O3b Networks LEO Satellite Internet

[Danderman]

http://www.o3bnetworks.com/

In 2010, bandwidth access will get cheaper, faster and easier for most of the world. O3b Networks is building a new telecommunications infrastructure offering low-latency links from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps for core trunking, instant fiber-path restoration and 3G Cellular backhaul.

 

[JWag]

LEO Satellite Internet, eh?

Here's their bird.  With "steerable antennas" it won't be for individuals, but ought to be able to deliver bandwidth to remote areas without having to run cable. 

I wonder who will launch them.

[braddock]

I'm not giving these guys much credence, based on their market-speak web site, simplistic looking satellite sketch, and big expensive PR splash today. 

BBC World Service was strongly playing O3b's "save the world" angle this morning. 

Of course if Google is *really* behind them then they can afford to make any fairytale they want to come true.  But I get the impression they are drawing just a little from a large Google VC fund along with HSBC.

[pippin]

But it's time for that business case.
The first tries were too early (Bill Gates, don't remember the name of the network) or too much focused at phone and direct reception (Iridium).
But it's quite obvious that
a) You DO want internet access in every ever so remote spot of the world these days, and
b) that you cannot do that with cables.

The idea is pragmatic: provide "backbone" access for local distributors. Worked for cable-TV, can work here. Google has funded worse investments.

[Jirka Dlouhy]

BG´s network was named Teledesic

[pippin]

BG´s network was named Teledesic

Thank you.

And - of course - I forgot to mention Orbcomm!

[Comga]

I'm not giving these guys much credence, based on their market-speak web site, simplistic looking satellite sketch, and big expensive PR splash today.  ....

Your other comments aside, it is hard to understand why the satellite image is so "simplistic".  Based on this news release (From Thales but posted on the O3b website) they are into fabrication.

Cannes, September 9, 2008 – Thales Alenia Space today announced it has started construction of 16 of its Low Earth Orbit communications satellites for Jersey Channel Islands based O3b Networks Limited, with options for additional spacecrafts. The satellites will offer low latency Internet backhaul to emerging markets and developing countries worldwide at speeds up to 10 Gbps with a combined total capacity in excess of 160Gbps. Thales Alenia Space started design activities under contract in 2007 and has received Authorization To Proceed (ATP) with the construction phase of the project. The delivery of the initial satellites and service activation are scheduled for late 2010.

[braddock]

I'd like to hear some technical details about how their satellite system is expected to work.
Thales calls them LEO comm sats. 
Can 16 provide constant coverage, and in what type of orbit?  Sounds more like a MEO bird to me.  Or is the plan for many many more?
Are those steerable directional dishes in the illustation? 
Are they mechanically tracking a few subscriber spots as the bird orbits? 
Or is it a steerable phased array?

I'm not skeptical of their overall technical approach because I'm sure they've been vetted.  I'm just curious to peek through the market-speak, and am uncertain of their current design stage (no Thales PR does not reassure).

I'm always skeptical of a startup that comes out of nowhere in a well orchestrated PR explosion while dropping names, and holding less than 1/10th of the amount of money they need to make a dime back.  That is like a plea for help.

They apparently have about $60 million in investment.  They estimate that they need another $640 million to pull it off.  They hope to get a loan for most of that (I can't imagine...).

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aqjBH48FtCbk&refer=news
 

[synchrotron]

I'd like to hear some technical details about how their satellite system is expected to work.
Thales calls them LEO comm sats. 
Can 16 provide constant coverage, and in what type of orbit?  Sounds more like a MEO bird to me.  Or is the plan for many many more?
Are those steerable directional dishes in the illustation? 
Are they mechanically tracking a few subscriber spots as the bird orbits? 
Or is it a steerable phased array?

The round-trip transmission times are also consistent with a MEO constellation.

[Danderman]

Some nuggets from their web site:

"For emergency services we can locate significant capacity within 10 minutes anywhere in the world between 45 degrees N/S. "

"O3b Networks' system virtually eliminates the delay of standard GEO satellites by reducing the round-trip transmission time from over ½ second to just 1/10 of a second. The reduced round-trip delay creates a web experience closer to terrestrial systems such as DSL or Optical Fiber."

