Buzz
Satellites like these could soon enable people in off-grid areas to access some of the fastest internet services available worldwide.The majority of global internet traffic currently travels through underground and undersea cables. However, several companies are now looking to the sky to increase the web's capacity and provide internet access to everyone on Earth, including the billions who are still without it.
SpaceX, OneWeb, and LeoSat are in the initial phase of deploying hundreds, if not thousands, of satellites to create a global internet network in orbit. SES Networks, based in Betzdorf, Luxembourg, is already leading the way with 12 satellites in orbit, and another 8 are planned. This fleet is providing high-throughput data services to a wide range of locations, including many impoverished and remote areas that lack the infrastructure for traditional cable fiber connections. This includes regions such as the Cook Islands, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Chad, Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, the Caribbean, and more.
"Through our company's rapid growth, we have been able to swiftly deliver large-scale data to remote areas, allowing them to connect to the internet, access platforms like Facebook and Google, receive remote medical assistance, humanitarian support, and much more," says Stewart Sanders, executive vice president of technology at SES Networks.
"It's hard to overstate the social and economic advantages this has provided to our customers," he adds.
Internet From the Sky
The satellite network traces its roots to O3b Networks, a company SES acquired in 2016. O3b was founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Greg Wyler, who spent the early 2000s establishing telecommunications in rural African areas. While helping the post-war government of Rwanda set up mobile phone services, Wyler started contemplating a more effective way to provide high-bandwidth internet to the other 3 billion people around the world who lacked access.
Due to the high cost and vulnerability of fiber in developing countries, Wyler turned his attention to satellite technology. However, he wasn't interested in the type of satellites used by companies like Dish Network and DirecTV. These satellites orbit about 22,000 miles (35,700 kilometers) above the equator in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), a position traditionally used for telecommunications. While GEO satellites can cover vast areas, their distance creates a noticeable delay, or latency.
"People often ask about home internet usage, wondering things like, 'What’s my throughput? How much data am I getting?'" says Sanders. "But an important factor that influences performance and the overall user experience is latency."
Signals from geostationary satellites typically take around 500 milliseconds (0.5 seconds) to travel down to Earth and back up to space. This latency is not ideal for delivering internet services.
Wyler chose satellites to operate in medium-Earth orbit (MEO), about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) above the Earth, much lower than the geostationary orbit. At this altitude, latency is reduced to under 150 milliseconds (0.15 seconds). The O3b fleet is now integrated into SES Networks, which also operates more than 50 satellites in GEO.
Each MEO satellite has 12 beams, two of which target ground-based gateways. The other 10 beams are split evenly between two gateway beams. These 10 beams, known as user beams, can provide up to 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) of throughput to a customer. SES Networks has nine global gateways supporting the O3b MEO fleet, and Sanders notes that at any time, a satellite in MEO can access multiple gateways.
Launch Party
In 2012, Wyler left O3b Networks to launch OneWeb, a company aiming, alongside SpaceX, to deploy satellites into low-Earth orbit — between 111 and 1,242 miles (180 to 2,000 kilometers) above Earth. This lower orbit could potentially offer even lower latency. However, it also reduces the time a satellite can maintain contact with a gateway, meaning that significantly more satellites are needed for global coverage, which adds complexity to the system.
In November 2016, SpaceX submitted a proposal to launch 4,425 satellites into low-Earth orbit, at altitudes of 700 miles (1,110 kilometers) and above.
Getting this many satellites into orbit will require substantial time and investment, says Sanders. "The launch costs alone will represent a major part of the total investment, and the technical challenges involved in implementing the system will be considerable," he notes.
However, both SpaceX and Blue Origin, a rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, are working on reusable rockets that could significantly reduce launch costs. SpaceX informed Congress that it plans to kick off its ambitious satellite launch project in 2019.
OneWeb plans to send 720 LEO satellites into orbit, with the first 10 scheduled for launch in 2018. By 2019, the company aims to start offering low-latency broadband services.
As these space-based systems start to come online, the fifth generation of wireless technology, known as 5G, will also begin to roll out. This means that individuals living in the most remote areas of the world, as well as those completely off the grid, might soon have access to some of the fastest internet speeds available.
"I've been in this field for more than three decades, and in the past five years, the level of activity has been greater than in the previous 20 years combined," says Sanders. "It's nothing short of extraordinary."
