strategy in developing terrestrial Internet infrastructure and applications and are doing the same with satellite broadband. Community networks, where the users own and operate the network, are another form of quasi-government ownership.

I don't mean to imply that public ownership is inherently superior to private ownership. Public ownership may lead to cronyism and bureaucracy.  For example, Cuba has a bureaucratic government-monopoly Internet service provider and Cuban infrastructure and access lag behind other Latin American and Caribbean nations, content is controlled and they recently confiscated SNET, a large and successful community network (that was not connected to the Internet).

There is no simple, optimal public/private policy and whatever we do needs to be continuously monitored and adjusted as people learn to game the system, but the proposal for the creation of a National Investment Authority (NIA) by Cornell University law professors Saule Omarova and Robert C. Hockett is a good place to begin the discussion. 

The NIA would bail out citizens and critical organizations during a crisis like COVID-19 and invest in socially valuable collective goods like rural broadband, renewable energy, affordable housing, and clean water during stable times. An independent NIA governing board would set development goals and strategies but would not make investment decisions. Those would be made by a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) and a National Capital Management Corporation (NCMC). 

The NIB would buy and securitize bonds that municipalities and other public and private actors issue and the NCMC would seek investors in a collection of socially valuable investment funds the way a privately owned asset management/venture capital firm like Blackrock does.

But, why would a private investor invest in an NCMC fund that was focused on long-term social return instead of a fund of a private asset management firm that seeks to maximize financial return? The government would guarantee an attractive, relatively short-term return on investments in NCMC funds. It would convert the expected long-term return to society into a reasonable short-term return to private investors.

The public foots the bill for bailouts today and the NIA would give us a seat at the investment decision table. It would face political hurdles, but so did the New Deal at the time of an earlier crisis. If the NIA sounds interesting, check out this short article, podcast interview (with transcript), or this detailed paper.

Update 3/31/2023

A partial explanation for the popularity of active industrial
policy Source

The collapse of prominent banks and the FTX cryptocurrency exchange have led Saule Omarova and Todd Tucker to renew their call for a new American industrial policy that discourages deleterious investments, like in FTX (financially and environmentally bad), and encourages socially beneficial investments like in clean energy, semiconductor production or infrastructure.

Lest this seem an impossible dream in today's divided political environment, check out Tucker's long Twitter thread with examples of congressional House and Senate candidates -- including some Republicans -- who won while running on an industrial policy "focused mainly on building up the nascent industries that policymakers want to see grow" like "domestic semiconductors and 'infant industries' like green hydrogen and floating offshore wind." (Be sure to click on "show replies" since the thread is in three parts).

A democratic industrial policy would allow the public to have a say in which industries should survive and thrive and Omarova and Tucker cite several historical and current examples of such policies and the organizations that implement them including the "more ambitious and strategic National Investment Authority" described above.

Amazon will thrive after COVID-19

Amazon has already received a retail
windfall, but their infrastructure
will be more important in the long run.

My final exam this term will include a take-home question: How will COVID-19 affect the fortunes one of the major Internet companies -- Apple, Google, Facebook, or Microsoft?

I didn't include Amazon because they are an obvious winner. On December 30, 2019 Amazon stock was selling for $1,847.84 per share and on May 1, 2020 it was $2,286.04, a 23.7 percent increase. The government gave trillions of dollars to consumers and at the same time, told most brick and mortar retailers they had to close, creating a double windfall for Amazon and other online retailers.

Since its inception, the Internet has enabled us to substitute communication for transportation. (See, for example, my 1998 pilot study at Hyundai USA). The rate of that substitution is a function of technological improvement and experience with the technology by users and organizations. COVID-19 has led to the invention of new use cases for communication in lieu of transportation and forced organizations and individuals to learn to use the technology. That will cause an increase in the rate of substitution of communication for transportation which will increase demand for Amazon’s infrastructure and services. While Amazon is known for retail, they are a major infrastructure company, which will be more important in the long run.

Amazon & Jeff Bezos' infrastructure
and services

More companies will establish affiliate retailer stores at Amazon.com and those that are already there will see increased sales. (In 2018, third-parties accounted for 58% of Amazon retail sales). There will be increased demand for Amazon fulfillment and delivery services as well as Amazon credit cards.

Organizations that need to tighten their belts to survive after COVID-19 will want to cut costs and staff, making Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cloud Storage more attractive than on-premises information technology. Organizations that fail as a result of the pandemic will free up IT people and potential entrepreneurs to create startups to exploit novel Internet use cases that were made apparent by COVID-19. Many of those startups will be run out of Amazon datacenters.

Space is a long-term growth sector and Amazon will benefit from that as a space infrastructure company. They are investing heavily in the launch business and recently (along with two others) received funding as part of NASA’s ambitious lunar program. Amazon's ground station service will be attractive for space startups with little cash to spend on building out their own ground infrastructure.

