New space race can lead to global availability of internet services

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.

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A huge potential market

“ 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.

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Limited and expensive service

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.

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At least three years away from widespre commercial service

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. “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. re’s way to have a viable mass service unless cost of this of equipment drops, said Caleb Williams, an ecomic analyst at aero engineering company Works Enterprises.

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