This would work out to a MEO constellation at about 8,000 miles or so altitude, at a very low inclination.  Perhaps the plan would be for SpaceX to launch the constellation, at 9 degrees inclination. I wonder if there will have to be ITU filings for this constellation, since it would seem that for some users, these sats would be in the line of sight of GEO comsats and the ground.

[Danderman]

Since the Falcon 1, even the enhanced version, is far too small to put appreciable mass in a MEO orbit, there are two realistic scenarios for this constellation to be launched:

SeaLaunch: A single mission could probably put a quarter of the constellation in place, so if SeaLaunch prices are anywhere near $100 million, then the estimate of $650 million total capital is way off. I am assuming here that each comsat is going to have a mass of about 1,000 kg, far more than a Globalstar comsat in LEO, but far less than the standard GEO bird.

SpaceX: If a Falcon 9 has a price of about $40 million, in its normal 2 stage version, maybe 2 comsats could be launched at a time, which leads to 8 missions, at $320 million total. This is possible under the $650 million development cost.

In either case, a multiple satellite dispenser would have to be developed, and they are not cheap.

I may be overlooking an alternative vehicle that could put 1,000 kg (ie a single spacecraft) into a MEO orbit, but such a vehicle would require 16 launches, and so the risk of a launch failure would be must higher, plus each launch would have to cost less than $20 million, otherwise SpaceX would be a better option.

[aero313]

Teledesic, Skybridge, Ellipso, ICO...  I guess some folks never learn.

Lessons from the 1990s:

1)  Paper constellations begat paper rockets (which are ALWAYS less expensive)

2)  Ground antennas are ultimately less expensive than satellites

3)  The only way constellations make financial sense is if you can buy one for five cents on the dollar at the bankruptcy sale. 

Has anyone asked the original investors in Iridium, Globalstar, or Orbcomm how those investments worked out for them?

[Danderman]

Teledesic, Skybridge, Ellipso, ICO...  I guess some folks never learn.

Lessons from the 1990s:

1)  Paper constellations begat paper rockets (which are ALWAYS less expensive)

2)  Ground antennas are ultimately less expensive than satellites

I am not sure what "ground antennas" means in this context, but assuming its "terrestrial communications systems" such as cell phones, this is true to a limited extent. I think that Google and the other investors are looking at a market segment that will not be covered by terrestrial communications systems, however. What is not clear is whether it is profitable to provide such coverage to markets that will not ever enjoy cell phone or landline service.

It is a good question whether the O3b Networks people have studied the earlier failures, or whether they are plunging ahead in the overconfident-ignorant mode.

[pippin]

Teledesic, Skybridge, Ellipso, ICO...  I guess some folks never learn.

Lessons from the 1990s:

1)  Paper constellations begat paper rockets (which are ALWAYS less expensive)

2)  Ground antennas are ultimately less expensive than satellites

3)  The only way constellations make financial sense is if you can buy one for five cents on the dollar at the bankruptcy sale. 

Has anyone asked the original investors in Iridium, Globalstar, or Orbcomm how those investments worked out for them?

The world has moved on a bit since the 90s and also the business models seem to become a bit more refined.

The BIG BIG BIG mistake in the 90s was that people were trying to do direct M2S communication (mobile to satellite). #2 was they were trying to cover the whole planet.

#1 is a bad idea since it drives a LOT of requirements: you need specialized (and to be developed) technology for handsets, high power, line-of-sight connections for your handset, lots of sats and and and
O3b doesn't seem to make that mistake, they only want to provide backbone access, for which requirements are much more simple (your ground station can have line of sight and lots of power etc etc.) and - probably most important - all the technology is in place, no dev. cost for that.

#2 is a bad idea since you have to launch a lot of constellation that does not pay. Very few users in the arctics and lots of competing infrastructure in Europe, Asia and North America. You can probably get away with a lot LESS sats if you focus on your "new" Market, which seems to be South America, Africa and South Asia.

Also the need is more pressing today, you cannot run a global business without broadband internet access these days. And that includes remote office access.

I know that currently it is a PITA to deal with some areas there today. We do have local offices down there that you just cannot get connected to today's IT systems because the infrastructure is not there and that costs a LOT of money so I'm pretty sure the market is there.

