back to article FCC: LEO ISPs A-OK

America's broadband watchdog, the FCC, has approved OneWeb's proposal to launch an ISP on the backs of 720 orbiting satellites. The regulator said it would allow the ISP to offer its service in the US once it makes good on the plan to send 720 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) and bounce data transmissions around the world …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In unrelated news, Comcast has begun an anti-satellite weapons program.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      You never know whom to blame for what. Virgin is an investor in this thing.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Intelsat is not a "fellow LEO internet firm" but a tradtitional GEO operator

    ...and actually a badly debt-ridden one.

  3. Christian Berger

    My guess is that they'll follow the Iridium model...

    ... create a company which sends up the satellites before it gets bankrupt... then you create a new company which busy up the assets from the first one.

    Otherwise it's probably impossible to finance this, particularly since such a company is bound to make losses for the first decade or longer.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: My guess is that they'll follow the Iridium model...

      Costs have gone down a lot.

      Getting to LEO is a lot cheaper than in the days of Iridium.

      The cost of the satellites is going to be 0.1xbugger-all once you are mass producing 1000 of them

      Since they are going into low earth orbit with a life of a few years you don't use space qualified milspec components and spend years in a clean room testing them - you use commercial grade parts with a standard design and if a few payloads fail - who cares you have a mesh of 1000 of them

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: My guess is that they'll follow the Iridium model...

      Dunno. I have two remote sites. While one of them has HSPA (if you use a 19db MIMO directed antenna), the other will not be getting decent connectivity any time soon. It is 13 miles from the edge of 4G coverage, in the 2G only twilight zone.

      I am willing to pay ~ 50-70£ per month for decent Internet there. If the local mobile company there continues to scratch its butt by 2019, I will be one of the first subscribers the moment they have self-install terminals.

    3. Tronald Dump

      Re: My guess is that they'll follow the Iridium model...

      that's the standard model innit? Worked for channel tunnel, cable tv ...

  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Looking up the previous history of LEO and MEO phone providers.....

    In the early 90s 5-6 companies said they wanted to do this.

    3 got to launch of which Iridium was the expensive, with Orbcomm and Globestar.

    Only Iridium delivered voice comms. The others went with M2M for driver dispatch, high value asset tracking and SCADA tasks using essentially SMS.

    All went Chapter 11. Iridium got a big boost when the USG bought a lot of minutes for use by staff globally (provided they are not inside buildings of course).

    OTOH with cable companies having virtual area monopolies in different areas of the US for internet access this story may have a different ending.

  5. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Devil

    Maybe Elon will help?

    perhaps SpaceX "used launcher" prices could make it affordable?

    Ok not for a few years yet, but still...

    Also not a fan of what the latency is going to be like. TCP could be a real problem.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Maybe Elon will help?

      "Also not a fan of what the latency is going to be like. TCP could be a real problem."

      LEO is only a couple of hundred miles up, not 36,000. Latency is low if the birds are directly talking to ground stations or each other.

    2. Vulch

      Re: Maybe Elon will help?

      SpaceX are due to launch another ten Iridium satellites tomorrow (Sunday 25th) and have plans for their own LEO constellation.

  6. uncommon_sense
    FAIL

    10.7-12.7 GHz <<< Sat TV Ku Band

    Sharing this range with so many satellites will not go over well with those in favour of uninterrupted Satellite TV!

    I admit that the beamwidth of a DTH sat dish is only 2 degrees or less, but with that many sats, some of them ARE going to go through the beam occasionally, and then only Sponge Bob will look right...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 10.7-12.7 GHz <<< Sat TV Ku Band

      They'll power off their transmitters when they are nearing/crossing the equator. The client receiver coordination won't be any different than what it will already have to do with ones that orbit below the horizon.

      What I'm curious about is the signal discrimination. Since the client receiver's antennas will obviously be omnidirectional, they'll pick up all the Ku and Ka satellites in GEO. I guess these satellites would have to reach the ground at a much higher power to not require a dish, so Directv et al should be received below the noise floor of the client receivers.

  7. Mage Silver badge

    FCC?

    Sorry, FCC, you can only approve TERRESTRIAL usage.

    Satellite / Space usage requires international agreement. The UN became the umbrella for the ancient ITU which allocates frequencies.

    Even with LEO (lower latency) it's going to be rubbish capacity compared to terrestrial services. Like all the existing struggling to make a profit (DTH TV makes a profit) retail satellite data services expect it to be only any use in not-spot areas and to cost lots, or else they'll go bust.

    There is competition in LEO, MEO and Geo.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communication_satellite_companies

    1. Vulch

      Re: FCC?

      The FCC approves usage over US territory, Ofcom will decide on use above the UK, similar agencies will decide for their own countries. ITU is, as you said, responsible for managing frequencies and not if operation is permitted over particular areas of the planet.

  8. fpx
    Devil

    Tough Business

    One major issue is that the areas without good 4G coverage are not very populated, poor, or both. Otherwise they'd have 4G already. So the customer base is either small, or can't afford pricey satellite internet. Plus IoT installations.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Tough Business

      "One major issue is that the areas without good 4G coverage are not very populated, poor, or both."

      Or are places like outer bumfuckistan where the entire internet connectivity for the country is a state monopoly, so you have great 4G, reasonble bandwidth inside the country and utter crap anywhere else.

      And because the state monopoly existed to keep people from getting Internet access until recently, the entire country has about 4 /24s for external connectivity - shared amongst 60+ million people.

      Needless to say, there are a lot of people with satellite internet accounts billed in $CountryNextDoor, but where the paperwork regarding ground station location isn't particularly accurate.

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