Amazon’s forthcoming broadband Internet service satellite constellation got a boost with the recent bankruptcy of OneWeb, which was shaping up to be a major competitor. OneWeb says COVID-19 precipitated their bankruptcy and Amazon may purchase the company or a portion of its assets.

Amazon’s Echo voice platform is also the leader in the growing voice-application sector.

In addition to being strong in retail and infrastructure, Amazon is rich. They had $55 billion cash in the quarter ending March 31, a 33.8% year-over-year increase. A lot of people will be looking for jobs after COVID-19, and Amazon will be able to afford to hire them. They will also have the funds to buy companies. How about Zoom? (If they can't afford something, they can probably get a loan from founder and CEO Jeff Bezos who has a net worth of $138.5% billion).

Finally, in addition to generating revenue, Amazon’s infrastructure will yield increased amounts of information in the post-COVID era. That information will enable them to better allocate resources and investments and make dynamic pricing decisions.

One caveat -- all of this is good news for Amazon post-COVID, but if it is too good, they may face anti-trust action.

SpaceX applies for a constellation re-design and announces beta test dates.

This week SpaceX petitioned the FCC to reconfigure their Starlink constellation and Elon Musk outlined their beta testing plan. As shown below, the most significant configuration change is reducing the altitude of four of the five groups of orbital planes by around 50%.

The total number of satellites and the number orbiting at a 53-degree inclination, which gives good coverage over relatively affluent regions, are not changed very much. In their application, SpaceX points out that the other inclination revisions would favor coverage in the more northern and southern regions and the lower altitudes will reduce satellite-ground latency and facilitate the de-orbiting of defective and obsolete satellites, reducing the risk of collision.

When and why did they decide to request this change? I've seen a lot of speculation online. Was OneWeb's bankruptcy which opened the Alaskan market, they had planned to cover this year, a factor? How about difficulty with developing inter-satellite laser links, making satellite-ground latency a priority? Negative feedback from some potential market segments or nations? Antenna design difficulty? Capacity constraints? Launch cost? Difficulty dealing with the risk of debris? Capital constraints? Etc. Etc. Were they pursuing multiple designs in parallel from the start? No one outside of SpaceX knows why and when they made the decision to change, but regardless of the reason and timing, a major change this late does not inspire confidence and this is their second major revision.

Well, enough speculation. No one outside of SpaceX knows what went into the decision, so let's turn to Elon Musks tweet announcing beta test plans:

The first beta will probably be restricted to SpaceX insiders and carefully controlled and monitored, but what about the second, public tests? I have a house in a small mountain community with no landline Internet service and would love to be included, but Musk's tweet says they will "starting at high latitudes," and my house is at around 34 degrees. At the current launch rate of 120 per month, around 1,000 53-degree inclination satellites will have been launched by the start of the public beta tests. My house will have coverage at that point so if Elon wants some beta testers in the southern portion of the coverage sweet spot, I'll volunteer.

Oh, by the way, SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites today and landed the used booster on a barge at sea. Cool, but getting to be routine -- not particularly newsworthy.

OneWeb is bankrupt -- who will buy their assets?

One could argue that a global ISP should not be owned by a single nation or a corporation.

OneWeb has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. OneWeb CEO Adrian Steckel stated that they were "close to obtaining financing" but failed as a "consequence of the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis." That is plausible, but they were also far behind SpaceX Starlink in launch cost and capacity. (SpaceX, remains open as an essential industry working on defense contracts, but two employees have tested positive for COVID-19) and financial analyst Tim Farrar said SpaceX faced a "near-term cash problem" even before the pandemic).

OneWeb has valuable assets -- satellites in orbit, ground stations, flat panel antenna, progressive pitch, debris mitigation and other technologies, engineering and manufacturing experience, patents, a satellite factory, supply chains, memoranda of understanding with nations, spectrum, marketing deals, and other partnerships, etc. Who will acquire those assets?

Amazon comes immediately to mind as a potential buyer. Amazon is a relatively recent entry in the LEO constellation broadband race, which leaves it far behind SpaceX, and it is first and foremost an an infrastructure company. CEO Jeff Bezos has a lifelong interest in space and owns satellite-launch and ground-station service companies. He could also fund the purchase himself.

While Amazon is perhaps most likely to acquire the OneWeb's assets, there are others. China is home to three LEO broadband startups that are also late to the LEO broadband race and have a ready funding source. Facebook might also be interested if they are seriously considering satellite broadband, .

Twitter user @megaconstellati has suggested that a government -- the US, UK or France -- might take over OneWeb. With its new Space Force and interest in lEO constellations, the US could consider taking over OneWeb, but that would not seem likely to appeal to a relatively anti-government administration. The same goes for the UK.