I do NOT say that O3b will be successful - still a lot you can do wrong. But I am pretty sure some day somebody will be. In the end, a few sats are MUCH cheaper than thousands ok km of buried (and maintained, they get stolen these days!) cable or thousands of point-to-point comm links.

[nomadd22]

"

This would work out to a MEO constellation at about 8,000 miles or so altitude, at a very low inclination.  Perhaps the plan would be for SpaceX to launch the constellation, at 9 degrees inclination. I wonder if there will have to be ITU filings for this constellation, since it would seem that for some users, these sats would be in the line of sight of GEO comsats and the ground.

More like 4,000 miles. Round trip means up and down twice.

[A_M_Swallow]

#2 is a bad idea since you have to launch a lot of constellation that does not pay. Very few users in the arctics and lots of competing infrastructure in Europe, Asia and North America. You can probably get away with a lot LESS sats if you focus on your "new" Market, which seems to be South America, Africa and South Asia.

Ships in the middle of the sea also need voice communications.

[pippin]

#2 is a bad idea since you have to launch a lot of constellation that does not pay. Very few users in the arctics and lots of competing infrastructure in Europe, Asia and North America. You can probably get away with a lot LESS sats if you focus on your "new" Market, which seems to be South America, Africa and South Asia.

Ships in the middle of the sea also need voice communications.

This is about broadband data.
Plenty of solutions for voice available today.
Few ships per square mile.
But ships will also need broadband data.
But, again, then most ships are traveling at moderate latitudes, have no line of sight limitations and plenty of power, so it should just work fine.

[anik]

Sea Launch Signs Launch Agreement with O3b Networks
http://www.sea-launch.com/news_releases/nr_082309.html
 
Long Beach, Calif., Sea Launch Company has signed a launch services agreement with O3b Networks Limited for up to two launches in support of their Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) telecommunications satellite constellation, with the first launch set for late 2010.

Built by Thales Alenia Space, the O3b Networks satellites will be deployed by Sea Launch's Zenit-3SL system in groups of eight per launch, to an equatorial injection orbit of 7,825 kilometers above the Earth. The satellites, each weighing approximately 700 kg (1,540 lb.), are designed to provide high-speed, ultra-low-latency Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity between emerging and developed markets worldwide.

O3b Networks' new global communications backbone will fundamentally change the way IP, 3G Cellular and WiMAX networks interconnect. This will reduce the costs of backhaul for Mobile Operators and Internet Service Providers, enabling them to provide more cost-effective services in underserved and emerging markets.

Sea Launch is developing a new multi-spacecraft dispenser for these missions, which will accommodate O3b Networks’ specific orbital insertion requirements. Upon successful sequential deployment, the satellites are expected to have an on-orbit maneuvering lifetime of ten years.

"We selected Sea Launch because of its knowledge, expertise and successful track record of moving payloads into orbit," said Greg Wyler, O3b Networks Founder and CEO. "With the placement of our first eight satellites, we will provide emerging-market network operators with a low-cost, high-speed alternative to connect their 3G, WiMAX and fixed-line networks to the rest of the world. This will allow consumers and businesses in emerging markets to benefit from high-speed Internet connectivity for educational, medical and commercial applications."

"We are delighted to have the opportunity to launch these innovative spacecraft for O3b Networks and to have a significant role in this dynamic new communications system," said Kjell Karlsen, President and General Manager of Sea Launch. "We are grateful for O3b Networks' confidence in our reliable launch system and the team behind it. We are proud of our ability to not only launch satellites, but to help launch O3b Networks’ new communications system, which will bridge the digital divide substantially."

[Danderman]

OK, so I was 125 km and 300 kg off in my estimates for this constellation. Fortunately, this allows O3B Networks to launch their entire constellation in 2 flights.  This also means that SeaLaunch must develop an 8 satellite dispenser, which I suspect will be closely related to the 12 sat Globalstar dispenser.

I find it interesting that the mass of each comsat is 700 kg, which is very low mass for a direct broadcast satellite; Globalstar satellites have a mass of 400 kg, but they provide much less bandwidth, at only 1400 km altitude. I guess transponder technology is much improved since Globalstar.

The last point may be more critical in the long term: how much more massive would a small SPS satellite have to be in this orbit? Assuming that one Falcon 9 could put an SPS in an 8000 km MEO orbit, perhaps we may see an equatorial SPS global system sooner than expected (albeit at a low power rate).

