SpaceX to launch satellites for competitor OneWeb

Elon Musk may be the richest person in the world because he is motivated by more than profit.

Covering the US flag on a Russian rocket (image source)

On March 2, Russia covered the US flag on the Roscosmos Space Agency rocket that was scheduled to launch 36 OneWeb broadband satellites on March 5. The Russians made two obviously untenable demands -- that OneWeb guarantee that the satellites would not be used for military purposes and the United Kingdom government remove its investment in the company. OneWeb declined and the satellites were removed from the rocket. 

On March 17, speaking at a USAID forum, Bala Balamurali, OneWeb's Director for Southeast Asia & the Pacific, said the plan to offer service later this year had slipped to early next year due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The schedule delay and loss of expensive satellites and payment for this and future launches was a major setback for OneWeb and they began searching for a new launch provider.

The plaques on the "wall of patents" at Tesla were replaced
by a mural (image source)

They found one -- broadband competitor SpaceX. Coming to the rescue of a competitor might seem like bad business, but Elon Musk may be the richest person in the world (with the possible exception of Putin) because he is motivated by more than profit. Musk does not see the success of the Starlink broadband business as an end in itself, but as contributing to his larger goals of extending the scope and scale of consciousness beyond Earth, achieving AI-human symbiosis, and transitioning to sustainable energy.

In 2014, Musk made a similar decision in support of his goal of transitioning the world to sustainable energy when he released Tesla's 249 patents into the public domain, saying "All Our Patent Are Belong To You" (derived from an obscure meme). He open-sourced them.

Update 4/22/2022

OneWeb has also contracted for satellite launches with New Space India Limited (NSI), the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation. They will launch satellites with both NSI and SpaceX in 2022, so the Russian cancellation might not cause a large delay.

Update 4/272022

OneWeb has announced that they will begin service in India in early 2023. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they planned to begin serving India in mid-2022. The invasion cost their schedule to slip by about six months.

Update 3/27/2023

OneWeb has given up on retrieving satellites left in Russia. 

CEO Neil Masterson said that the company has largely given up on retrieving 36 satellites currently held by Roscosmos, saying "I spend no time thinking about it. We've completely moved on ... There is value in getting them back, but I can tell you that I'm not getting them back any time soon."

A simulation of the SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat and OneWeb broadband satellite constellations

Over two years ago, an MIT research group ran a simulation of the low-Earth orbit broadband constellations of OneWeb, SpaceX, and Telesat, and last January they repeated the simulation updating with revised constellation characteristics and adding Amazon's Project Kuiper.

They ran the new simulation twice, once using the planned initial deployments of each constellation and a second time using the configuration shown below, which shows final deployments assuming that change requests that were pending in January would be approved. (SpaceX's have been approved). I will discuss the second simulation here and you can consult the paper for the results of the initial deployment simulation.

The following figure shows the total system throughput for each constellation as a function of the number of ground stations and whether or not the satellites have optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) enabling them to route traffic through the in-orbit grid. (The lines show averages and the shaded regions show interquartile values).

Note that Telesat is committed to having OISLs in all their satellites and SpaceX will have them in their polar-orbit version 1.5 satellites that are launching this year and in all version 2 satellites starting next year. OneWeb initially planned to include OISLs but decided not to for now and Amazon has not committed to them but has formed an OISL hardware team.

The following figure shows the number of satellites in line of sight (LoS) at full deployment and population as a function of latitude. All Amazon satellites are in inclined orbits, so, while major population centers are served, polar regions are not and the altitudes of the OneWeb and Telesat constellations increase the numbers of satellites in LoS.

If interested, you should read this and the earlier paper (links in the opening paragraph) for details on the methodology, assumptions, and results, but I will conclude with a couple of caveats.

This simulation ignores the 7,518 very low-Earth orbit satellites that have been approved for SpaceX and the designs of all of the constellations are in flux. SpaceX will soon be launching version 1.5 satellites followed by version 2 next year. Similarly, OneWeb will be launching improved satellites by the time the constellation is complete and Telesat and Amazon are still in the design phase.

The simulation assumes that demand is proportional to population (based on a 0.1-degree resolution grid), so mobile utilization by ships, planes, and vehicles is not considered. It also assumes each individual consumes an average of 300 Kbps and the total addressable market is 10% of the global population. As they admit, the 10% is optimistic. (Elon Musk expects 3-5%). Since SpaceX will be charging the same price in every nation, their per-capita subscription rates will vary with national income, and the companies' target markets vary. For example, Telesat will not market to consumers. 

While the specifics will change and this and other simulations will have to be rerun over time, this simulation considers key variables, and general conclusions can be drawn. For example, in this simulation, maximum throughput is from 13-42% higher when 20 Gbps OISLs are assumed. Currently, only SpaceX and Telesat are committed to OISLs, but since OISL technology is improving and they also improve latency, save on ground station cost and enable coverage at sea and other isolated locations, I expect all operators to eventually adopt them. (We may also see OISLs between layers, for example, between Telesat's LEO and GEO constellations).

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service developments for 2020

I posted reviews of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments during 2017, 2018 and 2019. I've updated those posts during the years and have 18 new posts for 2020. In 2020 we saw increased effort from China, OneWeb's bankruptcy and restructuring with new ownership and prospects, Amazon investng in space-related infrastructure, Telesat making steady progress, SpaceX making rapid progress and satellite and debris tracking and collision-avoidsnce service startups. The following are brief summaries of and links to the 2020 posts.

China will be a formidable satellite Internet service competitor (Jan 28)

This post describes three planned Chinese constellations, at least one of which will focus on broadband Internet service. Testing has begun and satellite mamufacturing capacity is being developed. They will serve both domestic and international users as part of China's global Digital Silk Road infrastructure program and are funded by both private and government investment.

