EU Must 'Move At Speed' On Space Broadband Network (bbc.com) 76
The European Commission says it wants its newly proposed satellite mega-constellation to be offering some sort of initial service in 2024. The BBC reports: The first priority is to fill in gaps in broadband coverage where ground infrastructure cannot reach, but later it will power services such as self-driving cars. The project will in some ways mirror America's Starlink and the UK-Indian OneWeb networks. Its scope has yet to be fully defined. A consortium of aerospace and telecoms companies is doing that right now.
But EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said he wanted to get going on the idea as soon as possible. "My objective is to go fast. And therefore it would be appropriate that the Commission puts forward this year a proposal to the European Parliament and the Council so we can move concretely," he told the 13th European Space Conference on Tuesday. "To be ready, we launched a few weeks ago a study on a secure space-based connectivity system. The selected consortium consisting of European satellite manufacturers, operators and service providers, telco operators and launch service providers will study the possible design and development of this project. This will provide insights on the technical dimension, but also the governance structure, the financing, the missions, the exact scope. I expect their first feedback in April this year."
But EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said he wanted to get going on the idea as soon as possible. "My objective is to go fast. And therefore it would be appropriate that the Commission puts forward this year a proposal to the European Parliament and the Council so we can move concretely," he told the 13th European Space Conference on Tuesday. "To be ready, we launched a few weeks ago a study on a secure space-based connectivity system. The selected consortium consisting of European satellite manufacturers, operators and service providers, telco operators and launch service providers will study the possible design and development of this project. This will provide insights on the technical dimension, but also the governance structure, the financing, the missions, the exact scope. I expect their first feedback in April this year."
Self-driving cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously: self driving cars must be autonomous, not depend on the network. They are always mentioned as the supposed killer application of every new network technology (5G, M2M, satellite, ...), ignoring that they must be able to drive in absence os connection (in this case, going into a tunnel).
Re:Self-driving cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously: self driving cars must be autonomous, not depend on the network.
European bureaucrats don't think that way.
StarLink is lightyears ahead of anything the Europeans have, and it is being built by an innovative American tech company that didn't even exist 20 years ago.
The European response? A massive taxpayer-funded boondoggle, managed by government bureaucrats, shoveling money to stodgy incumbent dinosaurs.
This is similar to Quaero, the European response to Google. It was also managed by bureaucrats, funded by taxpayers, and designed by committees of gray-haired industrialists.
So of course the self-driving cars need to be on the network, so the bureaucrats keep track of them and write TPS reports on their progress.
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A better comparison would be NASA and SLS.
However it's not all bad. They are basically copying the SpaceX business model, i.e. create demand for more launches to get launch costs down.
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You're kind of contradicting yourself. If Starlink is being built by a company that didn't exist 20 years ago, the maximum possible lead is 20 years. In fact, they don't start developing it seriously until 2015. That's not "light years".
If we go by their previous track record, you are right that it will be a "massive taxpayer-funded boondoggle, managed by government bureaucrats, shoveling money to stodgy incumbent dinosaurs", but they do now have a better model and there's no reason why what Space X did cou
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In theory yes... in practice the ESA moves much slower than SpaceX... so most likely the lead of SpaceX will increase with time.
When they decided that the Ariane 5 was too expensive because of SpaceX they should have set aside a billion Euro or two for building something similar to SpaceX Falcon 9... instead they spent billions for the Ariane 6, which will fly in a few years and will be more expensive than SpaceX is today.
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StarLink is the logical consequence of cheap launches. Cheap launches are the logical consequence of a smart billionaire and - especially - a huge amount of very capable people. The latter has been in the works for 50 years or so. Anybody aspiring such a job in Europe would almost without exception move to the USA. So I think the headstart is much bigger than 20 years.
Nevertheless, it could be done.
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Anybody aspiring such a job in Europe would almost without exception move to the USA.
Not entirely true. Private launcher companies are starting to surface. This one [www.rfa.space] is backed by OHB group, with an already well established relationship to the EU, delivering Galileo satellites and whatnot. The UK and Germany are working on establishing launch facilities (launching over the Atlantic and the North Sea, respectively) for smaller launchers.
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This seems to imply that the UK & German launches will be pretty close to polar orbits. Is that what you intended, or am I missing something?
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You are assuming that development and production velocity are equal between two organizations; one is a private for-profit company, the other a bureaucratic governmental organization.
I'm pretty sure we know what the score on that assumption is.
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StarLink is lightyears ahead of anything the Europeans have
What is StarLink? Much of Europe is lightyears ahead of the USA in terms of broadband access and speed. Starlink is an answer to a USA local problem. It doesn't make sense here.
I do agree on this being a boondoggle to keep the ESA funded though. There's just no need for a Starlink system in Europe.