Not that it's likely to happen, but one could argue that a global ISP should not be owned by a single nation or corporation -- it should be a global asset -- just as coronavirus and climate change are global liabilities. Those liabilities remind us that we live on a "pale blue dot.

Update 6/16/2020

If no company buys OneWeb by June 26th, their assets will be auctioned off on July 2nd. Last month Chris Forrester wrote that two Chinese companies were considering bids. He's updated that saying four Chinese companies are now interested and the Amazon, SpaceX and Eutelsat bids are less likely. We'll know how it turns out soon.

Update July 4, 2020

A consortium of the British government and Bharti Global limited was the winning bidder in the OneWeb auction. They bid over $1 billion to fund the full restart of OneWeb's business. The agreement remains subject to approval by OneWeb’s creditors, the Bankruptcy Court, and applicable regulators, with completion expected by the fourth quarter of 2020.

Bharti, through Bharti Airtel, is the third-largest mobile operator in the world, with over 425 million customers and a strong presence across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. If successful, the project will bring fixed broadband to those and other customers. The British government hopes it can use the constellation for global positioning and timing since it lost access to the European Union global navigation satellite system as a result of Brexit and it will provide connectivity in rural areas and a presence in the space industry.

The U. S. government could possibly challenge the sale since OneWeb has significant manufacturing assets in Florida and the Treasury Department Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is authorized "to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States." I'd like to listen in on the call when Trump and Boris Johnson discuss that possibility!

Geely's LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity

It will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.

The Geely Holding Group (GHG) is a private Chinese conglomerate that is highly diversified, but best known as an auto manufacturer that envisions itself as a "global mobile technology group." GHG announced this week that it has begun construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility that will include modular satellite manufacturing, satellite testing, satellite R&D, and cloud computing centers.

They will be capable of producing a variety of different satellite models, but the immediate goal is to produce satellites for a constellation of LEO satellites capable of offering low-latency internet connectivity plus cloud and edge computing to support in-vehicle entertainment, navigation, over-the-air software updates, and level 4 and later level 5 (full automation) autonomous vehicles. (For a summary of the definitions of SAE's six levels (0-5) of vehicle autonomy, click here and for a detailed definition click here). Note that in addition to car companies, GHG has interests in trucking, high-speed trains, and even passenger drones.

Reuters reported that GHG is investing $326 million in the project, aims to make 500 satellites a year by 2025, and will begin launching satellites this year. Geely sold 2.18 million cars last year and will be adding satellite functionality to their cars as well as those of other GHC companies, including Volvo and Daimler.

The illustration on the GHG press release shows a CubeSat, so they are evidently not interested in competing with SpaceX and other would-be broadband ISPs, at least for now. (Three other Chinese companies are working on LEO broadband constellations). Regardless, they will compete with broadband LEO satellite providers for mobile vehicle applications and it will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions of and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.

Update 2/2/2021

Geely has officially launched its internet satellite project in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province, with an investment of 4.12 billion yuan ($637 million). The project is located in the Qingdao Shanghai demonstration zone, which is the location of other projects in support of the Belt and Road Initiative. I assume that being within the demonstration zone means they are receiving some subsidy -- perhaps free land or tax breaks like states and cities often give to attract business in the US. (Remember the Amazon headquarters bidding war a couple years ago)? For an explanation of the somewhat opaque system of local government, national government, and private financing of Chinese space ventures, listen to or read the transcript of this podcast interview with China space expert Blaine Curcio.

Update 1/6/2022

On December 14, an Expace rocket carrying Geely's test satellites, Geesats A and B, failed. While this was a setback, Curcio reported several positive developments as well. Geely's highly automated satellite manufacturing factory will make 500 satellites per year, and they have been aggressively hiring people with extensive satellite design and manufacturing experience, including at least ten experts who have worked on the third-generation Beido positioning, navigation, and timing service. 

Geely is also well-positioned politically. GHG Chairman Li Shufu is a member of the National People's Congress and is rumored to be a friend or close associate of Xi Jinping who spent five years as governor of GHG's home province. Li came from a humble family and the “Geely Common Prosperity Initiative” is clearly in line with Xi's drive for common prosperity.

For background on GHG and Li and his view of the future of mobile vehicles -- cars, ships, trucks, etc. -- see this Reuters report.

Update 8/23/2022

GeeSpace launched nine satellites, and they are all performing correctly. They are the first of 72 phase-one satellites that are expected to be in orbit by 2025. The second 168 satellites will then be launched, bringing the constellation up to 240 satellites.

Update March 2, 2024

Geely launched eleven satellites in the same 50-degree inclination plane as the first nine, but there was a considerable delay between the two launches. The first nine were launched in June 2022 and the second 11 were launched in February 2024. The delay may have been caused by a satellite re-design -- The mass of these satellites is 130 kg whereas the first nine satellites had masses of 100 kg.

