Google To Spend $1 Billion On Fleet of Satellites 170
An anonymous reader writes "Google is planning to spend over $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions around the world. 'The projected price ranges from about $1 billion to more than $3 billion, the people familiar with the project said, depending on the network's final design and a later phase that could double the number of satellites. Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise. Google's project is the latest effort by a Silicon Valley company to extend Internet coverage from the sky to help its business on the ground. Google and Facebook Inc. are counting on new Internet users in underserved regions to boost revenue, and ultimately, earnings. "Google and Facebook are trying to figure out ways of reaching populations that thus far have been unreachable," said Susan Irwin, president of Irwin Communications Inc., a satellite-communications research firm. "Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access."'"
Interesting... (Score:2)
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...communication with the satellite?
*The satellite that serves a given area.
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Very unlikely to be in geosynchronous orbit, which is a long way away - about 20, 000 miles compared to Low Earth Orbit at 120 miles or so. Inverse square law means that both ends would need much more power. Handing from one station to another on the fly is a solved problem.
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Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Google just bought Titan Aerospace, which builds and sells solar powered airplanes that can fly for 5 years straight. In theory they would intercept the satellite transmission and then beam the signal down to "the last mile", or in this case last 40,000 ft.
Satellites aren't evil, sure. (Score:4, Funny)
Only when they complete some sort of "giant data laser" will people wise up, maybe.
Re:Satellites aren't evil, sure. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry. Sharks can't survive in space.
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Yeah sure, wait until you see the latest product of Google Labs:
Sharks with frickin' lasers attached to the top of their spacesuit!
180 satellites... (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of like a social network of satellites :)
Seriously, this makes a lot of sense. At the low altitudes that these will fly, the power necessary to reach the satellites will be much lower than geosynchronous or even Iridium satellites. Mass producing small satellites probably is cheaper than building a few big ones, as well.
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What a great way to build an global sigint platform. I am sure that those sats could pick up any radar signal transmitted on Earth in real time.
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I figured that the Iridium and GPS constellations had some Sigint functions paying some cash to add a sigint receiver to each bird should not be that expensive. Even if you limit to strong emitters around the XBand you should a large number of SAM, AWACS, and AI radars.
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Considering that the DOD is the largest customer for Iridium, I doubt that Sigint stuff would get much of a take for the U.S. government (except for internal investigations). Do you really think they are at that level of paranoia?
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Despite making almost $13 billion primarily on search-related ads, Google is not a search company. Google is an intelligence company.
I don't mean the spying kind of intelligence, either. I'm referring to their use of enormous data sets to feed complex decision algorithms that learn in real time what decisions to make. I would call it "artificial intelligence", except that much of the process is guided by humans. Perhaps "guided intelligence" is a better term.
Regardless, the more data they have, the more acc
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Re:180 satellites... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can't find an exact altitude for these satellites, but O3b (whom Google is working with on this project) is putting satellites in orbits 5,000 miles above Earth, which is definitely not LEO. That's lower than conventional geosynchronous communications satellites (which sit ~22,000 above Earth), but well above the low-Earth orbit cutoff (which is roughly 1,000 miles and below). At 5,000 miles, the atmosphere is thin enough to be considered non-existent. Now, Google might be looking at lower orbits for thes
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Also of note, O3b is seeing 500Mbit forward link data rates on a 1.3 meter dish and getting 150ms round trip delay on their MEO satellites (vs. 500+MS) on GEO.
The caveat is that you need either an expensive tracking antenna or two regular antenna to keep from breaking signal as you negotiate satellites moving into and out of your window.
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Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise.
Based on recent developments, costs could plummet. IMHO, the only reason Google is even talking about this now is because SpaceX recently flew a (theoretically) reusable first stage. Of course, "practical" reusability is still in the works, but Musk is tight with the gurus of Google, and it doesn't cost them much in the short run to flog their "visionary" quest to bring broadband to the masses. And if Musk succeeds with reusability (which seems likely) they'll be able to deploy this constellation at a fract
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I think its fair to say that when the number of gas molecules per unit volume is the same as space in the rest of the solar system then you've left the atmosphere.
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I'd really like to know what the real business plan is. Are they really after the part of the world's population that is currently unreachable, or is it a parallel effort to Google Fiber where they're hoping to get access to a greater percentage of the first world's internet traffic so they can monetize it?
My money's on the latter.
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I think they'll be called a KH11 Block V "DNE" [wikipedia.org] - That'll be their revenue stream.
