- The physical shape of the internet
really isn't that different from what we had 50 years ago.
It's gotten bigger.
We have better wireless,
and we've switched from copper wires to fiber optic cable.
But it's still one big, physically connected system.
A kind of arterial network strung between telephone poles
and lace through underground conduits,
connecting basically every computer in the world.
But that might be about to change.
A handful of companies are trying to build
a new type of internet,
one that doesn't run on physical cables.
And instead of going underground,
they're building it in space.
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This is what a satellite-based internet would look like.
Hundreds or even thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth.
It's expensive to launch and maintain a network like this,
but there are already a few up and running.
SpaceX is Starlink project is probably the most famous.
Thanks Elon.
But OneWeb is also fleshing out its satellite constellation
and Amazon's Project Kuiper secured a massive contract
to launch a plan 3,236 satellites.
There have been satellite
internet services available before,
but those have been geosynchronous satellites.
Maintaining a stable orbit over a specific spot on Earth.
That orbit only works if the satellites
are at a specific altitude, just over 22,000 miles up,
which is so far away
that the services tend to have awful latency.
The new generation of satellite internet systems
are doing it differently.
They're putting their satellites
in low to medium Earth orbit between 200-1200 miles up,
which means you can finally get
a low enough latency to make internet service really work.
The lower orbit also means the satellites
have to go a lot faster to keep from falling.
So they're always moving around relative
to a particular spot on Earth.
To make it work, you need a whole network of satellites.
So when one drops out of line of sight,
there's already another one coming into view.
- One thing that I think gets lost
when we talk about space space internet
is just how reliant these systems
are on ground-based infrastructure.
So in order to tap into a constellation like Starlink,
you need to use a terminal that relays signals
to a satellite that's orbiting overhead.
That satellite then needs to relay those signals down
to a ground station
that's connected to existing fiber optic infrastructure.
That ground station then relays those signals
back to the satellite, which then relays them back to you
and your user terminal.
But without those ground stations,
the entire system wouldn't work.
And so you need them populated
in certain locations all over the globe.
And you need to be within several 100 miles
of those ground stations
in order for you to get the communications that you need.
- Think back to that big network
we showed you at the beginning.
We take for granted that major services
like YouTube and Netflix
will operate out of regional data centers.
And that those data centers
will be in central parts of the internet backbone.
Places like Northern Virginia and southeast London.
But if a large portion of the internet users
are connecting through orbiting satellites,
that starts to look different.
For terrestrial networks,
the hardest part is the last mile.
That last bit of fiber connecting
the backbone to your house.
It's the most expensive part of the network
to build and also the most delicate to maintain.
So if you lose service,
there's a good chance your neighbors did too.
And restoring it, it's just a question
of how quickly the local service crew can get out to you.
But that's not necessarily true for satellite internet.
And it could really change the economics
of how remote areas connect.
Now, we're still a really long way from that happening.
Right now the best case scenario
for these companies is having a small sliver
of total users connecting through satellite networks.
But keeping that many satellites in the sky
is still a huge engineering challenge,
and it can cause real problems.
- The astronomy community is very concerned about
large mega constellations like this
because of what kind of impacts
that can have on their research
and their study of the cosmos.
So in order to study distant places in the universe,
astronomers take long exposure images of the night sky.
But the problem with these satellites
is they're very reflective,
and they can catch light from the sun.
And when they pass over a telescope
or an astronomer trying to take an image
of the distant universe,
that satellite reflecting sunlight
can leave a very long white streak through the image,
effectively ruining their observation.
Another major issue is the fact
that low Earth orbit is getting even more crowded
than ever before.
And with these companies
proposing to put thousands of satellites
into roughly the same area of space.
Satellite trackers are concerned
that the probability of collisions will increase.
And when things collide in space, it can be pretty nasty.
These things are moving at roughly 17,500 miles per hour.
So if one satellite runs into another,
they can create thousands of pieces of debris
that sticks around in space
that then threaten other satellites.
- There are also practical issues
that are still getting ironed out.
When our editor in chief Nilay Patel
tested Starlink in 2021,
he said that at best the service could offer
inconsistent connectivity and huge latency swings.
The biggest problem is obstructions
and the dishes line of sight to satellites.
Trees or even poles can cause service to cut out.
And since the satellites are always moving,
you really need a big strip of unobstructed sky.
The usual fix for that is to mount the dish
as high as you possibly can.
But Starlink also warns that roof mounted dishes
can be blown loose in a storm.
The company actually says you may wanna take the dish
inside during high wind events.
To be fair, Starlink has launched a lot more satellites
since we reviewed it in 2021.
But a quick spin through Starlink's Reddit community
shows latency swings, flagging download speeds
and dropped service are still very much an issue.
Still, there are places
where this kind of satellite internet
could really make sense.
Lots of places in America
are still hugely underserved for broadband.
And there are even more places like that
in the rest of the world.
The existing satellite projects
aren't ready to fix that just yet.
But the network keeps growing
and more areas keep coming online.
Even if Starlink can't make it work,
there's always OneWeb,
which is planning to launch full service at the end of 2022,
or Project Kuiper after that.
And if he finally does happen,
the internet could start to look a whole lot different.
Thanks for watching.
We've written a bunch of other stuff.
So if you wanna know more,
there are links in the description
including a link to that Starlink review we talked about.
And yeah, let us know in the comments what you thought.