The launch cadence will have to speed up if they are to reach their goal of beginning service with 72  satellites next year.

Update July 6, 2024

This update is based on a recent GeeSpace discussion in Blaine Curcio's excellent China Space Monitor.

Curcio begins with background on Geely and founder Li Shufu and his ambitious (Musk-like) plans for GeeSpace, which was initiated about six years ago when Li “floated his idea of using hundreds of proprietary mini, low-orbit satellites as a more accurate global positioning system for self-driving cars”

The company plans to provide “global real-time data communication services” once the 72-satellite first-phase constellation is completed next year and “global centimeter-level positioning services” when the 168 second-phase satellites are in orbit. GeeSpace envisions surveillance, urban planning, infrastructure management, and other applications, as well as automotive autonomous vehicle support and the eleven satellites launched in February had "artificial intelligence" remote sensing capabilities, with a resolution ranging from 3.2 to 16.4 feet 

Geely brands sold 2.79 million units in 2023, and Curcio concludes that "Within 5-10 years, GeeSpace could conceivably have a constellation of satellites connecting all Geely cars in a very interesting example of vertical integration (actual use cases pending)." 

Update 8/13/2025

Geespace launched 11 satellites, bringing the constellation to 41 in orbit with plans to begin IoT service with 72 satellites in 2025, followed by 264 D2D satellites and eventually 5,676 satellites.

"IoT services" is vague and more modest than earlier goals of “global real-time data communication services” with 72 satellites and a "168-satellite second phase by an undisclosed date to achieve “global centimeter-level positioning services,” or their press release promising "vision of building an integrated space and earth mobility ecosystem that will transform how users experience transportation."

That being said, don't underestimate Geely. It is a huge conglomerate selling many auto brands with large, rapidly increasing sales and profits, and as mentioned above, founder Li Shufu is ambitious.

Mass-produced propaganda -- a Cuban example

An "author" named Admin posted over 1,000
articles in seven languages in two weeks.

Earlier this month, Google sent me several notifications for an article entitled "The Internet Is Widely Accessible in Cuba. Why Is the US Insisting It Isn’t?" I checked it out and found that Reese Erlich had posted it on Truthout.org, a left-leaning Web site, on February 12. On the 13th, Cabasi.com published a shortened version of the article and Salon.com published the original version on the 17th. These were all in English and both Salon and Cubasi credited Truthout.

I also received notification of an article entitled "Internet es ampliamente accesible en Cuba. ¿Por qué Estados Unidos insiste en que no lo es?" that was published February 13 at DiarioDeLatinos.com.

It turns out that DiarioDeLatinos also published English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Russian versions of the same article on the 13th. The seven versions of the article were all written by the same author, Admin, with a little help from Google Translate, which rendered "New York Times" as "New York Instances" in the first paragraph. Admin is prolific -- he or she had posted 1,072 articles on DiarioDeLatinos.com as of the morning of February 18th and DiarioDeLatinos.com was registered on February 4th. The registrant organization is Domains By Proxy, LLC, which is located at the GoDaddy Headquarters building in Scottsdale, Arizona:

Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry
Registrant Name: Registration Private
Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com
Registrant Street: 14455 N. Hayden Road
Registrant City: Scottsdale
Registrant State/Province: Arizona
Registrant Postal Code: 85260
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.4806242599
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +1.4806242598
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: diariodelatinos.com@domainsbyproxy.com
Registry Admin ID: Not Available From Registry
Admin Name: Registration Private

Private domain registration is reminiscent of banks facilitating money laundering. I wonder what else Domains By Proxy is hiding.

Finally, I took a look at what the censors at Cubasi deleted when they edited the original article. They cut mention of tools like the Signal encrypted messaging app and VPNs, the fact that Cubans can download El Nuevo Herald, and Cuba’s blocking of Web sites. They also deleted references to dissidents like Yoani Sanchez or Ladies in White and admissions that only 38 percent of Cubans are connected to the web compared to 70 percent for all of Latin America, 3G wireless is being installed in Cuba while much of the world is switching over to 5G, Cuba lacks convertible currency, Cubans don’t have the bandwidth to stream video and El Paquete is “by far” the most popular technology for Cubans.

This was not Cuba's first foray into online propaganda. In 2013, Eliécer Ávila described Operation Truth in which 1,000 university students were writing social media posts favoring the government and working as "trolls," disrupting discussion and attacking those who question the government and last month Granma posted a propaganda/conspiracy article about US subversion.

I wonder how much Internet propaganda the Cuban government sponsored between 2013 and 2020 and I worry about the fact that any government could do the same.

Update 2/26/2020

A reader sent me a link to a claim of sock-puppet trolls working for the Cuban government and another pointed out that the term of art is "Ciberclaria" and if you Google that term, you will find more examples like this or this.


(This post is mirrored on my blog on the Cuban Internet).