Facebook May Have Secret Plans To Build a Satellite-Based Internet (ieee.org) 75
Public filings suggest the social media giant is quietly developing orbital tech to rival efforts by SpaceX and OneWeb to deliver Internet by satellite. From a report: A filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last week revealed details of a multi-million dollar experimental satellite from a stealthy company called PointView Tech LLC. The satellite, named Athena, will deliver data 10 times faster than SpaceX's Starlink Internet satellites, the first of which launched in February. However, PointView appears to exist only on paper. In fact, the tiny company seems to be a new subsidiary of Facebook, formed last year to keep secret the social media giant's plans to storm space.
Many technology companies believe the future of the Internet is orbital. Around half the people on the planet lack a broadband Internet connection, particularly those who live in rural areas and developing nations. SpaceX aims to put nearly 12,000 Starlinks into low Earth orbit (LEO), to deliver gigabit-speed Internet to most of the Earth's surface. Rival OneWeb, funded by Japan's SoftBank, chipmaker Qualcomm, and Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans similar global coverage using perhaps 2,500 LEO satellites. Further reading: Facebook's free walled-garden internet program ended quietly in Myanmar, several other places last year.
Many technology companies believe the future of the Internet is orbital. Around half the people on the planet lack a broadband Internet connection, particularly those who live in rural areas and developing nations. SpaceX aims to put nearly 12,000 Starlinks into low Earth orbit (LEO), to deliver gigabit-speed Internet to most of the Earth's surface. Rival OneWeb, funded by Japan's SoftBank, chipmaker Qualcomm, and Richard Branson's Virgin Group, plans similar global coverage using perhaps 2,500 LEO satellites. Further reading: Facebook's free walled-garden internet program ended quietly in Myanmar, several other places last year.
w00t (Score:5, Funny)
Now instead of merely sharing SOME of our personal data with FB, we can share EVERY BYTE of it with FB. I know *I'm* stoked...
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Yes - much higher sums too.
Re: Stormy Daniels payment broke the law (Score:1)
You can donate money to your own campaign, yes. In fact Trumps entire campaign was financed by his own money and he didn't accept any donations... oops, sorry I forgot that was just one of his lies. There are just so many, it can be hard to keep track of them.
So, anyway, yeah, you can donate to your own campaign. Having a third party do it undeclared through a special corporation the set up for one payment, then paying them back through structured, deniable, undeclared partial payments is a bit more dubious
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Global deployment of Band 72?
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Band 72 would be terrestrial.
End of censorship (Score:2)
This could be the end of national firewall based censorship. You can't keep Facebook out of a country if citizens can pull data from the sky.
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Satellite is just radio on specific frequencies. It's trivial for China to jam it.
Satellite data is line-of-sight, directional, and in the 10 GHz range. Good luck jamming that.
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That's true if you're using a (good) dish. If you're using something like an updated Iridium handset antenna, it's pretty susceptible to jamming.
Re: End of censorship (Score:1)
Facebook censors themselves and follow the law so you hope for way too much.
Satellite Internet Pitfalls (Score:2)
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Previous satellite based internet used geostationary satellites (26,199 miles up). These new proposals are using multiple satellites in low earth orbit (100 -1240 miles up) that would off an acceptable ping time vs. landline broadband.
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Using LEO satellites our friendly yak herder will likely have a ping comparable to consumer broadband.
That assumes the proposed sats can handle the traffic routing required for it all of course. Power budgets and CPU specs tend to be much smaller in space.
First strike? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thousands of satellites? (Score:2)
Yeah right. 2500 satellites, even at ten-per-launch, is 250 launches. Even at "only" $20 million a launch, that's $5 billion...not even counting cost of the satellites.
Plus 25 launches a year forever after just to replace the ten percent of satellites in the constellation that one can bank will go on fritz annually. And upgrades. Oh boy. Everyone 8G or whatever on the ground? Time for another...2500 satellites.
How that's cheaper than fiber endpoint -> cellular I don't know.
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$5 billion dollars is cheap for FB if it gets them access to the Chinese market. $5 billion a year is cheap too.
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$5 billion just launch costs. If satellites $50 million a pop (generously cheap quote there)...one can almost triple that price.
And Facebook can't get around the Chinese government whether under the sea, across the ground, over the air, or in space.
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Sure, but I was also quoting full replacement every year. If the satellites average a 3 year life, then my dual omissions cancel out.
I don't know why FB couldn't get around the Chinese government from space. I mean, sure the Chinese could DF the people on the grounds transmitters, but I'd imagine that's a sometimes thing.
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You seem to midunderstand the $ scale of global companies these days. If FB could plop down $15B for a global internet today, I don't think they'd hesitate any longer than to pick out some soon-to-be-historic pen to sign with.
For what you're talking about, that's not a lot of money at all, though I expect it will probably have another zero attached by the time all is said and done...and will still be a good investment.
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All the guestimates for cost I quoted are absurdly generous. And for the same $15 billion (again assuming incredibly cheap) one could get a lot more internet with a different approach.
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This is not all that costly if you compare with land and undersea cables. The number of satellites you needs depends on the orbit. Too low orbit will need more satellites but will need weaker signal to operate, and too high will need fewer satellites but will need stronger signal for the same data rate. Maintenance is low as you don't need to worry about weather, flooding, theft. The installation is also quicker as you don't need local permits. The revenue will come from all over the world. Also because the
Re: Thousands of satellites? (Score:1)
Back in 2002 offering broadband to all in Sweden was estimated to cost 50 billion SEK. ...
That could easily had been done.
5 billion usd is less and we're talking 400 times the population if it's only half the earth population
5 billion is "nothing."
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For reference, Liberty Global bought a company a few years ago which provides internet and cable TV to roughly four million subscribers for > 10 billion USD. Even if they can't make as much money per subscribers as from cable + internet it still seems cheap for a worldwide infrastructure
Say they pull it off (Score:4, Insightful)
Then what? *all* traffic goes through Facebook servers. I don't see anything wrong with a company whose whole reason for being is to sell as much data about the public as it can having the capability to sniff all traffic at a provider level. Do you?
I can't wait for the law to catch up to this bullshit and finally start breaking apart the media/internet stovepipes.
a little bit of (Score:2)
waitaminute... (Score:3)
Spy agency book (Score:1)
I don't want to used a walled and fenced spying network.
Sure it may be what we are forced to use in the future regardless but I don't want it.
FB: Yeah, Well, I'm gona go build my own internet. (Score:3)
... with blackjack, and hookers.
... or at least, farmVille blackjack, and targeted ads with the promise of hookers but actually only subliminally delivering politically suggestive ideas based on mined data of unsuspecting users.
... actually forget the blackjack, and the hookers.
Serious question about this? (Score:1)
All or None (Score:2)
The problem with satellite internet is that you can either provide access to the service to everyone on earth or no one. There is no way to do cost saving and make service available to US or China. This means that initial cost will be very high. But then you get global coverage as well. In the past, the cost would have been too high compared to number of users, but now it is not so. With 4 billion plus mobile phones, the market is ready if you can provide affordable service. Even if 10% of these people pay
Just what the planet needs. (Score:2)
The climate heats up and tens of thousands of satellites will be put up that collect solar energy and beam microwaves down on us.
And that's just a few companies of 1 country, 193 other countries may have the same ideas.