OneWeb Secures "Largest Ever" Rocket Acquisition For Satellite Internet Launch 45
Mickeycaskill writes: Virgin, Airbus and Qualcomm-backed satellite Internet venture OneWeb has acquired 65 rockets and $500 million in funding to launch its satellites by 2019. OneWeb has partnered with Airbus to produce 900 microsatellites which will provide "affordable", fast, low-latency Internet to remote parts of the world and to ships, planes and oil rigs. It has also been suggested the network will be a cheaper way for mobile operators to expand coverage in rural areas. Other partners include Bharti Enterprises, Hughes Network Systems, Intelsat, Coca-Cola and Totalplay, all of whom have committed financial, technical or manufacturing support to the project.
Coca-Cola? (Score:1)
I wonder what Coca-Cola gets out this partnership?
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I wonder what Coca-Cola gets out this partnership?
It is a financial AND (mostly) marketing investment - like every similar product, Coca-Cola can not really advertise its product ("well, it's carbonated water, with some poisonous color and flavours, plus sugar... lots of sugar - drink it!") so it advertises its brand ("watch some smiling black kids in Africa using The Internet, that WE brought to them from space thanks to our... carbonated water, with some poisonous color and flavours, plus sugar... lots of sugar - drink it!").
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I wonder what Coca-Cola gets out this partnership?
NASA astronaut: Houston, we have a problem. The Chinese are painting the moon red! Dirty commies! .... (hours later) ....
Houston: Good. Let them finish.
NASA astronaut: Sir? Are you sure?
Houston: Yes.
NASA astronaut: Sir, they've finished. The moon is now completely red.
Houston: Excellent. Now, you see all that white paint we stowed in your capsule? We need you to start painting the words "Coca-cola"....
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Low-latency (Score:4, Informative)
"Low-latency"
Yeah. Right.
At absolute best*, with no processing time, buffering, contention, sharing, delay or retransmission whatsoever through the entire process, with optical switching all the way along, with routing direct to each users and end-point, with not a single blip or anything else, that's going to be more delay on top of normal Internet latency.
Fast, yeah I can't argue that one way or another. But that's about volume, not delay. If you turn on a tap (faucet?) in the US and then put your head in the other end of the hose in the EU, it doesn't matter how big the hose is or how much water is coming down - it will still take a long time for the water to arrive. When it does, of course it can be high-pressure, huge volume down a ginormous hose. But delay will still make it useless for telephony, streaming, and a range of other purposes.
I'm all behind the concept, but don't claim low-latency as if it could possibly compete with any other technology out there - my mobile phone barely get 100ms delay to even default gateways).
(* Even LEO is 190km up. A round-trip from that to a base-station to a 0ms Internet back to the satellite back to the ground is going to be:
4 x 190km = 760,000m
Speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s.
3ms or thereabouts?
Maybe tiny in theory, huge in practice because none of the above theoretically-ideal-scenarios actually exist.)
Re:Low-latency (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sure as hell better than the [absolute minimum] 476ms round trip to GEO. Maybe that's what they're comparing their low latency to - existing satellite internet connections.
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Most of that latency you talk about are applicable to land based connections too. In fact, the transmission up and down to LEO is tiny compared to the savings in latency they can potential make by sending data "as the crow flies" once it's up there rather than having to route along existing cables which frequently go thousands of miles out if the way.
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No, latency is not like bandwidth, lower numbers are better. So 0 is better than 3ms
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3ms or thereabouts?
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I heard of a company making little storage base stations that would provide local, fast access to stuff (slowly downloading from sat. sources, I believe). I don't know how sensible that is, but a local proxy could help out for normal web browsing. I'd imagine that browsing is the main activity that they're trying to 'enable' in far-flung locations - it'd be enough for a text chat, even if voice or video aren't really feasible.
I doubt this will replace your (probably fairly crappy) DSL connection at home, le
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"But delay will still make it useless for telephony, streaming, and a range of other purposes."