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Kind of like a social network of satellites :)
It does. They should give it a name, "Skynet" or something like that.
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Maybe dumb questions, but is there a limit to how low-power a device could be and still reach a satellite, if the satellite had a powerful antenna (akin to a radio telescope) to pick it up? Granted you'd need a large number of such antenna to cover the earth since they'd be highly directional.
Second, is there a way to make a directional antenna small en
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The antennas are still directional. They use phased arrays to perform beam steering. No "moving" parts and a low profile are the plus, but they are relatively low gain for the surface area and power used.
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Yes, it is relatively easy. You use a phased array for beam steering / directional sensitivity. If you put something the size of Aricebo in orbit, you could presumably directly read the electrical signals of a human brain. And the electrical activity at the rear of the brain can be directly translated to what is being heard. So no phone required at all, at least for the uplink!
The same thing is possible for the downlink too, but there may be slight side effects. (Think "This is your brain in a microwav
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At the low altitudes that these will fly, the power necessary to reach the satellites will be much lower than geosynchronous or even Iridium satellites.
The link budget calculations have too many other things to say how important that is without looking at the other factors, especially when you consider that battery power, not Tx power, is what matters. Iridium satellites sit at 780km, but I haven't found any info about the Google proposal. Also, Iridium satellites run L-band (1-2GHz) but Google's are Ku-band (12-18GHz). Power amps are much less efficient at Ku, and there is greater rain fade. 2dB may not sound like much at first, but it means you need 43%
Did someone say satellites? (Score:5, Funny)
How about a satellite or two for the US? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of places here in the US, where even basic DSL or cellular service is fairly hard to come by, and if one goes with a conventional satellite provider, it becomes very expensive very fast.
This is something that I have high hopes for... done right, and assuming the uplink/downlink antennas are not too expensive, this would allow a baseline of Internet access in a whole region. Latency is "meh", but it is a lot better than what a lot of places have right now.
Re:How about a satellite or two for the US? (Score:4, Interesting)
I went camping up in the San Bernardino Mountains [google.com] this past weekend. The 3G internet speeds there on my phone were 1.8 Mbps down, 0.8 Mbps up. What Verizon is (not) doing with DSL in areas where they have no competition is absolutely criminal. If Google can pull this off, it'll be a work-around to the "one DSL company and one cable Internet company are sufficient competition" court decisions. And a good kick to the rear of the existing de facto monopolies as they'd be forced to actually offer competitive service and pricing or lose all their customers. The satellites being in LEO means they'll be circling the Earth, so they would cover the U.S. just as well as Central Africa.
How will they recoup costs? (Score:2)
Re: How will they recoup costs? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How will they recoup costs? (Score:4, Informative)
I think you might be surprised at some of the case studies surrounding mobile/cell phone use in central Africa.
here's a study from Tufts [tufts.edu] showing farmers in Ghana establishing the market price for crops, and labourers searching for job opportunities.
There's lots of more recent coverage too if you do some Google searches.
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We already have relatively cheap two-way satellite comms. Go visit any mountaineering store - and those are niche items.
I don't see why low cost, two-way, internet capable devices would be impossible given sufficient economies of scale.
Sounds like Coca Cola (Score:4, Informative)
They've brought a surprising amount of electrical power - first wired, now often solar - to remote parts of the globe simply because refrigeration helps them sell enough more product to make the investment worthwhile. This can be quite a good thing if the infrastructure remains open enough.
Re:Sounds like Coca Cola (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, I've also heard that NGO's attempting to get supplies into the most backwater bush locations will often contract with the local Coke distributor because they reach like 99.95% of the worlds population.
I've seen a lot of James Bond movies (Score:4, Funny)
Didn't someone do this? (Score:2)
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I've wondered if/when SiriusXM or even DirctTV might start "datacasting" in a similar manner.
I think the word is still broadcasting.
For a short while, the BBC used to transmit computer programs in BBC basic over the air. With a suitably equipped BBC micro, you could download and run them.
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Way back in the early to mid 90's Channel One had a type of datacasting service where they would push certain web pages to a caching box, it later was expanded to a pre-DOCSIS dialup + cable modem type setup that allowed two way communications.
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I had the same idea, except mine involved piggybacking on the sat TV system - putting a drive in the decoders, which have ethernet ports anyway. I envisioned it as a way to distribute things like software updates - a protocol by which updaters may query other devices on the LAN for files of a specified hash, and if the sat decoder managed to grab it then it'll serve the file up. But I am not rich, nor have I any business skill, so my idea remains no more than a comment on slashdot.