LEO Broadband Will Create Millions of Jobs (Feb 13)

SpcaceX is recruiting hard-working, trustworthy people with common sense regardless of their education. They will train new-hires. This was commmon practice in the 1960s, when IBM had a formal two-year training program for new hires and the 1950s when the US government paid IBM to hire and train 3,000 programmers for the SAGE early-warning system.

Geely's LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity (Mar 4)

The Geely Holding Group (GHG), a diversified, private Chinese conglomerate that is best known as an auto manufacturer, began construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility.

OneWeb is bankrupt -- who will buy their assets? (Mar 31)

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and partnership of the British government and Bharti Global limited, an Indian telecommunication conglomerate serving parts of Asia and Africa, bid a billion dollars to acquire OneWeb's assets and restart the company.

SpaceX applies for a constellation re-design and announces beta test dates. (Apr 24)

SpaceX applied for a redesign of their constellation. If approved, the number of satellites would essentially be unchanged, but many would be at lower altitude and some will be moved to polar orbits enabling better coverage of far northern and southren latitudes.

Can SpaceX launch 30,000 second-generation Starlink satellites? Maybe. (Jun 8)

SpaceX applied for permission to launch 30,000 "second-generation" Starlink broadband Internet satellites. This post describes the proposed constellation and speculates on their ability to fund, manufacture and launch so many satellites and the feasibility of dealing with the space debris that the effort would create.

Rural broadband subsidy -- what's the rush? (Jun 13)

The Federal Communications Commission adopted procedures for Phase I of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction to award up to $16 billion in support over 10 years for the deployment of fixed broadband networks. The post describes the program and questions the categorization of satellite-based services as high-latency and the rush to allocate the funds.

Questions on the impact of trees on SpaceX Starlink (Jun 24)

This post raises a number of questions about the impact of trees and other obstructions as well as rain and snow on SpaceX Starlink service.

Amazon Aerospace and Satellite Solutions -- integrating satellites and terrestrial services (Jul 6)

Amazon announced Amazon Web Services Aerospace and Satellite Solutions to market and assist in the design and implementation of complex space/terrestrial systems. SpaceX has a substantial lead in launch and satellite deployment and Amazon has superior terrestrial resources and is building the organization and infrastructure to connect them to space.

OneWeb rises from the ashes -- maybe (Jul 22)

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. While they lag behind SpaceX and will need more capital, they have a number of advantages and I hope they succeed.

Bill Gates has not forgotten Teledesic (Sep 17)

Gates was a founding investor in Teledesic, the first attempt at LEO satellite Internet connectivity, but it failed. Today, he is a major investor in Kymeta, a leading supplier of electronically-steered antennas and Microsoft tested satellite access to their Azure cloud services. Microsoft does not want to miss out on space connectivity and services.

A new Chinese broadband satellite constellation (Oct 2)

China applied for specturm for a major new LEO satellite constellation with 12,992 satellites, roughly half of which will orbit at around 550 km and half at 1,145 km. SpaceX is off to a fast start and will be first to offer connectivity in America and Europe, OneWeb, through Bharti, has an edge in Asia and Africa and the Chinese companies have the same in Digital Silk Road nations.

SpaceX Starlink is on a roll (Oct 23)

SpaceX entered into a partnership with Microsoft to connect to their Azure cloud, giving them an answer to Project Kuiper's integration with Amazon Web Services and infrastructure. They also began offering beta service to a few individuals and organizations in the northern US and solicited applications for a public beta test and saw such strong demand that they requested an increase in the number of authorized US terminals. They have also registered 14 shell companies in 13 foreign nations and are deploying ground stations in north America and Europe.

SpaceX Starlink beta, phase two (Oct 28)

Starlink opened beta testing to the public. Applicants must be between 42 and 53 degrees north lattitude. The inital locations must be in the US and the price is $99 per month for the service $499 for a terminal.

Satellite and space debris tracking as a service (Nov 6)

LeoLabs and Northstar are offering satellite and debris tracking and collision avoidance as a service. LeoLabs is using terrestrial, phased-array radar and Northstar is tracking from satellites. Tracking and collision avoidance is a technical and political problem because it requires collaboration and data sharing among government and private satellite operators from all nations.

Starlink will be priced to be affordable (Nov 14)

SpaceX and others will have to charge less for connecivity in developing nations if their service is to be affordable and fully use the capacity of the constellation. Charging more in affluent markets will increase revenue and tend to reduce the "digital divide" -- good business and good karma.

OneWeb is out of bankruptcy, but is not out of the woods (Nov 25)

OneWeb has emerged from bankruptcy with Bharti and the UK governmenet having 42.2% ownership each. Some of their previous agreements are in place and some inevestors are still participating. They will have to raise more capital and are well behind SpaceX, but have acquired assets that had cost $3.3 billion and have marketing advantages in several areas. We need competition and I hope they succeed.

Telesat update -- proposal for a larger constellation, Canadian and DARPA contracts, a planned IPO and more (Dec 28) Telesat has submitted a plan calling for an increase in the number of satellites they launch to 1,671. While they have not yet launched production satellites, they have run many tests and demonstrations and have research contracts with the US and Canadian governments, Canadian government support, a steady stream of income from their 50-year old geostationary satellite business, ground stations in the north and plans for an IPO to finance the LEO constellation.

OneWeb is out of bankruptcy, but not out of the woods.

OneWeb, which declared bankruptcy in May, has reorganized and emerged from bankruptcy. Bharti Global, an Indian telecommunication conglomerate, and the British government each own 42.2% of the new company, and most of the rest is owned by previous investors SoftBank and Hughes Network Systems.