[pippin]

I find it interesting that the mass of each comsat is 700 kg, which is very low mass for a direct broadcast satellite;

If I understand their model correctly, they're nor direct broadcasting sats.
That's what they do better then Globalstar.

[sammie]

More information with a focus on Africa, interesting reading

URL updated,

[Ronsmytheiii]

More information with a focus on Africa, interesting reading;

You linked to this thread?

[Danderman]

OK, I must be missing something here. From what I have read, the function of the O3B Networks system is to provide "backbone" or trunk function for Internet in the equatorial regions, ie T1 line bandwidth to rural areas. But, GEO comsats can do this today, albeit with some latency? So, is this $640M project in existence because people in Africa are unhappy with the latency in their current internet connections, or are unwilling to hook up until someone comes along with a quicker system?

[maxx]

OK, I must be missing something here. From what I have read, the function of the O3B Networks system is to provide "backbone" or trunk function for Internet in the equatorial regions, ie T1 line bandwidth to rural areas. But, GEO comsats can do this today, albeit with some latency? So, is this $640M project in existence because people in Africa are unhappy with the latency in their current internet connections, or are unwilling to hook up until someone comes along with a quicker system?

Not only. For example, in January 2008, a very large undersea cable broke and cut off internet access and telecom to a large part of the middle east (see http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/01/mediterranean_cable_break.shtml  and subsequent for details).
Having alternate routes in case of an incident like this make sense, and it is not rare for large companies to have several ISPs just in case one of them goes offline or experience difficulties.

[pippin]

OK, I must be missing something here. From what I have read, the function of the O3B Networks system is to provide "backbone" or trunk function for Internet in the equatorial regions, ie T1 line bandwidth to rural areas. But, GEO comsats can do this today, albeit with some latency? So, is this $640M project in existence because people in Africa are unhappy with the latency in their current internet connections, or are unwilling to hook up until someone comes along with a quicker system?

Yep. That's exactly what it is about.
Actually that's what pretty much EVERY business case is about: people being unhappy with something.

"some latency" renders a internet connection completely useless for modern applications, today it's much more of an issue than actual bandwidth. You will not be able to use something like Google Mail over a GEO comsat connection, let alone corporate enterprise software integration. I#ve been using a hight latency mobile internet connection for a while, about 1/5th compared to the latencies you get over a satcom connection, but things like this page are a nuisance, more demanding apps are simply not possible.
640 Mil.$ is not a lot of money for that kind of business.
Africa has quite a few people, that's no small potential.

[Danderman]

http://www.o3bnetworks.com/

Some updates on this proposed constellation.

[StuffOfInterest]

Latency reduction could certainly drive a "new model" for Internet trunk access.  New applications such as voice and video conferencing don't like two second ping time.  Things have certainly changed on that front.  In the early 90's, I once had the fun of experiencing a 17 second (yes, 17,000 ms) ping time from a US military site in Asia to a commercial site in South Africa.  Thank you double geo-sync hop!  Having low latency links from places such as Africa to the rest of the world could spawn some significant business development in places such as Africa.

As a side note, when they say "IP communications", I wonder if they mean IPv4 or IPv6?  Someday, the core Internet is going to have to convert and I'd hate to think of a 2/3 of a billion dollar asset stuck without handling the new technology (although IPv6 isn't all that new).

[nomadd22]

Latency reduction could certainly drive a "new model" for Internet trunk access.  New applications such as voice and video conferencing don't like two second ping time.  Things have certainly changed on that front.  In the early 90's, I once had the fun of experiencing a 17 second (yes, 17,000 ms) ping time from a US military site in Asia to a commercial site in South Africa.  Thank you double geo-sync hop!  Having low latency links from places such as Africa to the rest of the world could spawn some significant business development in places such as Africa.

As a side note, when they say "IP communications", I wonder if they mean IPv4 or IPv6?  Someday, the core Internet is going to have to convert and I'd hate to think of a 2/3 of a billion dollar asset stuck without handling the new technology (although IPv6 isn't all that new).

