Google Invests in Satellites to Spread Internet Access | Hacker News Reader

Google Invests in Satellites to Spread Internet Access

online.wsj.com

88 pointsrememberlenny36 comments

I have to wonder if they will be able to provide uncensored service to parts of the planet that are not able to get it now. China has their firewall, and other governments have tried restricting the internet as well. Satellites over head can get around the restrictions.

This would bring the internet not only to rural areas, but also oppressed areas.

Wouldn't whatever spectrum you use to communicate with satellites be governed by the country's government much like how wireless spectra are owned by countries? In which case, I don't think you'd be able to subterfuge like that.

Iridium and other satellite providers somehow managed to get around this. I think the only places they can't provide service is embargoed countries (and that's more of a "source" country rather than a "destination" country issue).

Further research suggests that the ITU-R is responsible for this, likely under some type of treaty.

The equipment used to communicate with the satellites is usually heavily regulated. For example in India you can't bring in items that communicate via a Satellite without a permit.

In Kenya before they changed the law, VSAT terminals were heavily regulated. They had equipment that could detect if you had an unauthorized installation and you could get under heavy fines.

Bottom line you can't regulate whether you can or can't get the signal, but you can regulate the domestic equipment required to communicate.

Lets hope this doesn't provoke China to destroy another satellite in orbit. The last time they did that 150,000 debris particles were smashed into orbit.

Please provide the link. I haven't heard of the story and it sounds really interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mis...

My radio theory is a bit limited, but couldn't those countries just point high powered transmitters at the satellites as the pass and drown out the customer transmitters?

I started/ran a commercial satellite provider (in war zones) for a while last decade. The big transition just happening then (but not in my region, due to a rocket blowing up during launch) was Ku -> Ka band.

Ku has big enough beams (thus, less freq re-use) and low enough bandwidth (due to cost of space segment) that it really wasn't economic for "regular" Internet for people -- hundreds or thousands of dollars for a high-latency connection with other performance characteristics of the worst DSL.

Ka is an order of magnitude or more better (although more subject to rain fade); smaller and cheaper equipment, too.

I was kind of sad Google went with "project loon", which seems kind of..loony to me..rather than UAVs, tethered aerostats, or LEO constellations. It looks like they're not just doing loon.

I want to figure out how a Gerald Bull space cannon or RAMAC (10-50k G force launch of 1m diameter satellites, for $100/pound) could be used to build an LEO constellation.

I'm not sure if this is related, but my father told me about something similar. My father is from and lives now in Palau [1], and the typical internet connection there has a download speed of something like 20 kbps. My dad said something about a company deploying satellites seeking to service unconnected or poorly connected regions, and Palau wanted in.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palau

Yikes,

An email only dialup account in Palau is $15/month. Unlimited dialup is $99.95.

64kbps DSL is $199.95 per month, going up to $759.95 for 320kbps...

I just wish they would give high-speeds at the last mile and ship in multi-TB drives for local access, while rate-limiting international (satellite uplink) access based on how much one pays.

edit: Palau internet access rate card: http://www.palaunet.com/view_pdf_file.aspx?field1=Palaunet%2...

You witness what happens when there is only one ISP with no competition (PNCC provides palaunet). A little example at a different scale of what could happen if comcast and time warner were to merge :)

>I just wish they would give high-speeds at the last mile and ship in multi-TB drives for local access, while rate-limiting international (satellite uplink) access based on how much one pays.

This idea has been around so long but no one has tried to actually tried to do something like this. Moreover, there isn't a lot of "local access" that I know since there arent't many websites on the island to begin with. Something like a local email service would make sense; palaunet's email service is so bad that people rather use services here in the US like gmail.

The funny thing is that PNCC and the Palau government had a chance to tap into AAG[1] when it was laid in the 2000s but Palau opted out of it because they thought it wasn't worth the investment. What a mistake...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AAG_%28cable_system%29

In cases where Internet is service extremely expensive and difficult to provide broadband, satellite service can be a great solution. You use the hard wire connection to make the request (upstream) and download from the satellite.

Since it's expensive to transmit a signal and the amount people upload can be minimal for most requests, the hard line works great. Then, it's relatively cheap to receive the response with the satellite, which is usually a large payload that would benefit tremendously from the broadband connection.

It physically is the only method, as this is an isolated island in the pacific. As I mentioned in a reply to another person in this thread, there was a chance to tap into one of a fiber optic cable that was being laid nearby, but the monopoly corp that provides the internet service decided not to invest in it.

That is some slow internet. I am in a remote region of Hawaii with no public utilities. No water or electricity reaches here, no phone or cable lines either. Currently satellite is my only option, which is fine speed wise, but latency is quite high and the bandwidth caps are very restrictive.

I'd love to see what Google can offer in this space.

Sounds like O3b. I think they were mentioned in the article?

Admittedly, I scanned the article, but this article seems mostly business speak. I was more curious behind the technical details, specifically potential speeds and overcoming limitations with satellite internet.

In other words, can this someday compete with (or even eliminate the need for) current broadband infrastructure?

>In other words, can this someday compete with (or even eliminate the need for) current broadband infrastructure?

Most likely not. The amount of spectrum required to replace current broadband users would be significant. The amount of coordination overhead for even managing just 50,000,000 satellite client transmissions would probably make the system unusable. I think the target here is less of a last mile replacement and more of a town-wide Internet uplink replacement for places in the middle of nowhere. i.e. the town would get one satellite uplink and then run last-mile connections to their own users.

but they could offer cellphone service across the globe without having to bribe the FCC.

No. Speed of light ensures this will never happen.

This won't replace broadband, but for a different reason.

The article suggests the satellites would operate from LEO orbit which generally means a few hundreds to 2,000km above the planet. This is less than 10ms even accounting for ionospheric effects.

Bandwidth would be a huge problem, though.

So would LOS. LEO sucks because you definitely aren't going to be using a dish, doubly so if you want continuous connections. At least not on any large scale.

Well, I remember reading about teledesic, which this seems to be under a new name, and the idea was you would always have 3+ sats in your sky at once.

LEO satellites transmissions have only 1-2% the latency of geosynchronous. The internal latency, cache capacity, etc. of newer routers will be better, too. Not ideal, but not too bad.

In theory, satellite Internet could have any capacity you want by flying more satellites. But that's always going to be more expensive than other ways of providing coverage.

In a real case, I expect this to be part of a terrestrial, drone, and maybe even balloon network.

Their driverless car needs Internet to work. This will let you drive anywhere.

And connect their robots to Viki.

I wonder where and how they are putting together a team to design and build the hardware and coordinate with launch companies. This will be a huge contract for whichever company wins the launch bid.

I hope they will use laser technology, which can probably go up to 1 Gbps if they're using cutting edge technology. Although that can probably work only for residences, so if they want it for self-driving cars they'll also need radio-based Internet.

Doesn't punching through 60 miles of atmosphere require dangerously high power?

Either that, or very good antennae.

Insects have antennae. Radio devices have antennas.

Thank you! Even after 37 years of English there is still room for improvement.

Do lasers use antenna(s|e)?

I think Google should invest in creating more https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland in the world

iridium lives!

More like: Teledesic lives.

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