Now you listen to me, Martin. You think you can play games with us, lie to us and it’s all a joke isn’t it? Well it isn’t! Colin Jenkins is dead! – Prime Suspect
O3b Networks today announced plans to launch at least 16 low earth orbit satellites to bring internet access to 3 billion people in Africa and other emerging markets. Google has joined forces with John Malone, the cable television magnate, and international banker HSBC to invest in the company.
O3b Networks is named after the “other 3bn” people who lack access to fiber networks. O3b Networks will provide fiber-like backhaul directly to 3G Cellular and WiMAX towers.
O3b’s service should provide speeds of up to 10G bps for Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, sending low-latency data anywhere between a 45 degrees north to 45 degrees south. The lifespan of the MEO satellites is expected to be 10 years to 15 years.
The system will become operational late in 2010, according to a statement today from O3b Networks Ltd., the Jersey, U.K.- based venture backed by the three companies. Thales SA, Europe’s largest defense electronics maker, said it has started construction of 16 satellites for the network.
The 16 LEO satellites use movable spot beams to focus bandwidth on the areas where it is needed. Unlike satellite phone companies Iridium (with 66 active satellites), Globalstar (with 48 satellites), and Inmarsat (with 3, “I-4″ satellites), O3B will not sell service directly to consumers. It will deal only with carriers — mostly cell companies and WiMAX providers.
The growth in the number of mobile phone users in emerging markets is high. In Africa, for instance, annual mobile customer growth is close to 60 per cent. O3B Networks could sharply reduce the cost of providing high-speed data services in many countries.
Up to 40 percent of a mobile operators’ costs are consumed in backhaul costs, said Greg Wyler, O3b’s founder and CEO. Fiber is often not an option while backhaul from geosatellites can cost thousands per megabit per month.
Wyler believes O3b will be able to offer the same capacity for $500 or less.
To succeed, the partners must raise another $700m, probably through standard debt financing. It could face competition from established operators such as Globalstar, which offers satellite phone services direct to consumers in many parts of the world. The company plans to upgrade its offering using similar satellites to O3B.
Alarmingly, Globalstar’s next-generation satellite network (right) will not be launched in time to help their prematurely dying S-band transponders that are currently used for two-way voice communications. Globalstar’s C-band antennas communicate with gateways, while L-band and S-band antennas link Globalstar satellites directly to user phones.
Van Allen is the prime suspect in the death of Globalstar’s phone service. The company is now pushing their SPOT Messenger service which uses Globalstar’s still adequate “L” band (uplink only).
O3B’s 20/30 GHz Ka-Band payload uses twelve fully steerable antennas that point to the area where data is needed. O3B will feed cell towers, not individual phones and from MEO space. O3B’s Medium Earth Orbit, around 1,243 miles, is higher that the 876 miles of Globalstar and 485 miles of Iridium. It will use Thales SPACEBUS family of communication satellites.
Low Earth orbiting satellites (LEOs) are often deployed in satellite constellations, because the coverage area provided by a single LEO satellite covers a small area. But Iridium at 2.4 Kbps and Globalstar at 7.2 Kbps, are not exactly broadband. Orbcomm offers low-speed, data-only service from 29 LEO satellites. Like its voice-centric competitors Iridium and Globalstar, it filed for Chapter 11 protection, in September, 2000. ICO, before it decided to go geosynchronous, planned a global MEO constellation. Lloyd’s satellite constellations is still about the best reference.
TerreStar, plans service in North America using a giant geosynchronous satellite and terrestrial repeaters (or cellular handoff). The Elektrobit Satellite phone, for example, features a 3 megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, microSD card slot, and supports direct calls through TerreStar’s satellite network due next year in the United States.
The GSM side of things also comes with HSDPA for high-speed data, but if you find yourself outside of a major metropolitan area, you can take advantage of TerreStar’s satellite network. The company also showed off a prototype of a modem based on the same design, that could hook PCs into satellite or cellular networks depending on where they are.
TerreStar has signed a nationwide reciprocal roaming agreement with AT&T Wireless. It will allow the satellite phone company to allow roaming with it’s handheld devices. Financial terms and duration of the agreement were not disclosed.
There are other projects to bring fiber to Africa notes the BBC. Kenya has commissioned a fibre-optic cable from Fujaira in The United Arab Emirates along the sea floor of the Gulf of Oman, down the East African coast to the port town of Mombasa. Another undersea telecommunications cable, known as East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), intends to connect 21 countries to each other and the rest of the world.
In other news, the GeoEye 1 spacecraft was successfully deployed last Saturday.
A chief customer of GeoEye 1′s imagery will be the U.S. government. A $500 million contract from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) helped finance construction and launch of the sophisticated satellite under the NextView program.
Everyone from Google Earth users to U.S. national security analysts will benefit from the GeoEye 1 satellite when it becomes operational in about six weeks. It is expected to produce images with a resolution of 0.41 meters or 16 inches for black and white imagery and 1.65 meters for color imagery.
“We are really in an age of transparency with these satellites. We’re providing customers with views of the Earth that they were never able to get before,” said Mark Brender, GeoEye’s vice president of communications and marketing. “This technology that was once only in the hands of people with security clearances is migrating from the world of intelligence to the world of commerce.”
“Because the NGA is a top-tier customer, because they have paid for half the development of the satellite, they will get priority tasking. So they will inform us of what areas of the world they want imagery of and we’ll go out and collect it,” Brender said.
Unlike U.S. spy satellites that gather classified imagery of the planet, the data from privately-run spacecraft like GeoEye 1 isn’t top-secret.
The NGA awarded contracts to rival satellite operators DigitalGlobe and GeoEye. The WorldView 1 satellite was put in service a year ago by DigitalGlobe, also launching aboard a Delta rocket from Vandenberg, and now GeoEye has its advanced spacecraft circling the globe today.
“We’re doing it on-budget without any cost overruns. You don’t hear those terms very often when talking about government programs,” Brender said of the $502 million GeoEye 1 satellite project.
Meanwhile, Germany’s RapidEye (right) was launched two weeks ago. The 5-satellite constellation will image any area between +/- 75 degrees using a multi-spectral imager. It was built by Canada’s MacDonald, Dettwiler, the prime contractor, Surrey Satellite, and Jena-Optronik who produced the opto-electronic instruments. The Mission Control Center in Brandenburg handles communications between the satellites and the ground. It was co-founded by a German agricultural insurance firm.
Related satellite phone and space news on Dailywireless includes; TerreStar Roams with AT&T, Skyterra/MSV Get $500M, Blue Sky for Satellite Broadband?, HughesNet’s Spaceway 3 Now Available, WildBlue: AT&T’s DeathStar?, Globalstar: We Bad, ICO G-1 In Space, Satphones: Merger Ahead?, Inmarsat + SkyTerra = Spectrum Sharing, HughesNet & Broadband Corporation, Mobile Satellite on the Move, Top Teleport Operators, Off Shore Data Links, Small Satellite Conference, Advanced EHF – Wait for It , John Malone in Space and Live Iridium Video from Arctic.