Ah that's why we can't phone farther than 500 miles on land lines.
But seriously, telephony and streaming works fine, I can stream flawlessly from an ASTRA Internet satellite on a geostationary orbit, heck they even 'stream' Television to a billion people from there.
Now if you're talking First person shooters, that's another story.
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"Acquired" 65 rockets? (Score:4)
39 of the rockets they've "acquired" have never flown. LauncherOne is over a year away from its first test flight.
Arianespace's soyuz launchers (the other 21) have at least actually, though why they're not buying soyuz launches directly from the Russians is unclear.
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Launching from ESA's Kourou facility gives a Soyuz more than a tonne of extra payload capacity thanks to the boost from Earth's own rotation when launching at the equator.
ESA also have a far better reputation for reliability than the Russians at the moment. Russia have had several high profile failures in space tech in recent years.
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And apparently options for 100 more. 139 flights on a launcher that doesn't exist yet, from a company that has never launched anything.
Look at SpaceX...the Falcon 9 has been extremely successful, but it's not the rocket they started with. Their first launcher, the Falcon 1 had multiple launch failures and was ultimately scrapped along with the planned Falcon 5 in favor of the more efficient and capable Falcon 9. Depending on the Falcon 1 being a massive success when it was still a paper rocket would have be
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Maybe because the Russians have none to sell. (They can only produce so many vehicles a year, and they're committed years in advance.) Maybe because the Russians can't reach low latitude orbits. (An inescapable consequence of the location of their launch site and the need to avoid dropping spent stages on other people's territory.) Or maybe they couldn't reach a deal. Or maybe there are tax and/or regulatory advantages
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Yep. Hence the "unclear", as opposed to "stupid decision" or something similar....
SPOILER ALERT (Score:2)
Next week, OneWeb's lisping president, Richmond Valentine, will announce free SIM cards for EVERYONE.
Pretty big promises (Score:2)
900 microsatellites which will provide "affordable", fast, low-latency Internet to remote parts of the world and to ships, planes and oil rigs.
"Affordable"? Maybe... though exotic projects like this don't have a great track record of keeping costs low. I suspect cellular networks would have better odds of being cheap but I'll keep an open mind. I don't really see how two way satellite communications would be cheap but maybe it's possible.
"Fast"? I suppose that depends on the definition of fast. Given the power requirements I'm again dubious but perhaps it can be done.
"Low Latency"? No. Just no. Satellite and low latency just aren't a compa
Something fishy going on (Score:1)
Iridium Redux? (Score:2)
Didn't we try this before with Iridium [wikipedia.org]? Other than this being new and shiny why should we reasonably expect this to be economically viable even if it works technologically? By definition the number of people in remote places is small so there cannot ever be a lot of customers. Iridium went bankrupt because they never could get enough customers to recoup the costs of launching all those satellites. I'm an accountant and while I think the notion of such a satellite network is cool I just don't really see
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The satellites are cheaper, more capable, and far more numerous, and there's a lot more of a market for low latency internet access that doesn't have to follow fiber links on the ground than there was for the capability to make an occasional call with an expensive, clumsy sat-phone.
And cities cover a tiny fraction of the Earth's surface. Around 20% of the population of the US lives in rural areas, and the fraction is much higher in developing countries. It's also not just people in remote areas that will be
It's all about economics (Score:2)
The satellites are cheaper, more capable, and far more numerous, and there's a lot more of a market for low latency internet access that doesn't have to follow fiber links on the ground than there was for the capability to make an occasional call with an expensive, clumsy sat-phone.
It's not clear that the total cost of implementation will be cheaper. Sattelite launches cost $50-250 million each and numerous launches would be required to provide broad coverage. 65 rockets X $50 Million = $3.25 Billion without even including the cost of the satellites. Iridium is reputed to have cost about $6 Billion so even if it is cheaper it will still be ludicrously expensive.
Just because there is a market doesn't mean it can be served economically. I agree that there is some amount of demand b
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It's not clear that the total cost of implementation will be cheaper. Sattelite launches cost $50-250 million each...