Hughes will continue work on ground infrastructure and marketing and the original joint venture with Airbus, which designs and manufactures OneWeb satellites, was re-activated and the production lines brought back into service.

The company has new top management. Neil Masterson, who was COO at Thomson Reuters, will be the new CEO at OneWeb and Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti, will be the Executive Chairman. The previous CEO, Adrian Steckel, has been appointed Adviser to the Board. Notably, OneWeb founder and previous Executive Chairman Greg Wyler was not mentioned so may not be involved -- perhaps that is related to the shift from the end-user market to government, enterprise, maritime, aviation and other markets that may be less price-sensitive and not require low-cost terminals. (The first million terminals may be costing SpaceX as much as $2,400 each).

OneWeb has permission from the FCC to operate 2,000 satellites -- 720 in low-Earth orbit (LEO) at 1,200 km and 1,280 in medium-Earth orbits at 8,500 km and a 45° inclination. They currently have 74 LEO satellites in near-polar orbit and recently shipped 36 to Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome for a December 17th launch on a Soyuz rocket. (While they have permission to launch 720 LEO satellites, they seem to be only planning to launch 648).

OneWeb's first priority is building out its first-generation broadband network and providing coverage down to about 50 degrees latitude next year and to complete the full constellation the following year. The plan is to begin commercial services starting at the end of 2021 to the UK, Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic Seas.

The company is seeking landing rights in India and Mittal said they plan to begin testing Internet service there in 6-8 months. (Those will be test satellites with intermittent connectivity). The plan is to offer service in India in May/June 2022.

OneWeb is starting over with new partners, assets that had cost the previous company $3.3 billion, and priority spectrum rights, but they are not yet out of the woods.

For a start, they've booked sixteen launches with Arianespace but will need about $2-2.5 billion to complete the constellation.

They have also lost time. They had initially hoped to begin Alaskan service in 2019 and serve the entire state by the end of 2020, and are now far behind that schedule. In the meantime, Telesat, their stiffest competitor for Alaska and the polar region, has made steady progress.

Whiile Bharti's participation gives OneWeb an advantage in terms of distribution and business and government relationships in developing nations in Asia and Africa, they will face stiff Chinese competition in the "Digital Silk Road" nations.

They are also under time pressure to manufacture and launch satellites in order to retain their ITU spectrum rights -- 360 satellites by June 2023 and 720 by June 226. While OneWeb has maintained it's manufacturing joint venture with Airbus, the BBC reports that "components exist for a further three batches of satellites, and the new owners have been busy in recent weeks re-establishing old supply chains to fully ramp up production to pre-bankruptcy levels."

Other than Hughes and Airbus, I don't know which of their prior contracts, MOUs, and relationships are still in force. For example, they had agreements for distribution and cooperation in Alaska, Hawaii, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and surely others I am unaware of.

Finally, there has been discussion of the possibility of OneWeb generating revenue by modifying their satellites to double as a high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that is difficult to jam or spoof. Mittal told BBC News: "For Generation 2, we will of course have full-scale precise, navigation and timing. And if the UK government wants some other payloads critical to the needs of security, we will do whatever is required." By the time they are ready to launch the next-generation satellites, they may face competition from Xona Space Systems's forthcoming 300-satellite GNSS as well as the possibility of similar offerings by SpaceX.

I hope OneWeb survives and thrives -- billions of people live in unserved areas and competition is good for all.

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.

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!

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service developments for 2019

SpaceX lands two boosters (video)

I posted reviews of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments during 2017 and 2018. I've been updating those posts during the years and have 16 new posts for 2019. In 2019 we saw four inciteful simulations, Leosat suspending operations and Amazon announcing the availability of a new ground station service and plans for a LEO constellation, progress in phased-array antennas but a lowering of expectations for inter-satellite laser links (ISLLs), new competition from China, worries about space debris and SpaceX racing ahead of the pack. The following are brief summaries of and links to those 2019 posts:

Simulation of OneWeb, SpaceX and Telesat's proposed global broadband constellations (January 2019)

Inigo del Portillo and his colleagues at MIT have run a simulation comparing OneWeb, SpaceX and Telesat's proposed LEO Internet service constellations. They estimated the average data rate per satellite and total system throughput (sellable capacity) for each constellation then computed the number of ground stations needed to achieve full capacity. The simulations were run with and without ISLLs. The configurations of SpaceX and OneWeb's constellations have changed somewhat since they ran the simulations, but del Portillo does not think the numbers for total throughput and number of ground stations would vary a lot for SpaceX and he expected the total system throughput would decrease slightly for OneWeb because of the reduction of the number of satellites from the initial 720 to 600.

Fifteen-dollar, electronically-steerable antennas for satellite and terrestrial connectivity (February 2019)

OneWeb founder Greg Wyler announced that his self-funded side project, Wafer LLC, has developed a flat, low-power phased-array antenna that could be mass-produced for $15. If that is the case, we can look forward to end-user terminals in the $2-300 dollar range. At this cost, one can envision deploying large numbers of two-antenna user terminals to act as ground stations when they are otherwise idle. A recent simulation shows that doing so would result in lower latency and jitter than today's terrestrial networks. Owners of these relay terminals could be subsidized.

Google balloons and Telesat satellites (February 2019)

Telesat will use Google's network operating system. In return, Google, which is also a SpaceX investor, may get access to some Telesat data in addition to compensation for their software. Another intriguing possibility is that Google might be planning to integrate Project Loon, their stratospheric balloon Internet service with Telesat's LEO satellite Internet service -- to use Telesat's network as a global backbone. That integration would be facilitated by their both running the same SDN software -- the same network operating system. (In the long run, I expect that all network layers will be integrated -- from the ground to airplanes to geostationary orbit).