The main reason for IPV6, lack of available IP addresses has eased quite a bit since so many homes and office are on their own networks with cheap routers and aren't eating up public addresses like they feared.
 The goal for satellite internet is straight IP based comms without special interfaces. The most you can push over geo that way is about 400kbs because of packet acknowedgement delay.
 At 7800km they could probably push 2 or 3 mbs over generic IP, and would have to use some sort of special interface for higher.

[drbuzz0]

There have always been really big issues with LEO communications satellite systems which have made them a very difficult place to turn a profit.   Iridium and Globalstar are both magnifficant systems from a technical standpoint - the fact that iridium can provide handset communications reliably to any place on the face of the earth is nothing to discount.   It was and is an amazing engineering achievement.

That being said, the market for their services has turned out to be incapable of making these ventures profitable if you pay for the entire project.   Now, if the company goes bankrupt and it is bought out for cents on the dollar and the debts erased.. well then it can, but that's another issue entirely.

Of course there are some big issues to be tackled here.   One of the biggest is the whole issue of bandwidth.  The LEO satellites like Iridium and Globalstar have really limited bandwidth - no more than 9.6 kbps or so.   That's hardly useful for anything beyond text communications.  Voice on Iridium is extremely compressed using AMBE, one of the most advanced voice coding formats around to save bandwidth.

The issue has to do with the frequencies used and the types of antennas used.   If you have a fixed antenna and a geostationary satellite then you can use a point to point beam and make use of bands like the Ku and Ka band which have a lot of bandwidth.  The antennas are dish or phased array types with a narrow beam so you don't have to share the frequencies with everyone.  Move the dish a few degrees and you can talk to a different satellite on the same band.

Of course the LEO satellites don't stay in one place and are generally used for mobile stuff.  For that reason they use the l-band and the devices have omnidirectional antennas.  They can't effectively use the higher bands and they can't use narrow beams because you'd have to track the satellites constantly.

Of course, this is not impossible if you have a fully steerable set of antenna arrays - you could track each satellite as it comes into and out of view and then pick up the next one.   This is necessarily large and needs to be stable and have a good view of the sky so it precludes handsets or small devices like that.

The GEO systems have been more successful, for both mobile and fixed sights.   Only one satellite is needed to cover an entire region, you can use higher bands relatively easily and the satellite can be multi-purpose.   

There are mobile GEO systems as well.  Some of them use small dishes or phased arrays that are poined at the satellite either manually or, in the case of a ship or plane, automatically by an in-motion tracking system.  These are such systems as Inmarsat and Msat.   THere are a few next-generation ones like Thuraya which can actually make use of handsets.   Thuraya does this by using a massive deployable high gain antenna array on the satellite which gives it the gain to connect with small low power transmitters on earth even at such an altitude.

There are also the GEO services that offer true broadband and concentrate on fixed sites.  These are ones like Hughesnet (formerly Direcway, formerly DirecPC), Starband and WildBlue.   They use the KA or Ku band and have been commercially successful to a limited degree.


The issue with these, in addition to having to place the antenna pointed at the satellite and having an unobstructed view of it is latency.   The latency of satellite internet is bad, but it's not absolutely intolerable.   It depends on the activity.   Using a GEO satellite for something like telephone is totally doable.  The latency is a minor annoyance but it's not a deal breaker.   Using GEO for surfing the web is very usable.   If the system is properly setup and uses techniques like prefetching and some caching then the latency is hardly noticable.

Of course for things like downloads and one-way streaming it's not an issue.   But it does make teleconfrencing haphazard and things like gaming impossible.

The question is:  is it worth the enormous costs of a LEO satellite system to provide latency-free internet?    The GEO systems work, they work decently and they have their issues, but it's really a BIG jump to get these resolved. 

[pippin]

Of course the LEO satellites don't stay in one place and are generally used for mobile stuff.  For that reason they use the l-band and the devices have omnidirectional antennas.  They can't effectively use the higher bands and they can't use narrow beams because you'd have to track the satellites constantly. 

My understanding is that this is NOT the case here. The idea is to provide backbone service, not direct access so you will not have to communicate to thousands of handsets at a time and the antennae don't have to be omnidirectional, at least not the ones on the ground.
Also power (on the handset side) is not an issue with this approach, which has been the biggest problem for Iridium.

