How do you connect to the internet? You probably have a Wi-Fi network at home, or use your mobile phone network, to send and receive data from one of a number of Earth-based providers. The coming years could bring a drastic change, however, with the advent of new satellite space internet services from companies like SpaceX and OneWeb, which promise to bring billions more people online by 2021.
It’s estimated that about 3.3 billion people lack access to the internet, but Elon Musk is trying to change that. On Thursday, May 23 – after two cancelled launches the week before – SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, in Florida, as part of the firm’s mission to bring low-cost, high-speed internet to the world.
SpaceX is one of at least nine companies that plan to launch large constellations of satellites – Musk’s firm alone says it will launch 12,000 – providing global coverage of the planet to beam internet to the ground from space using radio waves.
“The amount of people around the globe without routine internet access is staggering, and terrestrial companies have shown little interest is meeting the needs of these rural customers,” says Caleb Williams from the US-based consulting firm SpaceWorks. “Space-based internet services can help to bridge this divide, bringing potentially billions of people online.”
Among this race with US-based SpaceX and OneWeb are LeoSat from the Netherlands, Telesat and Kepler Communications from Canada, and several others, all of whom have approval from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US for their constellations. Others such as Amazon, which revealed its 3,000-satellite Project Kuiper constellation earlier this year, also have plans to launch similar services.
None of the nine companies with FCC approval so far have yet revealed how their services will work exactly, nor how much they will cost. What we do know is you will require a dish of some sort on the ground, not unlike satellite TV and likely costing in the region of hundreds or thousands of pounds, to connect to one of these constellations.
“The terminals that the end-users will use to connect are a tremendous barrier as they are very expensive,” says Lluc Palerm-Serra, a senior analyst at Northern Sky Research in Spain, noting that many countries also have strict regulatory systems in place that companies will need to navigate in order to provide a satellite internet service. “Launching a global service is very tough. No [internet service provider] has done that before as they always have a [single] country focus.”
This highlights one of the key questions already emerging about these space internet services. While many tout their goal of connecting the whole world to the web, will everyone be able to afford it? And does everyone even want to be online? In June 2018 Facebook shelved plans to build its own high-altitude drone that it had been intending to use to beam the internet to rural areas. The drone had previously crashed.
“If you’re trying to connect the really impoverished parts of the world where they struggle to meet basic needs like food, water, even electricity as well, then the concept of them being able to afford the internet is unclear,” says Manny Shar, head of analytics at Bryce Space and Technology in London. “The demand has still to be proven for these services.”
Satellite internet itself is not new. Several companies, such as Hughes Communications and ViaSat in the US, already offer a satellite internet services which let people connect to the internet on a plane. The former operates two satellites in geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 35,000 kilometres (22,000 miles), with a third to launch in 2021. The company has 1.3 million users in the US.
Where new mega constellations hope to exceed existing systems is in speed and coverage, and perhaps price. Satellite internet at the moment will cost you about £40 to £80 a month, depending on where you live and what download speeds you’re after. It’s unclear how much the new services will cost, but being competitive will be key.
“None of the companies currently pursuing large satellite constellations for space-based internet have been able to provide a definitive guide to their pricing models,” says Williams, who thinks SpaceX may target around £50 a month. “The gold standard will be competing with terrestrial-based services. If [they can’t compete], they’ll be forced to rely on customers that have few terrestrial alternatives, such as those in rural and remote regions.”
Even if they can’t compete on price, they’ll certainly be able to compete on coverage. Current satellite internet services are limited to areas that these satellites orbit over, while bandwidth is limited owing to the number of users connecting to a single satellite. Companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb hope to change that by offering constant high-bandwidth coverage at any location on Earth, even Antarctica, with their vast constellations of satellites.
Orbiting at lower altitudes of between 500 and 1,200km (310 and 745 miles), they will also be able to reduce latency – the time taken to send a signal to the satellite and back, limited by the speed of light – reducing wait times. This might not be fast enough to play an online video game, but it could be enough to hold an audio conservation over the internet.
Existing satellite internet services have also not yet been able to break the 100Mbps download speed barrier. While SpaceX is keeping the speed of its service under wraps, OneWeb has touted eventual speeds of up to 2.5Gbps. It hopes to start launching between 30 and 36 satellites per rocket every month by the end of 2019, working up to a total of about 650 – and perhaps even more in the future. So far it has launched six prototype satellites.
Managing these constellations in orbit also presents a challenge, particularly the risk of colliding with other satellites and removing space junk from orbit. There are only 2,000 or so active satellites in orbit today, but if all of the planned satellite internet constellations launch, that number would approach or even exceed 20,000.
Satellite operators are asked by the United Nations to remove their satellites from orbit in 25 years, to prevent a build-up of space junk, but it’s unclear how the nine companies plan to do this. Many appear to be relying on their on-board propulsion but satellites can and often do fail, leaving them stranded in orbit. With thousands being launched, and no way to remove them, this could rapidly increase the problem of space junk.
At low altitudes of 500km the orbits will naturally degrade in several years due to atmospheric drag, but at higher altitudes of 1,200km they would remain in orbit for thousands of years if they were not deorbited. OneWeb, for its part, says it will attach handles to each of its satellites so they can be grabbed and removed from orbit in the future if they do fail.
Ultimately, there are still uncertainties about who will use space-based internet, how it will work (including the cost) and whether there is a market for so many different companies. “I struggle to see more than two, maybe three companies being successful in this market long-term,” says Williams. With its launch, however, SpaceX is clearly one of the frontrunners. Who will join it?
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
