Recent podcast by founder of Lynk Global.https://www.thespaceshow.com/show/14-aug-2020/broadcast-3557-charles-millerCurrently have few satellites in operation.
Lynk announced May 25 that it filed the FCC application using the commission’s streamlined licensing process for smallsats established in 2019. The company hopes that approach will allow it to begin commercial services with a first group of satellites within a year.That streamlined approach does set limits on the size, orbital altitude, and lifetime of the satellites. It also covers constellations of no more than 10 satellites.
Lynk ultimately envisions operating as many as 5,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, communicating with mobile phones without the need for special antennas or other equipment. The company has tested the technology enabling this on several hosted payloads and smallsats, operating under experimental licenses. Earlier this year company officials said they wanted to begin commercial operations in 2022 using a small fraction of that full constellation.
Last month, Lynk claimed a first: two-way satellite-to-smartphone connectivity. The breakthrough was not the connection, but that Lynk satellites communicated with ordinary, unmodified phones. Phones were talking to satellites without any special satellite receiver.Lynk is raising a new round of funding, negotiating contracts with mobile carriers, and preparing for Gen-1 satellite production, CEO Charles Miller tells Payload. You can find the full interview below.
Lynk Global had its first commercial satellite, Lynk Tower 1, on the Sherpa as the company begins to roll out its satellite telephony services.
Lynk Global satellites have connected with thousands of unmodified smartphones, tablets, internet-of-things devices and vehicles, the Fall Church, Virginia, startup announced Feb. 8.The mobile devices required “zero modifications,” Lynk CEO Charles Miller told SpaceNews. “In fact, these devices did not know they were even participating in our test.”Lynk was testing the ability of its fifth satellite to connect with the company’s own smartphones, when thousands of other devices that lacked terrestrial network service detected the Lynk signal and “automatically requested a connection,” Miller said by email. “Our satellite then connected them.”
Lynk is a huge deal. Honestly, the idea is just as big or maybe even bigger than Starlink’s idea. (Execution is maybe another story.)It’s a trillion dollar market. And by working with unmodified cellphones, there’s no terminal supply chain issues to slow development and limit revenue. It’s purely just satellite capacity and regulatory permission.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 02/10/2022 01:52 pmLynk is a huge deal. Honestly, the idea is just as big or maybe even bigger than Starlink’s idea. (Execution is maybe another story.)It’s a trillion dollar market. And by working with unmodified cellphones, there’s no terminal supply chain issues to slow development and limit revenue. It’s purely just satellite capacity and regulatory permission.I'm somewhat in agreement, but will emphasize that these connections are very low bandwidth. Lynk themselves specify that they'd have serious trouble handling even voice calls with their early setup - no problem, they want to start small and work their way up. The problem is that scaling up to higher bandwidth is fundamentally limited by mobile antenna size. To achieve a good enough SNR for high-bandwidth operations requires either more power or higher gain, which in turn means larger or more numerous satellites, until eventually you're at AST/SpaceMobile levels, which are (IMO) unsustainable.Low-bandwidth communications are still great. You can still serve a lot of customers, and make a lot of money, by operating such a network. That's exactly what IoT satellite operators have been doing for decades - the difference is that Lynk is building an IoT constellation that uses existing terminals and protocols (even if it takes significant work to fit into specifications that weren't designed for them). That's a large market, but I would characterize it as closer to existing IoT operators than new high-bandwidth operators - and indeed, "We’re not competing with Elon."So while I'm confident Lynk has a path to success, and an important role to play in global communications, I wouldn't exactly say that they've opened up a brand-new "trillion dollar market", though I can see why there's reason for optimism.
