Orbiting satellites might start beaming down our high speed Internet.
Two projects are already in the works to develop, build and launch hundreds of satellites to bring high speed internet connections to the entire world. The OneWeb project just received $500 million investment from Softbank (the company that brought us Pepper the Advanced AI robot.) The other project is a brain child of Elon Musk and his Space X company.
Both groups face the same problems to overcome beyond the technology including approval from regulators (like the FCC or UN agencies) as well as dealing with concerns over space debris. A day after the end of Net Neutrality, one might hope that this would be a way to get around the likely price gouging we'll see from internet providers. Unfortunately, these services would be sold to customer, just like their terrestial equivalents. So there's nothing preventing them from charging through the roof, however it's yet to be seen how each internet provider company will actually approach their pricing structures moving forward.
OneWeb's goal seems to be around providing internet access to the 31% of the world’s population who don’t have access to 3G connectivity. With Musk's Space X having gotten some push back on getting federal approval, it was stated that selling this satellite broadband service was a key part of their business planning.
Selling broadband from orbit is a key part of how SpaceX plans to make money beyond its original rocket-launching service.
-Source
It will be interesting to follow both of these projects to being high speed internet to the world! Knowing what changes it could make to peoples lives, what this service might cost us, or even what issues may arise like satellites falling out of orbit is hard to nail down at this stage. But the drive definitely seems to be there for both companies and their investors.
Additional Reading:
Broadband to be beamed to every corner of the earth from space
Softbank Invests around $500 Million in OneWeb
Elon Musk’s Plan to Girdle Earth With Satellites Hits Turbulence
SpaceX and OneWeb broadband satellites raise fears about space debris
Image Sources:
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Yes. Give the world satellite internet... then they can all be just like me. One minute I have internet, the next, not so much. Latency is a huge problem. It takes awhile for the signal to travel. We're talking split seconds, but that means a lot in a video game, or a trade. If it snows or the cloud cover is thick... no cat videos for me.
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Oh I definitely understand, especially with as many gaming hours I have under my belt. The rage when the lag made me (or worse, my whole party) die because I just stood there, lol.
While I did read that they were looking to be keeping the latency down for users like us...I've seen that so many times before. It sounds good, but we'll have to see how well it actually works once it's up and running.
Even if it's not a service for everybody (like us gamers), I'm still interested to see if it has any effect on rural or areas that haven't had the infrastructure setup. Though, it's still hard for me to think of high speed as 3G anymore...I'm so spoiled. #firstworldproblems
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Hi, I found some acronyms/abbreviations in this post. This is how they expand:
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Very cool project.
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Very interesting. Very timely. Sharing this on the tweeters of course. But also looking forward to you meeting Scott Gresham. He is in our ImprovCoin group. He works in tech and I had a fascinating conversation with him about the net neutrality topic. Essentially, he suggested that what could happen is, popular sites can start charging more such as facebook and netflix. So he saw a huge benefit to blockchain because then people would migrate to steemit and other blockchain projects because it would be cheaper and who knows, maybe even more efficient. I'm interested if Net Neutrality would apply to internet whether it came from space or not. But very interesting and it makes sense.
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I see it happening. It may be spotty at first but they will get the kinks worked out of it. It is a trade off. Wonderful to have everywhere but a continued theme of big brother enticing you with the carrot for his benefit. Thanks for sharing.
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If Elon can get pay the hurdles involved with s starting his own space company, this will be a cinch by comparison.
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good read. resteemed
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net neutrality :-( I feel like i'll be telling stories to young kids what the internet used to be like
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cool idea but to execute it will take lot of approvals like you mention. High speed internet price might come down considering the cost the service providers are currently have to spend in order to establish a new coverage to the areas that are hard to reach at the moment. But on the other hand there will be issues for the places that are already coverage. And also there will be some issues based on regional legal requirements.
Idea is great and hope that we will see in action in near future.
Cheers!
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This is going to happen and i remember elon musk is also going to be in that field soon so yeah good times ahead lets see the competition rising
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