SpaceX's Starlink Internet service will target end-users on day one (March 2019)

Starting with Teledesic in 1990, would-be LEO satellite constellations have pitched their projects to the FCC, other regulators, and the public as a means of closing the digital divide, but they also have their eyes on lucrative aviation, maritime, high-speed trading, mobile backhaul, enterprise, and governments markets. (LEOSat, which had planned to focus exclusively on the enterprise and government markets recently suspended operations). SpaceX has filed an FCC application for one million ground stations, indicating that they will be focused on end-users and small organizations in addition to high-end customers from the start.

Are inter-satellite laser links a bug or a feature of ISP constellations? (April 2019)

OneWeb has decided not to include ISLLs in the first phase of their constellation and SpaceX will not introduce them until near the end of 2020, at which time they may start with test satellites. OneWeb's decision was motivated by political issues in Russia as well as technical considerations. They will need more ground stations to offer global service without ISLLs and a team of MIT researchers has run a simulation of a 720-satellite OnWeb constellation. They estimate that 71 ground stations would be required to reach maximum throughput.

Amazon's orbiting infrastructure (April 2019)

In his first annual stockholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stressed that Amazon was focused on investing in infrastructure. Initially, they invested in retail distribution centers but have added an Internet backbone, trucks and planes, third party retail support, cloud computing and storage, and satellite launch and ground station service and are now working on a constellation of LEO satellites for broadband service. They use this infrastructure themselves and market it to competitors like online retailers and they have contracts to launch satellites for OneWeb and Telesat. This infrastructure yields both revenue and access to market data and there have been calls for antitrust action against Amazon.

Satellite Internet Service Progress by SpaceX and Telesat (May 2019)

Telesat has signed their first LEO customer, Omniaccess a provider of connectivity to the superyacht market, received a subsidy from the Canadian budget for providing service in rural Canada, is working with two teams that are competing to be the prime contractor for their constellation, and signed a launch contract with Amazon's Blue Origen. They also announced that they had demonstrated 5G mobile backhaul in tests with Vodaphone and the University of Surrey. SpaceX also announced ambitious plans for future launches, which have subsequently been surpassed.

SpaceX reports significant broadband satellite progress (May 2019)

SpaceX announced a significant reduction in the size and weight of their satellites and the addition of krypton-powered thrusters that would enable them to autonomously avoid collisions with on-orbit debris that was large enough to track. The thrusters would also be used to de-orbit obsolete satellites. Might the collective constellation "learn" to avoid smaller debris one day?

Might satellite constellations learn to avoid debris with sensors on satellites? (May 2019)

According to the European Space Agency, there are about 5,000 orbiting satellites, about 40% of which are still functioning. They estimate that there have been over 500 break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events resulting in fragmentation and they estimate that there are 34,000 debris objects >10 cm, 900,000 from 1 to 10 cm and 128 million from 1 mm to 1 cm. NASA says there are more than 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball, 500,000 the size of a marble or larger and many millions so small they can’t be tracked. Space debris is a "tragedy of the commons." SpaceX plans to launch thousands of satellites. Could sensors on satellites detect and catalog small pieces of debris and, if so, could that lead to meaningful evasive action?

Hongyun Project -- China's low-earth orbit broadband Internet project (June 2019)

China has announced two LEO broadband satellite projects and a LEO narrowband Internet of things constellation. While far behind SpaceX in technology, the Chinese companies have a large domestic market, access to government capital and political and economic ties to many nations through their Belt and Road and Digital Silk Road infrastructure projects.

Amazon's AWS Ground Station service is now available (June 2019)

Amazon is offering satellite ground station access as a service. They list a number of advantages to their service, several of which are based on complementary Amazon offerings like access to their data centers and global network backbone and cloud computing and storage services. We can assume that Amazon's satellite constellation will use these ground stations at cost and, like their launch service, they will be made available to competitors. Amazon has been accused of predatory pricing in retail and competing ground-segment companies may fear the same.

Latecomer Amazon will be a formidable satellite ISP competitor (July 2019)

In spite of being a latecomer to the race to deploy a constellation of LEO broadband Internet satellites, Amazon's Project Kuiper will be a formidable competitor. While far behind SpaceX, Amazon has in-house launch capability and they have extensive complementary infrastructure including data centers, Web services, and a ground-station service. They also have the funds to finance the constellation as well as to develop or acquire critical technology like ISLLs and cost-effective phased-array antennas. They have also hired ex-SpaceX executives and engineers and in Jeff Bezos they have a leader who is comparable to Elon Musk.

An optimistic update from Telesat (August 2019)

Telesat received 685 million Canadian dollars from the government to subsidize rural connectivity. They plan to start service at the end of 2022 with 200 satellites in polar orbit, to add 100 more in inclined orbit in 2023 and perhaps eventually reach 500 satellites. Combining polar and inclined orbits and utilizing the far-north ground stations they already have for their profitable, established geosynchronous satellite service will help them gain a foothold in rural Canada and polar regions.

Inter-satellite laser link update (November 2019)

SpaceX initially planned to have five ISLLs per satellite but cut that back to four due to the technical difficulty of linking to a fast-moving satellite in a crossing plane and the short duration of such links. OneWeb has decided against using ISLLs for the time being due to cost and political considerations and Telesat remains committed to them. SpaceX is engineering its own ISLL hardware, but OneWeb and Telesat may be working with third parties. The situation with Hongyun is unknown and LEOsat has abandoned their effort.

