New space race to bring satellite

IT Live: Anxiety has set in across the space industry ever since the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, revealed Project Kuiper: a plan to put 3,236 satellites in orbit to provide high-speed internet across the globe.

Offering broadband internet coverage to digital deserts is also the goal of the company OneWeb, which is set to start building two satellites a day this summer in Florida, for a constellation of over 600 expected to be operational by 2021.

At the Satellite 2019 international conference in Washington this week, professionals from the sector said they feared an expensive bloodbath especially if Bezos, the founder of Amazon, decides to crush the competition with ultra-low prices.

The firm eventually relaunched itself and has just finished renewing its entire constellation: 66 satellites offering connectivity, but not broadband, with 100 percent global coverage to institutional clients including ships, planes, militaries and businesses.

Having internet beamed in from space is more of a priority for isolated zones than it is for cities, where users have fiber optic or cable connections. With satellite constellations, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world: an antenna is all you need to get broadband.

“It’s just like having a very tall cell tower,” said Al Tadros of Maxar, which builds satellites. The other advantage of the newly announced constellations are their relatively low orbit, which is important for reducing latency, key in curbing lag in video calls or games, for example.

“The challenge in monetizing is being able to get through those first few years, where you have to put in all your capital expenses, but not being able to get enough revenues to keep you afloat,” Shagun Sachdeva, a senior analyst at Northern Sky Research, told AFP.

Sachdeva expects most of the companies to die off, adding that the market will eventually have room for “maybe two” and that space-delivered internet services won’t be commonplace for at least five to 10 years.

 

Dhaka, 08 May (campuslive24.com)//MIH

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