It’s a 21st century race: Amazon, X and ors are competing to get into orbit and provide internet to Earth’s most remote places. And like last century’s battle for supremacy that was triggered by Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, this one involves satellites. Thousands of m. More than a dozen companies have asked U.S. regulators for permission to operate constellations of satellites that provide internet service. t all are aimed at connecting consumers, but some have grand and global ambitions.

“ goal here is broband everywhere,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said at a conference in June.

With half world’s population — more than 3 billion people — t using internet , it’s a huge potential market. And re’s obvious benefit on ground: t having internet access makes it difficult or impossible to apply for many jobs, for kids to do homework, for people in remote areas to get medical care, and to participate in global ecomy. But this new wave of d-based internet faces hurdles. It is expensive to launch, techlogically complex and could prove too costly for very people it hopes to reach. And n re’s junk. More on that in a moment.

NASA Deep Network continuously beaming at ISRO's Vikram Lander

Satellite internet

Satellite internet alrey exists, dominated by a handful of companies like HughesNet and Viasat that have huge, expensive satellites sitting 22,000 miles (35,000 kilometres) from Earth and covering big territories on ground. But service is expensive and limited, comes with data caps and lags, and doesn’t have many users. new satellites are smaller, cheaper, and closer to Earth, so oretically signals travel faster and applications like online gaming that need instant responses would work better. And y have some heavyweight backers. In dition to Amazon and X — company of eccentric billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk — race has also been joined by OneWeb, which is backed by investors including Virgin founder Richard Branson, U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm and Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank. But industry is still in its infancy, and at least three years away from widespre commercial service, said Kerri Cahoy, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and even furr from making any money.

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“I would be surprised if something were profitable in 10 years,” she said. re are also competing efforts at extending connectivity, including Google with its Loon balloons, which are solar-powered cell towers me of plastic sheets that float on winds, and ors working on solar-powered drones.

satellite companies need to build dishes and antennas that are more complicated and costlier than those for tritional satellites that don’t move. X, for example, has filed for permission with U.S. regulators to build 1 million “earth stations” that would help connect customers to internet. re’s way to have a viable mass service unless cost of this of equipment drops, said Caleb Williams, ecomic analyst at aero engineering company Works Enterprises. Launches have alrey been pushed back: OneWeb h once said it would be operating in Alaska this year. But service is w expected to start in late 2020.

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logistics of becoming an internet service provider also aren’t easy. new crop of -internet companies are more likely to set up arrangements with existing telecom companies than try to sell internet service directly, Williams said, because it’s easier than setting up a sales and marketing operation of ir own. Those same telecom companies don’t want to build in remote areas because it’s too expensive. A Federal Communications Commission official in 2017 estimated that extending fibre to roughly 20 million U.S. homes and businesses that lacked broband would cost $80 billion. And in developing countries, where underlying infrastructure is worse, internet is primarily available through a cellphone.

Amazon’s satellite-internet arm to cost “multiple billions of dollars”

new satellite companies may have an infrastructure alternative that’s cheaper for companies to build than wires on ground. A telecom company needs to pay to build out to a handful of customers in a large area, with huge per-customer costs. With satellite, costs can be shared out over a bigger pool of potential customers all over world. A X executive in 2018 predicted that it would cost $10 billion to deploy a constellation of mini-satellites. Bezos predicted that Amazon’s satellite-internet arm will cost “multiple billions of dollars” to build. Making sure that people have access to internet is just one step to getting m online, however. People also need to be able to afford internet, and those in rural areas are more likely to be poor. It’s t clear what pricing will be but high costs swamped satellite phone service two deces ago. It could do so again with internet.

“If you would have to pay 20% or more of your income to go on internet, in a situation where you make a few dollars per day, you don’t, because it’s too expensive,” said Martin Schaaper, an analyst at United Nations’ information and communications techlogy ncy.

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n re are concerns about growth of junk, or “orbital debris,” which could crash into each or and even potentially set off a chain reaction of collisions that make orbit “ longer usable,” according to NASA. X, for one, says it’s trying to avoid ding to junk layer by moving satellites to avoid crashes and designing m to burn up in atmosphere when y’re used up. companies have laid out ir plans to avoid debris with U.S. regulators, but critics say more needs to be done, like setting up an air traffic control system for .

(Except for heline, or changes were me to original AP story)