What to expect from SpaceX Starlink broadband service next year and beyond (November 2019)

By the end of 2020, SpaceX will have coverage in the heavily populated parts of the world between around 50 degrees north and south latitude. They expect to be launching 120 satellites a month and, by the end of 2020, the satellites will be equipped with ISLLs. However, by that time they will have many legacy satellites in space and those early ISLLs may just be for testing. They expect the next-generation Starship to be able to place at least 400 Starlink satellites in orbit, reducing the per-satellite cost to 20% of today's 60-satellite launches. They hope to compete with the "crappy" $80/month service in the US and, since the cost of the constellation is fixed, they will strive for affordable prices worldwide.

Starlink simulation shows low latency without inter-satellite laser links (ISSLa) (December 2019)

Mark Handley, a professor at University College London, has made two terrific videos based on runs of his simulation of the first -- 1,584 satellite -- phase of SpaceX Starlink. I discussed the first video, which assumes that the satellites have ISLLs, in a recent post. This one shows that, while not as fast as an equivalent ISLL path, long bent-pipe paths would typically have lower latency than terrestrial fiber routes between the same two points. It also considers the possibility of using end-user terminals as ground stations when they are idle, which would further reduce latency and jitter.




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Satellite Internet Service Progress by SpaceX and Telesat

This has been a busy week in the race to deploy constellations of low-earth orbit (LEO) Internet-service satellites.

Telesat LEO-1, artist's conception.
Credit SSTL.

In their quarterly report, Telesat mentioned progress in two, disparate markets. As I noted earlier, they have signed their first LEO customer -- Omniaccess a provider of connectivity to the superyacht market. Telesat is a Canadian firm and the quarterly report also said Canada's 2019 Federal budget included a commitment to using LEO satellite services to help bridge the digital divide. They will be serving Russian oligarchs and rural Canadians.

Telesat also announced that the two teams they contracted with to develop overall satellite and ground system proposals, Airbus and a consortium of Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies, had significantly advanced their detailed designs for the complete system, having completed the system definition and risk management phase of the program. Telesat will continue their collaboration with both teams and will select a prime contractor later this year.

Telesat's coolest development was the announcement that they had demonstrated 5G mobile backhaul. They collaborated with Vodaphone and the University of Surrey in a test of their experimental satellites and recorded round trip latency of 18-40 milliseconds. The demonstration supported video chatting, Web browsing and simultaneous streaming of up to 8K video. The team also transferred 4K video to the edge of the 5G network. SES is already providing mobile backhaul using their middle-earth orbit satellites and it seems that the new LEO constellations will be competing with them. This will be an important application for rural areas and developing nations.

Telesat has signed launch contracts with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and they plan to be operational by 2022. (Bezos will also be a Telesat competitor, but his LEO project has just been announced).

SpaceX also made the news. SpaceX president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, confirmed that the launch scheduled for May 15 will include "dozens" of Starlink Internet-service satellites.

She characterized these as "demonstration" satellites and said they would not include satellite-to-satellite laser communication links. Bulent Altan, CEO of satellite laser company Mynaric, estimates that their laser terminals will cost around 250,000 euros in quantities of 1,000. SpaceX will have 4 in each satellite and they plan to start offering broadband service once they have 800 satellites in orbit -- in the 2020-2021 time frame.

OneWeb will forego inter-satellite optical links in their initial constellation, but they seem to be making steady progress in antennas for satellite-to-ground communication. Both are key technologies for LEO satellite Internet service.

Shotwell said that depending on how the demonstrations proceed, from two to six Starlink launches could follow by the end of this year. In the past, they referred to these as "operational" satellites. Maybe the switch to "demonstration" means they will use them as a marketing tool and the number of launches later in the year will be determined by sales.

Update 5/11/2019

TMF Associates suggests that the FCC may be favoring SpaceX Starlink and that the upcoming launch may carry as many as 40-50 satellites. The post also suggests that they may be launching so many satellites in order to generate publicity to spur further investment which has been difficult during the past year.

Are inter-satellite laser links a bug or a feature of ISP constellations?

I hope each of these companies has someone in charge of thinking about what might go wrong with a single, satellite-based network providing fast, low-cost links anywhere on the global Internet.

Inter-satellite laser links (source)

OneWeb, SpaceX, Telesat and Leosat all aspire to be global Internet service providers using constellations of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Their success will require still-unproven technological innovation, but there are also political stumbling blocks.

OneWeb has already encountered significant political problems in Russia. Russia launched OneWeb's first test satellites and has a billion dollar contract for 20 additional launches, but Russian security officials are lobbying against OneWeb's offering service on the grounds that it might facilitate spying. When Anatoly Zak, an expert on the Soviet space program, investigated that claim, he concluded that "With the launch of the OneWeb constellation, the Russian rocket industry stands to earn millions, but the Kremlin is terrified at the prospect of unhindered access to the Internet by its citizens."

As far as I know, OneWeb is still planning to offer service in Russia, but they have had to make financial and technical concessions. They agreed to become a minority partner in the company that will market their service in Russia and, significantly, they agreed to drop the inter-satellite laser links (ISLLs) from their constellation and pass all Russian traffic through ground stations in Russia.

Dropping ISLLs, which are still unproven for this application, will simplify the design of their satellites and save development time and cost. It will also reduce satellite complexity, size, and weight and save power, but there will be costs.

OneWeb throughput simulation (source)

They will need more ground stations if they offer global service without ISSLLs. OneWeb founder Greg Wyler says they will have more than 40 such gateways, each capable of “seeing” satellites up to 4,000 kilometers away. A team of MIT researchers ran a simulation of a 720-satellite OnWeb constellation and they estimate that 71 ground stations would be required to reach maximum throughput. (Anatoly Zak estimates that four to six gateways will be in Russia and speculates that hackers may be able to illegally connect to satellites in neighboring countries). Dropping ISLLs will also add latency, especially on long-distance links.