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Europe has the same problems with rural broadband as the US does, or any other country. 10% of EU citizens don't have access to any kind of broadband. The number rises to almost 30% in certain EU countries. That's a lot of people who might be interested in Starlink or a competing service.
Good for you if you live in the EU and already have got broadband access in your area. It's not true of everywhere in the EU.
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Europe has the same problems with rural broadband as the US does, or any other country.
No it doesn't. Both the urbanisation rate and distance between population centres matter. While you can point to a farmer without broadband in each case that doesn't mean you need to launch a satellite for both of them as the fundamental geographies differ greatly. The EU still has rural areas without broadband. There are better ways to solve this in the EU than launch a satellite constellation.
Australia, now there's a place that benefits from satellites for broadband.
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That's the thing, Startlink is a global constellation. Satellite broadband will make sense for rural Europe because the satellites will already be there, and the incremental cost to provide service in Europe will be minimal. Some ground stations may be required, but they'd likely be built anyway to enable more efficient routing when inter-satellite lasers start being used in the constellation (as they would enable a customer elsewhere in the world to route through the constellation to Europe rather than thr
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When I see what Star Link (and for the most part, SpaceX) are accomplishing, I fee "impressed" by their accomplishments but I do not feel "proud" as an American for what "we" have done. I think in general we are a little too quick to extend patriotism to private companies, since financial considerations preclude them from extending loyalty in return.
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I do not feel "proud" as an American for what "we" have done.
As an American, I am not specifically proud of SpaceX.
But I am proud of how my country has created an economy and culture that fosters innovation and entrepreneurship.
Europe has mostly failed to do that. Their response to SpaceX isn't a broad reform of restrictions and regulations that stifle business, but to spend taxes on a government bureaucracy to manage a narrow response.
That is a profound difference in culture. Europe, and the world, would be better off if Europeans became less hostile to technologi
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Much of Europe is lightyears ahead of the USA in terms of broadband access and speed.
Right. You mean, a few rich countries in the northwestern part of the EUSSR.
Try getting your gigabit outside large cities in Romania, or Bulgaria. Or Poland perhaps? Or wait, let's try Bari, Italy. No? Surely, I must be able to get your promised superbroadband living in Larissa, Greece?
Or perhaps, not.
There is a reason why Europe's smart people move to the U.S. if they get an opportunity.
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Re:Self-driving cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Once all the cars are in communication you get swarm behavior.
It makes more sense to use direct car-to-car communication, rather than going through a satellite in orbit to talk to the car in the next lane.
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Once all the cars are in communication you get swarm behavior.
It makes more sense to use direct car-to-car communication, rather than going through a satellite in orbit to talk to the car in the next lane.
Any sort of vehicle-to-vehicle communication, whether direct or network-based, is problematic, because each vehicle is inherently untrusted. Is that really a Tesla with stock firmware telling you that it is braking, or is that a Raspberry Pi that some jokester taped to the side of a bridge post? The inability to know the difference (and, in the case of satellite-based V2V, the inability to verify that the other vehicle is even in the same country as the data being reported) basically makes V2V, whether di
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Seriously: self driving cars must be autonomous, not depend on the network. They are always mentioned as the supposed killer application of every new network technology (5G, M2M, satellite, ...), ignoring that they must be able to drive in absence os connection (in this case, going into a tunnel).
Personally I think it should be a hybrid of the two to ensure safety and redundancy.
TBH, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I read some time ago that people found a blast from a high-watt linear amplifier (CB radio hacking) could confuse electronic fuel regulation in certain models of cars.
Starting to wonder how bad attacks on autonomous vehicles could get with similar stunts involving LIDAR/RADAR hacking, or blocking/jamming of signals (GPS). Future cars will be designed to react to emergency situatio
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TBH, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I read some time ago that people found a blast from a high-watt linear amplifier (CB radio hacking) could confuse electronic fuel regulation in certain models of cars.
Another way to look at that is that if most cars are already CB-proof then all cars could be made CB-proof.
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TBH, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I read some time ago that people found a blast from a high-watt linear amplifier (CB radio hacking) could confuse electronic fuel regulation in certain models of cars.
Another way to look at that is that if most cars are already CB-proof then all cars could be made CB-proof.
True, but I highly doubt car designers back in the day were worried about TEMPEST shielding around vehicle components. The operational environment is a freeway, not a radio field. (Then again, I'm being dismissive of the radio field repairman who doesn't want to walk to work.)
Could also be a dead issue today, but I kind of doubt it. Modern cars, aren't exactly going analog.
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Could also be a dead issue today, but I kind of doubt it.
Why? The people designing these products are real engineers. With degrees.
(as opposed to the armchair engineers and reality TV engineers we're constantly bombarded with).
