New hope from space

To make internet from the sky a reality, satellite network providers need to connect their networks to high performance interconnection infrastructure on the ground

- IVO IVANOV

Is space the next frontier for the internet? The growing interest in providing internet access via Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites may seem out of this world, but in fact, the frontiers which are being pushed back are right here on the planet’s surface. Currently, close to 50% of the world’s population do not have effective (if any) access to the information superhighway. According to McKinsey, Elon Musk’s SpaceX got more than USD1.3 billion in funding in 2019 alone and investments are likely to increase dramatically as the high potential starts being realized. With SpaceX having already received half a million orders from end consumers since February 2021, the dynamism of the market is clear.

The new rollout of LEO satellite internet provision offers the potential to bring remote communities, which are isolated from the main terrestrial fiber data highways, online to join the global internet. These communities are struggling to run online businesses and to gain good access to the internet for schooling and tertiary education, as well as for modern digital services, like video and audio streaming due to the limitations of their current connectivity solutions. These often involve copper cable networks and at most geostationary satellite connectivity, resulting in internet speeds down to less than one megabit per second and latency (response time) as high as 400 milliseconds end-to-end.