Really Rocket Science

This week’s news that traces of nitrates were found by SAM on Mars — and the Fark headline linking it to hot dogs — reminded me to ponder the one decent rumor to come out of the Satellite Show in Washington last week: Apple is buying a spacecraft from Boeing.

You might as well sell one to Sabrett’s to connect all their hot dog carts around the world. Hey, they’re selling branded merchandise, so why not?

Google, Facebook or Amazon might buy one, too. Does anybody at Reuters check this stuff? One call to anybody in the business would tell you “you’re way off on this one.” This is link bait.

Designing, building, launching and operating a spacecraft takes a long time and costs a lot of money. Understand this. This cannot change.

You can have all the bandwidth and high-throughput possible on the spacecraft’s payload, but it means absolutely nothing if you can’t make use of it on the ground. One-to-many distribution is where this technology makes sense — not point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint. That’s why TV loves satellite. This network topology can’t change much. Higher frequencies need better antennae for reception — and transmit has its own challenges. If you plan on using mobile frequencies such as those used by Thuraya in Asia and the Middle East, you’d be planning on coordinating with terrestrial and mobile telecoms for more years than it would take to build the spacecraft.

Get over it, people. Building a new satcom network isn’t worth it. It’s like selling hot dogs on Mars: who are you going to sell it to?

With O3b Networks actually operating and building out globally, get in that space and figure out how you can work with it. Latency is minimized on the tech side, and terrestrial connectivity is being added for “the other 3 billion people” inhabiting this planet who are without Internet access.

And put some mustard on it.

What a gorgeous place to visit: the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. It’s not cheap to fly there and it’ll take more than a day from the Eastern U.S.

How’s the Internet connection out there? It’s getting better, thanks to Telecom Cook Islands and O3b Networks. They began installing and testing back in December and they should be up and running with more by now.

What do their customers think? They’re happy…

O3b Networks is well-funded, yet it may soon face competition from one of its backers, namely Google.

More interesting news for O3b Network: $1.2 billion in funding. As reported by the WSJ…

 Satellite communications company O3b Networks said Monday it has raised $1.2 billion from a group of investors and banks, its final funding round before the launch of its global satellite broadband network.

O3b, which is backed by Google Inc., plans to launch its fiber-quality Internet service serving emerging markets in the first half of 2013, after securing $770 million of debt financing and $410 million of equity investment.

The firm’s name refers to the “other 3 billion” people in the world currently without access to broadband Internet.

“We are looking to connect the unconnected, now we can start to do that,” Chief Executive Mark Rigolle said in an interview.

The company already has around 10 customers for its service, who have signed deals valued at $500 million to $600 million to use its infrastructure, Mr. Rigolle said.

O3b is selling capacity on its network on a wholesale basis to Internet service providers and telecom companies. Mr. Rigolle said he expects the strongest long-term demand to come from mobile phone companies in emerging markets, which lack the fiber-optic infrastructure to offer their subscribers high-speed Internet access. O3b’s network will be able to offer “backhaul” connections in place of a fiber network.

Chicken & egg contingencies aside, this is a positive step for O3b. Or is it?

Yes, they’re fully funded for design, build and launch, but will it work well enough to really get some cash coming in? We’ll have to wait another two years to see whether that question will be answered. In real “Internet time,” two years is a very long time and things could change materially — especially in high-risk space-based ventures.

Curiously, this venture is still referred to as “backed by Google,” while SES will increase its ownership to 34%. And they only have to contribute US$75 over the next two years. Judging by the composition of its board of directors, SES seems to be in control here.

Considering the utter lack of connectivity in the regions where “the other 3 billion” people are situated, this is still a good idea. 100-millisecond latency is good enough. Add the possibility of micro-payments via mobile Internet, this could prove to be a real winner. Now hurry up and launch the spacecraft!