LauncherOne is targeting $10 million per launch and would put up 2-3 satellites with each launch...it will be one of the most expensive ways to lift mass to orbit at roughly $44000/kg, and still won't be nearly as bad as you state. The Soyuz launches, with over 30 times the payload capacity, would put up many more satellites at far lower cost per satellite.
So what? That has nothing to do with whether the economics of this are workable or not.
You wouldn't have to ask that question if you'd bothered to read the entire text you were responding to. The rural population is not "by definition" smal
Tell me who the typical customer is (Score:2)
LauncherOne is targeting $10 million per launch and would put up 2-3 satellites with each launch
Who cares what they are "targeting"? They haven't even launched a prototype yet and won't until probably next year. Any cost estimates are purely speculation at this point and all currently available launch vehicles are more expensive than that. By a lot. But even accepting the figure of $10 million per launch they still are going to be looking at startup costs well north of $1 billion before they even have a single customer. There will be a lot more expense beyond the launch costs.
You wouldn't have to ask that question if you'd bothered to read the entire text you were responding to. The rural population is not "by definition" small, it is a substantial fraction of the global population.
If you want to get p
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Anybody who would use this service is going to be WAY out in the boonies and there simply aren't huge numbers of people who live that remotely, who need and can afford fast internet service and who can be reached economically to sell them the necessary equipment.
I think you are underestimating just how desperate people are to get out from under Comcast's thumb. If OneWeb and/or SpaceX can operate in the US at all (and presumably they will be getting the necessary spectrum), both of them will be able to pick up a LOT of Comcast refugees, many of whom will be from urban areas. If they have anything like comparable bandwidth, they could make a huge dent in Comcast subscriber numbers. From what we've been hearing, these satellite systems stand a very good chance of
Competition (Score:2)
I think you are underestimating just how desperate people are to get out from under Comcast's thumb.
Interesting notion though I'm not really convinced. Comcast would have some HUGE advantages, not the least of which is the ability to drop prices. I have Comcast as my ISP and while I certainly have no love for them I don't think they are stupid - just arrogant. Comcast could easily increase my bandwidth and/or drop my charges easily if they felt the competitive pressure (which is good for me). They are already wired to my house so they have no startup costs to recoup. It doesn't cost them really any m
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Basically I have an "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude. I don't think this proposed satellite service has an obvious natural customer base. Wouldn't mind being wrong but I just don't see it.
It very much depends on what they manage to do for the customer end. If they perform some voodoo when doing antenna design (MIMO included), the customer device could be the size and formfactor of a smartphone. From what I've been hearing out of the RF people, this is not out of the question. Between MIMO antennas on the ground and a phased array on the satellite, some dark magic becomes possible. Whether or not either SpaceX or OneWeb manages to implement such a thing remains to be seen. If they do....
Fixed cost amortization (Score:2)
It very much depends on what they manage to do for the customer end.
Naturally. While there are some technical issues the real question will be economic. Presuming everything works the real challenge will be convincing people to buy transceivers to use the service. I strongly suspect they'll find that to be more difficult than making the satellites work.
LEO satellites zip past you so quickly that your uplink is being handed off between satellites at least every half hour
Faster than that really. I track the International Space Station now and then for fun and it goes horizon to horizon in less than 10-15 minutes much of the time. It's rarely directly overhead so like GPS you'd probably n
High risk and probably high cost (Score:2)
By contrast these new attempts are trying for a much larger customer base, probably reaching into millions of simultaneous connected devices.
"Probably reaching into millions"? That's a HUGE assumption about how popular this service will be and still doesn't address the fundamental economic problems. My 2 minute back of the envelope analysis:
1) You have a satellite system that will cost billions to launch (65 launches X $50 million/launch = $3.25 billion and that is a conservative number) and billions more to build and operate the satellites.
2) The receiver equipment does not (yet) exist and nobody owns one. Complete infrastructure development