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It won't be of much use for vehicles anyway due to the size of the receiver. They said "pizza box size" but meant "pizza box footprint", the actual dish is about as big as a stack of 10 pizza boxes. Not the sort of thing you can mount on the roof of a car.
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Except if the route planning is done centrally you can manage traffic in entire city or country in a way that avoids congestions. If you think self driving is about reading newspaper behind the wheel you're not looking far enough. It's about less cars and less roads. You say where do you want to go and the closest car picks you up. Like Uber but on a global scale. No one owns a car because there are 0 wait times and minimum empty cars moving. Yeah, I know, privacy and you would like to keep your old, analog
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Except if the route planning is done centrally you can manage traffic in entire city or country in a way that avoids congestions. If you think self driving is about reading newspaper behind the wheel you're not looking far enough. It's about less cars and less roads. You say where do you want to go and the closest car picks you up. Like Uber but on a global scale. No one owns a car because there are 0 wait times and minimum empty cars moving. Yeah, I know, privacy and you would like to keep your old, analog car. Tough luck. In the future cars will be like planes.
Sure Uber and others will provide the service that you describe. And that will be sufficient for many people. But some of us will choose to own a car for various reasons (but maybe only one instead of two) that you do not seem to have the imagination to foresee. Some reasons:
1. Perfume allergy (or other allergies)
2. Immune system defects (risk of infection)
3. People living in remote areas
4. Handicapped people (car customizations)
5. Special car requirements (e.g. have to be able to pull a large trailer - pro
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The service will be public and cheap/free, saving the government lots of money on infrastructure (less roads), healthcare (less pollution and accidents) and lost productivity (no time waisted in traffic jams). I guess if you still need to own a car for any reason you will be able to but it will be a self-driving, centrally controlled car. Of course we have to separate city centers from country roads. Inside cities 99% of people will use the very cheap public cars so there will be no need for parking spaces
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5. Special car requirements (e.g. have to be able to pull a large trailer - probably more an issue outside the US where cars are smaller)
Probably an issue in the US as well. While cars are larger, they are not set up to tow, and the view is that they can't/shouldn't. While it's common to see something like a VW Golf pulling a small camper in Europe, it's extremely uncommon to see a much larger vehicle (with a 3L 6cyl engine no less) pulling as much as a garden trailer in the US... and the vehicle's owners manual probably cautions against doing so.
Always boggled my mind.
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If you think self driving is about reading newspaper behind the wheel you're not looking far enough. It's about less cars and less roads. You say where do you want to go and the closest car picks you up. Like Uber but on a global scale. No one owns a car because there are 0 wait times and minimum empty cars moving.
Ew! You just know that people are going to spit on the seats (or worse) if that ever happens.
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Ever heard about public transport? In Europe, every city I have visited have some sort of buses or metro that people manage to share without spitting on the seats.
Also, if a dirty car shows up, you report it and the car self-drives for cleaning. You get clean car in a couple of minutes and the previous passenger gets banned. Problem solved.
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You get clean car in a couple of minutes and the previous passenger gets banned.
So an easy way to DDOS the system and get random people banned is to report cars as dirty?
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The French are probably benefit from any internet satellite constellation since it
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"Seriously: self driving cars must be autonomous, not depend on the network. "
You are obviously a man.
Those AIs are female, they are not afraid to ask for directions when they are lost.
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I told you this would happen. (Score:2)
Now everyone is going to want one and they're gonna start colliding with each other.
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That's the point... we are bored with cold wars. We want a hot and heavy space war. I mean when they started calling these projects "star wars", you really thought branding space warfare as something catchy was just a way to get the funding passed? No... it's to get people comfortable with the idea of war in space which is likely to break out in the next 100 years. The same with the space force which I wonder what would happen if it was disbanded but I personally don't think this really "undoes" any imbalan
Why go fast? This isn't GPS. (Score:4, Insightful)
If Starlink gets decent market penetration in Europe, getting people to buy new receivers and switch to a new system will be a huge obstacle.
They need to move fast or they might as well not move at all.
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It's not Tesla. European manufacturers are competing well with Tesla. They out sell Tesla in Europe and have overtaken it in some areas of technology. For example BMW's drivetrain is more efficient, and VW has cheaper batteries.
Remember that in Europe long before Tesla arrived we had Renault and Nissan mass producing EVs and building charging networks.
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Space X != Tesla
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They need to move fast or they might as well not move at all.
There's no reason for them to move. Elon is already doing what they say they want to do, cheaper and almost certainly better than they will/would do it. Why do it again?
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Because if they don't have absolute control, they can't control the users absolutely.
Move Fast (Score:2)
They're still 'moving fast' on reusable rockets, needed for LEO Internet.
I am sure their government program will produce some results any year now...
