New space race can lead to global availability of internet services

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

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A huge potential market

“The goal here is broadband everywhere,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said at a conference in June. With half the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — not using the internet, it’s a huge potential market. And there’s the obvious benefit on the ground: Not 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 the global economy. But this new wave of spaced-based internet faces hurdles. It is expensive to launch, technologically complex and could prove too costly for the very people it hopes to reach. And then there’s space junk. More on that in a moment.

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Limited and expensive service

Satellite internet already 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 the ground. But the service is expensive and limited, comes with data caps and lags, and doesn’t have many users. The new satellites are smaller, cheaper, and closer to Earth, so theoretically signals travel faster and applications like online gaming that need instant responses would work better. And they have some heavyweight backers. In addition to Amazon and SpaceX — the company of eccentric billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk — the 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 widespread commercial service

But the industry is still in its infancy, and at least three years away from widespread commercial service, said Kerri Cahoy, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and even further from making any money. “I would be surprised if something were profitable in 10 years,” she said. There are also competing efforts at extending connectivity, including Google with its Loon balloons, which are solar-powered cell towers made of plastic sheets that float on the winds, and others working on solar-powered drones. The satellite companies need to build dishes and antennas that are more complicated and costlier than those for traditional satellites that don’t move. There’s no way to have a viable mass service unless the cost of this type of equipment drops, said Caleb Williams, an economic analyst at aerospace engineering company SpaceWorks Enterprises.

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