What about the other would-be global LEO projects?

Telesat will retain ISSLs, but accommodate countries on a country-by-country basis. Erwin Hudson, vice president of Telesat LEO, says we "have the flexibility in our network control system to route traffic all kinds of different ways. There are no rules that traffic has to go over the inter-satellite links."

SpaceX is going forward with ISSLs, and they are also aware of the political problems. During a recruiting talk at the opening of their Seattle satellite-design office four years ago, CEO Elon Musk said "I'm hopeful that we can structure agreements with various countries to allow communication but it is a country-by-country basis ... it's not gonna take longer than five years to do that and not all countries will agree at first ... that's fine."

Leosat is also prepared to build gateways to make accommodations. For example, CEO Mark Rigolle says they would be willing to build a gateway in China to accommodate the government; however, that would be inconsistent with their primary marketing focus of providing low-latency, secure, point-to-point links globally.

These companies are all thinking about concessions they need to make in order to operate in countries that want to surveil citizens and control their access to information, but what about guarding against aggression? I hope each of these companies has someone in charge of thinking about what might go wrong with a single, satellite-based network providing fast, low-cost links anywhere on the global Internet.

During the recruiting talk mentioned above, Elon Musk said "[the constellation design] is a really difficult technical problem to solve so that's why we need the smartest engineering talent around the world to solve the problem and, you know, to also make sure we don't create Skynet." At that time, I asked "Would global Internet service providers require unique regulation and, if so, what should it be and who has the power to do it?" and said I was "less worried about Musk creating SkyNet than creating Comcast on Steroids," but I was naive.

Follow these links for background on the four projects: SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and Leosat.

Update 1/13/2020

OneWeb hopes to establish three ground stations in China. They have signed a "framework agreement" for one in Sanya, a city in southern China, and hope to have that and two others approved. They are also seeking partners to market and support their service. They plan a total of 45 global ground stations.

SpaceX's Starlink Internet service will target end-users on day one

It sounds like SpaceX is planning on offering broadband service to end-users who will order the service online and set up their own ground stations.

Internet users per 100 inhabitants (source)

Starting with Teledesic in 1990, would-be Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have been justified to the FCC, other regulators, and the public as a means of closing the digital divide. Teledesic's goal was "providing affordable access to advanced network connections to all those parts of the world that will never get such advanced capabilities through existing technologies." Today's low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite companies make the same claim, but Telesat, OneWeb and Leosat seem to be targeting commercial markets first.

As far as I know, Telesat is the first LEO provider to sign up a customer and that customer is Omniaccess. Headquartered in the “yachting capital of the Mediterranean,” Palma de Mallorca, OmniAccess provides broadband and IPTV service to over 350 vessels -- superyachts, boutique cruise lines, and prestigious research & exploration organizations. The Telesat agreement provides OmniAccess with limited exclusivity to serve the "superyacht" market -- in other words, they will be connecting the yachts of Russian oligarchs.

In 2003, OneWeb founder Greg Wyler worked on 3G mobile and fiber access to homes and schools in Rwanda. In 2007, he founded O3b Networks, a middle-Earth orbit satellite Internet service provider to connect the "other three billion" unconnected people. OneWeb was founded in 2012 with goals of 1 billion subscribers by 2025 and the elimination of the global digital divide by 2027. Their first marketing-oriented move was to partner with Airbus, Delta, Sprint, and Airtel, establishing the Strategic Air Alliance to develop standards to enable them to provide passengers seamless, in-cabin connectivity. It looks like their first customers will be airline passengers, ships at sea and mobile phone companies.

Leosat has focused on enterprise and government customers from the start.

Elon Musk followed a similar strategy in bootstrapping his electric car company, Tesla. He started with expensive, high-end vehicles and followed several years later with the lower-priced Models 3 and Y, but it looks like the SpaceX Starlink Internet service will focus on end-users from the start.

SpaceX sister company, SpaceX Services, filed an FCC application for "a blanket license authorizing operation of up to 1,000,000 earth stations that end-user customers will utilize to communicate with SpaceX’s LEO constellation." Those end-users will be individuals, libraries, schools, etc. "throughout the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands." They assert that this license will "enable SpaceX to bring high-speed, reliable, and affordable broadband service to consumers in the United States and around the world, including areas underserved or currently unserved by existing networks.” (Note that these initial satellites would have the capacity to serve Cuba and other Caribbean nations).

Their user terminals will "employ advanced phased-array beam-forming and digital processing technologies to make highly efficient use of Ku-band spectrum resources by supporting highly directive steered antenna beams that track the system’s LEO satellites." Since SpaceX plans to begin launching operational satellites in 2019 and they are already conducting successful satellite-ground communication tests, they must be confident that they can mass-produce such antennas at a low cost. (Note that a former SpaceX executive has recently joined Mynaric, a German laser communications startup focused on satellite and airborne platforms. Perhaps SpaceX and Mynaric will collaborate on the antennas).

Ground stations that can track fast-moving satellites, switching seamlessly from one to another when they go out of view, will be easy for end-users to install. It sounds like SpaceX is planning on offering broadband service to end-users who will order the service online and set up their own ground stations.

Click for more on the SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and Leosat LEO Internet-service projects.