How about breaking the Comcast tyranny also? (Score:2)
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Where is the bottleneck? what part of your community is locking you into Comcast?
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Their exclusive contracts with the existing infrastructure. Oh, we're an open town - I can change providers any time I like, but it requires moving to a new house.
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Really? Your local telco doesn't offer any DSL service? I believe you, but your situation is REALLY rare.
Iridium flares (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Iridium flares (Score:4, Insightful)
The only part they overlooked was not that there wan't anyone in the middle of nowhere, but that most of the people in the middle of nowhere found $5/minute on a large, dedicated device a touch on the pricey side.
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The only part they overlooked was not tthat... most of the people in the middle of nowhere found $5/minute on a large, dedicated device a touch on the pricey side.
With billions of dollars of infrastructure to build and maintain, how can the Google service be made more affordable?
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There are many ways to improve satellite data service compared to what Iridium is doing. You are comparing 1980's technology to stuff in the 21st Century, where I think there has been some improvements in terms of the quality of computer equipment being used. Bandwidth has definitely increased, as has satellite to ground or the reverse in terms of radio technology being employed. That by itself can make the service considerably more affordable.
Iridium was a good first try, but it is the first generation
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Google is an advertising company.
More eyeballs equals more money.
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Iridium had problems because it was just a little bit ahead of its time. First of all, it uses analog hardware. To use it for digital data, you need a modem, and you can forget about going beyond 9600 baud. If they had done it a few years later, it could probably have been digital. With no digital capability, the only people who had any real use for the service were ships at sea and polar explorers.
The other big problem was launch costs. Then the whole project went bankrupt and was bought cheap. Launch cos
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Funny enough my boss was testing an Iridium satphone just today. One of our senior execs is going rafting in the grand canyon and wants to be able to get SMS and possibly make a call while out there and our CEO is thinking about going on a safari and would want the same capabilities.
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Iridum turned out to be a huge success, but not for the expected reason. The U.S. Government bought into it, buying half the capacity, just in time for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. DoD and the State Department have lots of people in the middle of nowhere who need to communicate, and Iridium does the job for them. Most ships of any size have an Iridium phone or two on board.
Iridium airtime is now around $1/minute. U.S. Government usage is now under 25% of use, and the number of users is slowly increa
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Iridum turned out to be a huge success, but not for the expected reason. The U.S. Government bought into it, buying half the capacity, just in time for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. DoD and the State Department have lots of people in the middle of nowhere who need to communicate, and Iridium does the job for them. Most ships of any size have an Iridium phone or two on board.
Iridium airtime is now around $1/minute. U.S. Government usage is now under 25% of use, and the number of users is slowly increasing. There's an SMS message capability, and lots of devices in remote areas report in using it. Messages cost about $1/KB, which, considering some US carriers were charging $0.20 per SMS message, isn't bad.
If you let me discard the costs of building _anything_ in bankruptcy, I could call it a huge success.
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I don't think this is ever going to happen. That's a crapton of satellites to launch, and the market just isn't there to support it. People who are going to be able to afford this are generally going to already
ICO Global Communications (Score:3)
A few companies have proposed this type of system, most notably ICO Global Communications [wikipedia.org]. It hasn't ended well.
Granted, Google is a much more established company than some collection of venture capitalists, but manufacturing, launching and managing constellations of satellites is extremely complex. You can't do it alone and at least one company along the way will over-promise and under-deliver. That stalls the overall program and problems just snowball from there.
Google obviously has experience managing some mapping satellites, but scaling up to dozens and hundreds is not straightforward.
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FYI, they don't manage mapping satellites. They buy the imaging (primarily from DigitalGlobe).
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Actually Google owns exclusive online rights to the images produced by GeoEye-1 which is managed by DigitalGlobe so it's kindof both.
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That's kind of like saying that, if Tiffany has an agreement to buy 100% of the gold coming out of a given mine, that Tiffany has expertise in gold mining.
So the motorola purchase still has impact. (Score:2)
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Well they did keep all the patents after they discarded Motorola - it was likely the plan all along.
Doesn't seem like a wise investment.. (Score:2, Insightful)
counting on new Internet users in underserved regions to boost revenue, and ultimately, earnings.
If they were doing this out of a sense of humanitarianism thinking the internet is so important that they want to do some altruistic investment, that's one thing.