[agman25]

Some updates...

http://www.spacenews.com/satellite_telecom/o3b-networks-ceo-expects-close-billion-financing-package-soon.html

[bolun]

O3b 'fibre in the sky' project wins financial backing

The financing has been secured for one of the most ambitious commercial space projects of the decade.

O3b Networks has raised $1.2bn (£700m) for a series of satellites to support super-fast broadband connections to Africa and other emerging markets.

The company informed the markets early on Monday that a collection of investors and banks would provide the money it needed to launch the venture's first eight satellites.

These will be constructed by Thales Alenia Space at its manufacturing facility in Cannes, with the first platforms ready to go into orbit in the first half of 2013.

Russian Soyuz rockets will launch the satellites from the new Sinamary spaceport in French Guiana.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11847708

[zaitcev]

This almost sounds reasonable. Without sat-sat links it's basically another Globalstar, only with one orbital plane and a promise of better data rates. The question is, who's going to buy the service.

[Nate_Trost]

I suspect the targeted customers aren't individuals with phones, but small mobile services operators with remote cellular towers and very limited national infrastructure.

[Robotbeat]

I suspect the targeted customers aren't individuals with phones, but small mobile services operators with remote cellular towers and very limited national infrastructure.

I believe LEO-based sat phones will eventually start crowding out cell phone providers in rural areas (especially). Once you have the infrastructure for a very broad sat phone service (with LOTS of active calls per satellite) in place (and go bankrupt so you don't have to pay for it anymore... lol), then you can compete in almost every cellphone market in the world at a far, far lower fixed cost than if you wanted to do the same thing with cell towers all over the world. It's like a shortcut to global domination. If you can pull off making it cost-competitive with cellphones, then it would be immensely profitable. If you survive long enough, that is.

[kevin-rf]

Hasn't happened yet, they need to get the price point and quality to better than the cell providers. It places an unnecessary cost burden on the end users. Plus once a tower goes up, it is up. Fiber had a similar effect on the GEO market.

Now that anyone with an internet connection can throw up a "micro tower", the necessary dead zones can be well covered (Actually threw a Verizon network extender up in the house to cover "my" dead zone)...

[wjbarnett]

Plus, the cost of sat phone components will always be higher than that traditional cell phone alone; then add the difficulties of uplink RF signal penetrating building materials (sure, rural mostly-wooden building less problematic than metal; but lots of metal roofs where I am).

I've done the trade studies (professionally): won't happen! except for niche markets, or possibly in a collaboration/hybrid ATC (Ancillary Terrestrial Component) deployments, like TerreStar and their traditional wireless network partners.

[Robotbeat]

Hasn't happened yet, they need to get the price point and quality to better than the cell providers. It places an unnecessary cost burden on the end users. Plus once a tower goes up, it is up. Fiber had a similar effect on the GEO market.

Now that anyone with an internet connection can throw up a "micro tower", the necessary dead zones can be well covered (Actually threw a Verizon network extender up in the house to cover "my" dead zone)...

Actually, maintaining a tower isn't cheap.

And, yes, being able to penetrate into a building is a quite significant problem for sat phone providers. If then can overcome this limitation, they will have a chance at doing what I described.

If you can get a million subscribers, it doesn't take actually that much more orbiting infrastructure to do 10 million or more... But you have to reach a critical point where you have enough subscribers to make it cheaper than cellphones are. At that point, relatively small investments in capacity can result in vastly expanded service.

This is dependent on technological advancement. You'll need a bigger, more powerful satellite to be able to service almost a million calls through building materials. Larger solar array and larger antennae both help. This is many orders of magnitude more powerful than current Iridium satellites.

[wjbarnett]

"power" on the sat side is just a part of the problem. As the sat or any single RF source gets more powerful, the much bigger problem becomes interference. So if there are many subscribers near each other (in sat terms, is within the radius of the same spot beam -- ie 50 to 100s of miles; vs cell tower of <5) will cause problems! Generally n=64 simultaneous bearer paths is the max supported in 3G/WCDMA on the same RF carrier within the same sector/cell. (I'd have to lookup the value in LTE/4G; but much improved due to ODMA). But still ODMA is approaching the Shannon limit for information transmissions (considering real-world system losses) and therefore has required growing the RF carrier size to 10 or even 20Mhz (one-way). Sats won't have enough spot beams nor their operators enough spectrum allocated/purchased.  Sure 10m subs, no problem. 3B subs = fantasy.

