Satellite Internet

Starlink Comes to Africa - Markets and Competition

SpaceX Starlink Internet service will be available in several African nations in the second quarter of this year, and the price in Nigeria has been announced -- $600 for the "residential" terminal and a monthly fee of $43. Is there a market for Starlink at that price in Nigeria and other Sub-Saharan African nations? The IMF projects a GDP per capita of $2,580 for Nigeria this year (and $1,900 in Sub-Saharan Africa and $2,260 for Africa overall) so the market for individual consumer accounts will be much smaller than in what the IMF refers to as "advanced economies."

Getting Serious About Satellite Texting

One of the more interesting telecom announcements at the CES electronics show in Vegas was the announcement from the partnership of Qualcomm and Iridium of plans to bring satellite texting capability to many more cell phones and other devices. We've already seen a few other announcements recently of the ability to make emergency text calls when out of reach of cell coverage.

SpaceX Launches “Second Generation” Starlink Satellites

In interviews last Spring, Elon Musk said the data throughput of the next version of Starlink satellite (Gen2) would be almost an order of magnitude greater than that of the first generation and that the new Starship rocket would be needed to launch them. Regulatory and engineering delays slowed Starship's progress, so the Gen2 satellites Musk referred to at the time have not yet been launched.

Space Weather and Broadband

There was an interesting phenomenon that happened in September when Starlink launched 49 new satellites. The satellites were successfully deployed by the rocket, but as the satellites were being maneuvered to reach the final orbital slots, there was a geomagnetic storm that caused 38 of the satellites to fall back to earth. Space storms happen when radiation affects the magnetosphere that surrounds the earth.

FCC Implements Broadband Labels

The FCC voted recently to implement consumer broadband labels. This was required by section 60504 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The new rules will become effective after the Office of Management, and Budget approves the new rules and after the final notice is published in the federal register. ISPs will then generally have six months to implement the labels. The labels look a lot like the nutrition labels that accompany food.

Some Random Notes from IETF 115

The IETF held its 115th meeting in London in November 2022. This was another in the set of hybrid meetings with specific support for online attendees in addition to the normal face-to-face meetings for the week. In no particular order, here are a few of my impressions from the IETF meeting.

Starlink Now Covers All of Australia

My colleague, Robert Smallwood in Geraldton, WA at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (WA Government), has been testing Starlink now since March 2022 and he reports on his experience and in general, provides updates about Starlink and its mother company, SpaceX. He allowed me to use his report to write this article.

Update on Satellite Broadband

The first announcement came from OneWeb. The company successfully launched 36 new satellites with rockets supplied by NewSpace India Limited. This new rocket company was formed in 2019 and is a public-sector undertaking sponsored by the Indian Government and an arm of the India Space Research Organization. This launch is a reminder that many parts of the world are now interested in the space business.

Is the Defense Innovation Unit’s Hybrid Space Architecture the “ARPANET” of Space and Will It Run on Aalyria Spacetime?

The goal of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the Department of Defense is to strengthen our national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology throughout the military and strengthening our allied and national security innovation bases. Space is one of its areas of focus and two of the space "lines of effort" are multi-orbit operations and logistics and hardware-to-software transformation modernization.

Broadband Satellite Issues

One of the most interesting aspects of serving broadband from low-orbit satellites is that it brings issues related to space into broadband discussion. Space issues were less important for high earth orbit satellites that sit 20,000 miles above the earth. Other than an occasional impact from sunspots, there wasn't much of note. But there are two recent events that highlight our new focus on low-earth orbit satellites.