If they are thinking they have a significant revenue opportunity in regions without infrastructure to otherwise participate in the internet, that seems a dubious investment. It seems that such areas are underserrved because they can't afford it. Spending a large amount of money to work around one fairly small facet of their reality seems like it wo
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That's never the reason... Or rather, it can be a self-reinforcing problem.
Sometimes it's a problem of geography... Land-locked countries don't have access to those submarine cables that coastal countries can connect to.
But scale seems to ALWAYS be a problem. Without enough early-adopters... people willing to commit a big chunk of their income to non-essential internet access... you never get the economies of scale, and it stays astr
I prefer the balloon with trajectory control (Score:2)
Since they invested in balloon, it seems it is far cheaper. And they can control the trajectory using this method https://smartech.gatech.edu/bi... [gatech.edu]
Only a Billion? (Score:3)
I don't think a Billion is enough to do much more than a proof of concept. Google is going to have to pony up a few more bills or this will be a huge boondoggle. But if anybody has the money it's Google.
Next up will be the purchase of the spectrum space needed for this. I'm thinking LightSquared has some licenses they could get by talking to the bankruptcy judge..
Why didn't they just buy ViaSat? (Score:3)
Why didn't they just buy ViaSat, their space and ground segments, and their Exede brand? Charlie Ergen isn't going to sell HughesNet anytime soon.
It must be nice for your stock to be so excessively overvalued to have so much money to throw around on all these ancillary projects.
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It must be nice for your stock to be so excessively overvalued to have so much money to throw around on all these ancillary projects.
Google has money to throw around because they're excessively profitable.
They aren't issuing shares to fund this stuff.
As for ancillary... well, here's two quotes from their IPO prospectus
And now, we are in the process of establishing the Google Foundation. We intend to contribute significant resources to the foundation, including employee time and approximately 1% of Googleâ(TM)s equity and profits in some form. We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the worldâ(TM)s problems.
We will optimize for the long term rather than trying to produce smooth earnings for each quarter. We will support selected high-risk, high-reward projects and manage our portfolio of projects.
They have always aimed to do things outside search/advertising.
Satellites? (Score:5, Funny)
The cheap bastards. If they'd added a couple of billions, they could have gotten a headphone company.
Taxes (Score:2)
It is more likely Apple bought that company for tax purposes.
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Pay 200 more because it's Beats
Pay 200 more because it's Apple
The two companies could not be a better match.
cool satellite, so: (Score:2)
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster.... oh, never mind.
On the subject of Beowulf clusters: now that Tolkien's translation [amazon.com] is available, do we need a new stupid /. meme?
But will they also have GPS? (Score:2)
Will these puppies also have some form of GPS in them? Not only will they know what filth you are posting but they'll know where you posted it from.
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Will these puppies also have some form of GPS in them? Not only will they know what filth you are posting but they'll know where you posted it from.
With triangulation, and Doppler shift calculations it doesn't matter. Though it's much harder to do those things with everyone vs just have them send their position data. Not that ISPs don't already know everything about you.
Make that search a quick one (Score:2)
...but be quick about it.
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Could be a great equalizer... (Score:2)
Big market (Score:2)
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if you think you are going to get "broadband" access speeds to download your 475 MB in even a month via these proposed sattelites I've got some engineering reality with which to slap you upside the head
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Depends on the orbit, if it is a very low orbit, say 180km altitude, the latency will be 4*180000m/c=2.4ms. Note that this assumed that both the user and the ground segment station are covered by the same satellite. if the sat needs to relay to other satellites the latency will obviously increase, but thats not different than latency through fiber optic cables, you just need slightly longer distances since the satellite is at a higher altitude than the ground below it, but only little compared to the radius
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Of course, the satellites will be further away than this if they are not directly overhead, but still -- I think 2 seconds is definitely on the long side.
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Certainly not. These are very small satellites, probably will be launched something like 20 at a time. Maybe 9 orbital planes with 20 satellites each?
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No, if the satellite is small you can put in orbit a lot of them with a single launch. Google 'cubesat' for an extreme version of this idea.
Well, yes, but the problem you will have is the limited orbital variations you can get from a single launch of multiple satellites. There is a trade off here between launch weight and fuel and the initial orbits of everything. The last thing you really want is 10 small satellites that are all in the same orbit.
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Ion thruster. Might take a year to get them into place, but a lot cheaper than chemical rockets from ground each time.
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Exactly. I wonder why Google and Facebook haven't figured out what Hulu has down to a science...but anyway I hope they generously continue to bleed money onto the world's impoverished masses!
Re:Yes, reach the poor people! (Score:5, Insightful)
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