Update 3/20/2020

SpaceX has received FCC permission to deploy 1,000,000 terminals. The diameter of the terminals will be .49 meters and Elon Musk says they will resemble OFOs on a stick and self-installation will be simple:

Simulation of OneWeb, SpaceX and Telesat's proposed global broadband constellations

Inigo del Portillo and his colleagues at MIT have run a simulation comparing OneWeb, SpaceX and Telesat's proposed low-Earth orbit Internet service constellations. The models are based on the initial FCC filings by the companies and demand and data-rate estimates by the authors. (I will mention subsequent amendments to the filings below).

The first part of the paper presents an overview of the satellites and constellations and simulations predicting the average number of satellites within line of sight at different latitudes:

Source

With 4,425 simulated satellites, SpaceX is the clear leader in all but the extreme north and south, but Telesat, with only 117 satellites, averages more visible satellites than OneWeb with 720 because their minimum elevation angle is 20 degrees while OneWeb's is 55 degrees (SpaceX's is 40 degrees).

Note that SpaceX coverage peaks around the latitude of Seattle, where their center for satellite operations is located, and many large trading and financial cities have 30 or more visible satellites:

Source

They also simulated alternative ground segment configurations. The following figures show throughput as a function of the number of ground stations and assumed optical inter-satellite link (OISL) speed:

Source

They estimated the average data rate per satellite and total system throughput (sellable capacity) for each constellation then computed the number of ground stations needed to achieve full capacity:

	SpaceX	OneWeb	Telesat
Average data rate per satellite (Gbps)	5.36	2.17	22.74
Total system throughput (sellable capacity, Tbps)	23.70	1.56	2.66
Ground stations needed to achieve full capacity	123	71	42
Throughput with 50 ground stations (Tbps)	16.80	1.47	2.66

Note that marginal improvement diminishes as the number of ground stations increases. For example, with 50 ground stations each, the throughputs are SpaceX 16.8, OneWeb 1.47 and Telesat 2.66 Tbps.

Since SpaceX has their own launch capability, they can afford to begin at very large scale, giving them a significant capacity advantage, but Telesat has a significant lead in capacity per satellite. Putting these constellation capacities in context, Telegeography reported that global International bandwidth in 2018 was 393 Tbps, two-thirds of which has been deployed since 2014. Satellite constellations with OISLs will add to that total and provide lower latency times than international terrestrial cables.

As mentioned above, there have been some changes in plans since the FCC filings upon which these simulations were based. OneWeb has reduced the number of satellites in their constellation to 600 and eliminated ISOLs and SpaceX has lowered the altitude of their constellation from 1,100 to 550 km and cut the number of ISOLs per satellite from 5 to 4. (SpaceX was also authorized to use V-band spectrum, but that may be for their planned VLEO constellation).

I asked del Portillo whether they had rerun the simulations using the revised plans, and he said they had not, but he did not think that the numbers for total throughput and number of ground stations would vary a lot for SpaceX and he expected the total system throughput would decrease slightly for OneWeb because of the reduced number of satellites. He also expressed concern about OneWeb being able to provide continuous coverage near the equator where there might be coverage gaps or lower data-rates. (Note that the simulation focused on end-user and backhaul demand, not marine and in-flight connectivity which are priority markets for OneWeb).

SpaceX appears to have financing in place to cover their initial launches and achieve high capacity early and Telesat is making a much smaller initial investment, but should be able to scale up as demand increases. Based on this simulation and problems they have encountered with their Russian partners, OneWeb may be falling behind.

I've summarized some of the results of these simulations, but you should read the paper for details on the model structure, assumptions and a discussion of technical challenges. You can also check out this slide presentation on the paper. I also recommend an earlier paper and accompanying videos on a simulation that predicts routing redundancy and latency with SpaceX's planned broadband constellation.

Update 1/13/2020

Click here to access a subsequent journal article based on this research.

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service developments for 2018

At the end of 2017, I posted a review of important LEO-satellite Internet service developments. I've been updating those posts during the year and have also added the following new posts this year:

OneWeb's offer to sell a share of their satellite Internet service to Russia. (December 2018).

OneWeb has a Russian contract to launch Internet-service satellites and a marketing partnership with a Russian company. When the Russian government expressed concern about security and US sanctions, OneWeb made concessions. It was reported that OneWeb had offered to sell 12.5% of the company to Russia, giving them a board seat and access to technical information, but OneWeb denied the report. Given Russia's accelerated investment in their global satellite navigation system, history of hacking the US Global Positioning System and using the Internet to foment social unrest and influence election results in Europe and the United States, I would be reluctant to share technical information with them.

A cool simulation of SpaceX's revised satellite broadband plan. (November 2018)

On November 15, the FCC approved a revision to the plan for Starlink, SpaceX's forthcoming broadband satellite service. The new plan reduces the number of satellites from 4,525 to 4,409 and lowers the altitude of the phase-1 satellites from 1,100 to 550 km. Mark Handley, a professor at University College London, has created videos based on simulations he ran of both the original and revised phase 1 plans. The videos and his narration provide insight into the assumptions he made in building his models and constellation design decisions and tradeoffs.

An in-depth interview of OneWeb Executive Chairman Greg Wyler. (November 2018)

In this "definitive" 2018 interview of OneWeb founder and Executive Chairman Greg Wyler, he said their initial customers will include emergency services, mobility (aviation), health centers and schools. He did not mention individual homes or the problems he has been having negotiating with the Russians or dropping inter-satellite laser links. There is a lot more -- check the interview out.

Obstacles in OneWeb's negotiations with Russia. (October 2018)

OneWeb has a contract to launch satellites on Russian-made Soyuz rockets and has formed a joint venture with Gonets, a Russian satellite operator, as a marketing partner. Recently, Russia has expressed concerns about security, drug their feet on spectrum allocation and complained about US sanctions. Subsequently, OneWeb reduced its interest in the Gonets partnership from 60 to 49 percent, giving Gonets control. This case illustrates the fact that political, security and financial negotiations may be as difficult as designing satellites and rockets for a would-be global Internet service provider.

