Data: Satellite internet comes into its own
The havoc of the Ukraine war is showcasing a new future for internet connectivity, said Vivek Wadhwa and Alex Salkever in Foreign Policy. There are now “more than 10,000 Starlink terminals operating in war-torn Ukraine,” receiving high-speed broadband internet beamed down from low-orbit satellites launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The terminals have received rave reviews for being “resilient and adaptable,” keeping Ukraine’s military, hospitals, schools, and municipal services connected with high-speed internet. “When Russia resorted to electronic countermeasures, Starlink simply pushed out software updates.” Satellite data communication is not new, “but the cost of the service has traditionally been high, and bandwidth and capacity have been comparatively low.” Both problems have been addressed, thanks to innovation and competition, which is heating up. Musk has said “he wants to put 42,000 Starlink satellites into orbit,” while competitors such as Amazon, OneWeb, and Indian telco Reliance Jio are planning to launch their own satellite-internet flotillas.
Starlink lacked “a clear use case,” said Meaghan Tobin and Masha Borak in Rest of World—until Ukraine. SpaceX had tried “multiple market launches” in recent years with Starlink, but the uptake was slow. Now people are starting to realize the potential beyond war-torn areas. When there are high-profile internet outages, for instance, “tweets fly about whether SpaceX and Starlink might offer a solution.” SpaceX is also quickly lining up partnerships in the aviation sector, said Taylor Rains in Business Insider. Last month, Hawaiian Airlines became the first big U.S. carrier to use Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi. More airlines, including Delta, are gravitating toward satellite internet for its speed and reliability. And more uses will be found on Earth, because satellites can “move information through a vacuum in space,” at speeds almost 50 percent faster than fiber optic cable.
Jeff Bezos isn’t going to let Musk hog all the interplanetary praise, said Loren Grush in The Verge. The world’s second-richest man has shepherded his own space-internet initiative, Project Kuiper, through Amazon, which recently booked 83 launches over the next five years to construct “a constellation of 3,236 satellites” with broadband internet for communities around the world. Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, will handle at least 12 of the launches. All these plans are expensive, though, said Dan Gallagher in The Wall Street Journal. The space-obsessed Bezos “put the company’s initial investment at more than $10 billion” for Project Kuiper last May, more than Amazon has spent on any of its acquisitions save for the $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods. Bezos himself admits he can’t guarantee Kuiper will generate returns on that huge amount of capital, but says the “only way to get returns is to take risks.”