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exactly, they will not be able to compete with on a truly big constellation of satellites if they not develop a much cheaper launch system or use spaceX or Blue Origin to do it, but given this is a pork barrel proposal, they will use ariane or soyuz to get those satellites in orbit, so either they have to use a much smaller number of satellites, which will mean higher altitudes, higher ping times, more clients per satellite, thus lower bandwidth per terminal and so on, or their services will need to be subs
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I wish I had mod points right now. Consider this a virtual +1 - Insightful.
Love the anty EU comments (Score:2)
Criticizing EU for not being great at technological innovation is like criticizing Starlink for not being great at preventing coup attempts in USA.
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> I'd rather see "ever closer union" extend to nations outside the EU as much as within it - how better could they ensure their continued peace and prosperity without bringing everyone else along for the ride?
Totally agree but EU has to keep very high standards about the countries it integrates with. It's not always possible but it definitely tries to do this. Trade deal with South America was suspended because of environmental issues. That's pretty amazing compared with other countries.
If you apply this
Car industry (Score:1)
The Germans will sell their soul to the devil to keep their car industry afloat.
Kessler Syndrome (Score:2)
Maybe SpaceX has worked out how to ensure its planned huge constellation doesn't trigger the Kessler syndrome. Maybe OneWeb will too, ... and Amazon, ... and the EU, ... and Russia, ... and China. Because they're all queuing up to implement this concept. But maybe at least one of those will screw up and all those many thousands of satellites will turn low earth orbit into a disaster zone for a few years. Don't forget, satellite collisions follow a square law.
Starlink is global (Score:5, Interesting)
Starlink *is* global. Sure, it's run by an American company, but that never stopped BILLIONS of people around the world from using GPS did it? And GPS is even "worse" because it's run by the US government and not a private company that is happy to make money off of you regardless of what country you're in. GPS went public almost 40 years ago for FREE for everyone on the planet to use - I can't think of anything any other government has done as altruistic as this for humanity in general. Anyway, my point is that the US government has set a precedence here, and I don't see them trying to force Starlink to turn off internet for Italy or France, etc.
If the EU were smart they would approach Starlink now and offer significant funding for agreements for coverage in their countries. Maybe let European business entities lease time off Starlink when it is over EU countries, which they resell locally as their own brand. Not sure that would fly, because Musk doesn't seem to be needing any help at all these days - basically all he needs is for government to stay out of his way.
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it's run by an American company, but that never stopped BILLIONS of people around the world from using GPS did it?
It also hasn't stopped the EU from standing up their own constellation for satellite navigation, called Galileo [wikipedia.org].
They can hire SpaceX to launch them! (Score:2)
No it doesn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
The EU doesn't have the population density spread that makes space broadband a necessary investment.
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You may be surprised to find out that there is more to Europe than the suburbs of Paris. There are spread-out rural areas even in central Europe, and much more so when you go further north or east. The municipality where I grew up is not even an extreme case and it has a population density of 4 inhabitants per square mile. They do have 200Mbps fiber available if you're in town, but good luck if you live ten miles out! A few hundred miles further north, the population density is on par with Alaska. Somethin
Ah bureaucracy. (Score:2)
Looks to me like half the people they're bringing in could be put out of a job if this goes forward. So, it probably won't. At least not in any kind of sane fashion. Probably end up with some crazy constraints on the service to protect everyone it would compete with, like only allowing households with no physical connection to use it - which would probably mean never having enough users to make it v
Move at speed? (Score:2)
It's pretty hard to move at speed zero.
EU, Move, Speed, in the same sentence? (Score:2)
The EU move with speed?
Well hey, there is always a first time for everything.
Doubling down on a bad technology (Score:2)
Starlink is already forking up ground-based astronomy with only a fraction of satellites in place. Adding the European and God knows how many commercial competitors is going to make it impossible to do any astronomy from the ground. Astronomers will become dependent on space-based telescopes and we've seen how easy it is to get those up and running (*cough*James Webb*cough*).
I think in the next five years we will see the end of manned spaceflight and possibly most spaceflight because we won't build a get
Classic EU (Score:2)
This just sounds like the EU being up to it's old tricks. I remember talking about this a while ago on slashdot with regards to semiconductors [slashdot.org]:
I don't know why you're being downvoted. This is an on going problem with Europe. They don't have the startup culture that you get in the US and East Asia. So they rarely spawn disruptive startups and fall behind. Then once they fall behind they try to play catch-up with initiatives like this. But most of these industries have a big first mover advantages so playing catch-up is an uphill battle that they eventually lose. We've seen this cycle with their attempts to challenge FAANG.
Now that an American company has demonstrated that space based internet is going to work and be a significant market they want in. They'll pump huge amounts of tax payer money to make a less capable Starlink rip-off. Then adjust their regulatory environment around whatever system they end up developing to ensure they have enough protectionism in place to make it the