[jongoff]

Plus, the cost of sat phone components will always be higher than that traditional cell phone alone; then add the difficulties of uplink RF signal penetrating building materials (sure, rural mostly-wooden building less problematic than metal; but lots of metal roofs where I am).

I've done the trade studies (professionally): won't happen! except for niche markets, or possibly in a collaboration/hybrid ATC (Ancillary Terrestrial Component) deployments, like TerreStar and their traditional wireless network partners.

I like the idea of ATCs (thanks! I didn't know the technical term).  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  :-)

Do you see any possibility of LEO-based ATC satphone/cellphone combos making much headway into the market?

~Jon

[wjbarnett]

Do you see any possibility of LEO-based ATC satphone/cellphone combos making much headway into the market?

I've not studied LEO-based systems. But my first thought on the likely issues are a) (costs for) enough sats to provide continuous coverage with sufficient # of spot-beams, but small beam-size, and b) spectrum allocations (can't conflict with GSO sats, in any orbital position). I believe (but not fully current on latest FCC rule making) all ATC spectrum is currently GSO compatible. Plus c) the usual issues faced by every global player (ie highly variable regulatory environments). The uplink power reduction is a benefit for LEO-based sats.

Jon, My knowledge base is traditional cellphone & broadband data networks, and business models. But when a good client wanted a Sat/ATC tradestudy, I jumped in (with a comsat knowledgeable partner) and learned a lot. But that project completed 4 years ago with the client declining an investment offer, at least partial due to our study results.

[MikeAtkinson]

I took part in the WISDOM (Wideband Satellite Demonstrator of Multimedia Services) EU funded project in the late 90's.

We looked at GEO, MEO and LEO constellations. This was both about demonstrating end to end connectivity, and doing system design work. We built two ground stations. I did the bandwidth allocation algorithms and wrote both a simulator of one beam (thousands of users with up to 1000 active at any one time). It could also connect to the ground stations, controlling one as the network side and one as the user. Unfortunately the breadboard satellite system was late and we did not get to try out the entire system end-to-end.

While we had great confidence that the system was technically sound, I and many others on the project had grave misgivings about its commercial potential.

We looked really hard for a solution that would allow GEO satellites to be used first and then replaced/supplemented with MEO and then replaced/supplemented with LEO satellites. We could not find a solution which kept the ground station cost reasonable.

The problems we found included:

The service would cost a reasonable amount, probably more than broadband wireless or cable networks in towns or cities. So anywhere where there was a moderate density of (reasonably wealthy) population the satellite network would loose out to terrestrial solutions.

The system worked best when each beam had just the right number of subscribers, too few and the revenue would be low, too high and they would contend for bandwidth and get a degraded service.

Within Europe (this was a EU funded study) the potential user base would be continually squeezed by extensions of terrestrial networks. Realistically we could expect only a few 100,000 users at best, those in the most remote locations. This wasn't enough to pay for the system, even with EU subsidies for universal access to services.

For LEO and MEO systems most of their time would be spent over the ocean, where there would be very few subscribers.

Over much of the world we had the problem that most of the population were too poor to afford access, most of those wealthy enough live in cities where they would have terrestrial broadband. We would be looking at targeting the rural rich - a small, hard to reach segment of the total broadband market.

It would require marketing to almost every country at the same time, building up a user base very quickly.

When the required user base had been reached in an area there was not the flexibility to increase it without degrading the service for everyone.

A partial service would not be very good, so selling to users could not realistically take place until the constellation was in place (for LEO and MEO). What happens if a satellite fails, how quickly can the gap in coverage be filled. What would that do to the user base.

It is over a decade now since I worked on it so the details are fuzzy, however IIRC we reckoned that obtaining >20% capacity factor would be a major achievement.

These (and probably other risks I've forgotten), indicated that the risk of a financial failure were quite large, the potential gains would need to be equally large, even with optimistic assumptions this seemed unlikely.

In the end the company I worked for (Nortel) pulled out, we reckoned that if there was a broadband satellite system, we could bid for ground segment business just as well even if we were not a consortium member, and bid for the ground segment of rival systems as well.

[Robotbeat]

...
It would require marketing to almost every country at the same time, building up a user base very quickly.
...