Might CubeSats provide broadband Internet connectivity one day? (September 2018)

Cubesats are small, standardized satellites. Since they are small, they are relatively cheap to launch and standards and standard components make them relatively cheap. This post looks at the efforts of two startups working on narrowband communication applications using CubeSats. Today's CubeSats are smaller and less powerful than those planned for Internet constellations from companies like OneWeb, Telesat or SpaceX and it's hard to believe that the capability of broadband Internet-service satellites might one day fit in a CubeSat -- but think about the phone in your pocket.

SpaceX Starlink test -- good news but unanswered questions. (June 2018)

Elon Musk tweeted that the two SpaceX test satellites, TinTin A and B, are connecting at "high bandwidth" with 25 ms latency. That's good news but it leaves a lot unanswered. For example, he did not mention the speed and reliability of the phased-array handoffs between the satellites and ground terminals and he said nothing about tests of the inter-satellite laser links, which OneWeb has abandoned.

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell on synergy among Musk companies and Starlink profit. (May 2018)

In a recent interview, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell said that SpaceX is profitable, but she predicts that Internet service revenue will soon be much greater than that of their launch business and the Wall Street Journal agrees. She also pointed out synergies between Elon Musk's companies and said they remain on schedule to take people to Mars in 2024.

Telesat begins testing low-Earth orbit satellite Internet service. (May 2018)

Telesat's demonstration satellite is now ready for testing with maritime connectivity provider OmniAccess, Australian ISP Optus and in-flight entertainment company Global Eagle Entertainment. They are moving quickly and their initial focus is on these specialized markets.

Elon Musk tells what to expect from the Block 5 Falcon 9 rocket. (May 2018)

On the occasion of it's first production flight, Elon Musk said this will be the last major version of the Block 9 Falcon 9 before their next rocket, the BFR. The Block 5 is designed for rapid-turnaround reusability and he expects there to be 300 or more Block 5 flights before it is retired. The rockets are designed to do 10 or more flights without refurbishment and expected to be capable of at least 100 flights before being retired.

FCC approves SpaceX Starlink's Internet-service constellation -- now there are four. (March 2018)

SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and Space Norway (focused on the far north) now have FCC approval to provide fixed-satellite service using constellations of LEO satellites.

O3b satellite Internet -- today and tomorrow. (March 2018)

SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat are planning to offer Internet-service from LEO, but O3b is already providing connectivity to relatively large customers like mobile phone companies, government organizations, and cruise ship lines using a constellation of medium-Earth orbit (MEO) satellites. For example, they serve mobile phone company Digicell in Papua New Guinea and Cuban ISP ETECSA. O3b plans to add four more satellites early next year and will begin deploying their next-generation constellation, mPower, in 2021. While today's O3b satellites have 10 steerable edge-terminal beams, the mPOWER satellites will have over 4,000 steerable beams that can be switched under program control giving the initial seven-satellite constellation over 30,000 dynamically reconfigurable beams and over 10 Tbps capacity.

The current and future role of satellite Internet service in Cuba. (12 posts)

Today Cuba makes limited use of geostationary and MEO satellite connectivity, but LEO and MEO satellite constellations could play a major role in future Internet connectivity there and in other developing nations.

OneWeb's offer to sell a share of their satellite Internet service to Russia

Update: OneWeb has denied that they have offered to sell any stake in the company to the Russian Government and Reuters has now reported that Russia’s communications minister said that "the government has not discussed such a deal with OneWeb."

OneWeb confirmed that they are restructuring their existing commercial joint venture with Russian partner Gonets, to comply with certain Russian regulatory requirements. They reiterated that "the joint venture is solely for the commercialization of OneWeb’s satellite broadband services to customers in Russia" and stated that the joint venture would "not have access to OneWeb's satellite technology or related know-how."
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Given the context, I am not keen on OneWeb sharing technology with Russia before or after a deal is closed.

Number of global satellites (source)

OneWeb has a contract to launch Internet-service satellites on Russian-made Soyuz rockets and has a joint venture with Gonets, a Russian satellite operator, as a marketing partner in Russia. However, the Russian government has expressed concerns about security, drug their feet on spectrum allocation and complained about US sanctions. This led OneWeb to make two concessions -- they dropped inter-satellite laser links from their constellation design and they cut their interest in the Gonets joint venture from 60 to 49 percent.

Apparently, that did not satisfy the Russians. Reuters reports that according to three sources, OneWeb has offered the Russian government the option of buying a 12.5-percent stake in the company in exchange for approving its request for a frequency band.

If Russia buys a minority stake in OneWeb, it would be represented on the company’s board of directors and have access to the project’s technical documentation. One of the sources -- a Russian government official -- said the government was not satisfied with the conditions attached to the purchase -- it wanted access to the technical documentation before committing to the deal.

This offer needs to be put in context:

Active disruption by Russia (source)

• There are four competing global satellite navigation systems: GPS (US), Galileo (Europe), GLONASS (Russia) and Beidou (China).
• University of New Brunswick professor Richard Langley, who has worked extensively with the Global Positioning System since the early 1980s says that "while the GLONASS service level has dropped below acceptable levels, it is now a dependable system and, with announced improvements, will be a contender in the future world of multi-GNS.
• Russia has been accused of jamming and spoofing the GPS.
• Russia has used the Internet to foment social unrest and influence election results in Europe and the United States.

Given this context, I am not keen on OneWeb sharing technology with Russia before or after a deal is closed.