Yes, this is a good point. I think the most likely scenario for an uber-sat-phone network would be an existing cellphone provider who already has fingers in every single market in the world, and could even distribute compatible phones well in advance to switching on the satellites. It would take much more capable LEO satellites than we currently have. That means much larger antenna arrays (enables more efficient spatial multiplexing to enable many more users per satellite than currently possible... each Iridium satellite is capable of 1100 concurrent active users) and more power, among other things. In very high population density areas, it'll still make sense to have cell towers.

[A_M_Swallow]

{snip}

Within Europe (this was a EU funded study) the potential user base would be continually squeezed by extensions of terrestrial networks. Realistically we could expect only a few 100,000 users at best, those in the most remote locations. This wasn't enough to pay for the system, even with EU subsidies for universal access to services.

You are assuming that subscribers are people, they could be towns and big companies.  The satellite would then be acting as a trunk network.

From this page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Population
The current world population is estimated to be 6,885,100,000, round up to 7b.  If you design for 100,000 ground stations each ground station would supply 7,000,000,000 / 100,000 = 70,000 people

There are plenty of towns that size.  Cities could be divided up into districts.  There may be sufficient ground stations left over to have individual ships and very isolated buildings as subscribers.

[wjbarnett]

A broadband link shared by 70k people is pretty low bandwidth per person/device (especially in today's world of smartphones!). And who would guarantee that they would sign up to pay for this system? And why, since the existing terrestrial broadband systems are already serving the vast majority of these people that in towns or cities?

[Robotbeat]

A broadband link shared by 70k people is pretty low bandwidth per person/device (especially in today's world of smartphones!). And who would guarantee that they would sign up to pay for this system? And why, since the existing terrestrial broadband systems are already serving the vast majority of these people that in towns or cities?

Those 70,000 people aren't going to be fully streaming all the time. All consumer (and many non-consumer) internet connections are over-subscribed, especially the wireless ones. Say you sell the connections as being 700kbps, each person may only get 15kbps constant throughput, but since everyone isn't always using it, you get a lot more throughput, and the provider still only has to do ~1Gbps per satellite, which is more than reasonable for a next-gen system. Trust me, this is already how it's done with smartphones, hence the whole "5GB per month" thing for many existing smartphones (which works out to about ~15kbps on average, interestingly) with $30 per month plans.

This still goes one with wired connections, too, but usually isn't as bad. But terrestrial wireless data connections that are $30/month for 5GB/month are the competition. I think it's possible to beat that.

(and actually, most people don't come near the 5GB/month for their 3G devices... not saying they won't or that it wouldn't be nice not to have greater limits, but that's the reality right now)

[wjbarnett]

Trust me. It's not average traffic that matters, but rather peak traffic. Traditionally we used "busy hour" but these days it about "peak minute" speeds (that is a sum of rates, NOT volume) that drives the sizing of broadband networks.

[Robotbeat]

Trust me. It's not average traffic that matters, but rather peak traffic. Traditionally we used "busy hour" but these days it about "peak minute" speeds (that is a sum of rates, NOT volume) that drives the sizing of broadband networks.

I believe you!

[Danderman]

Scads of technical information in this FCC application.

[zaitcev]

So... Are they dead like LightSquared or not yet?

[Skyrocket]

So... Are they dead like LightSquared or not yet?

As two launches with each 4 satellites are scheduled for this year, they seem to be alive. (http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6114.msg994277#msg994277)

May 29 - O3b (4 sats) - Soyuz-STB/Fregat-MT (VS05)

Late July-Early August - O3b (4 sats) - Soyuz-STB/Fregat-MT (VS07)

[Zond]

O3b's First Satellite, Fully Tested and Ready for Launch!

[zaitcev]

First batch was launched today, see launch thread:
 http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31727.105

And I almost wrote them off for dead at the start of the year! People work, not post press releases.

[sb]

There's a good article on theregister.co.uk on this and some interesting stuff in the comments from someone who was involved in the design of the ground stations (I think, read it a couple of days ago). Will add link when on a PC

[R7]

Here is The Register article.

Ground station needs two 3m tracking dishes for uninterrupted service, preferably third as backup. Estimated cost several million $ (are they really that expensive??).

Hoping these guys make it and congrats for successful launch!