'CommStellation': Swarm of net satellites planned
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
The satellites would be launched into orbit at 14 to a rocket - 13 operational, one spare
A Canadian company has announced a plan to put 78 small satellites in orbit to carry the internet.
Called the "CommStellation", the system would be deployed from 2014-2015. It would require six rockets to take the platforms to an altitude of 1,000km.
The network will act as backhaul, linking the traffic of local telecoms and internet service providers to the global fibre infrastructure.
Microsat Systems Canada Inc (MSCI) has not revealed any details on financing.
It is, however, an established and very experienced small spacecraft systems manufacturer.
The company said many regions across North America and the rest of the world are falling behind in terms of the bandwidth available to users. Space offers a simple solution to that problem, claimed David Cooper, the president and chief executive of MSCI.
"Here in Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is pushing to extend high-speed internet connections to all Canadians," he explained. "Industry estimates to extend that fibre network are on the order of seven billion dollars and will take 10 years to implement. CommStellation [on the other hand] will be about one-tenth of that cost and be twice as fast to implement."
CommStellation would do something very similar to O3b, which is planning a constellation of eight internet backhaul satellites in a medium-Earth orbit (8,000km) around the equator. This system is expected to start to roll out in the middle of this decade.
The Canadian venture would be very much lower in the sky and circle the Earth via the poles.
Connected planet
Its 78 microsatellites would sit in six planes (with a spare in each plane), providing, says MSCI, up to 15 times the speed and 10 times the total bandwidth capacity of a MEO constellation of comparable satellites. The total throughput of each platform is expected to be 15Gbps.
One the of advantages of having a low-orbiting system is the reduced latency, or delay, introduced into the transmission of data as it passes back and forth to the satellites in the sky. This latency can be quite severe on geostationary systems positioned 36,000km above the Earth.
"The influx of millions of data-hungry mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, is causing unprecedented strain on mobile networks, which have already reached, or are nearing, capacity," said Mr Cooper.
"CommStellation will provide essential backhaul capacity to mobile operators across the globe. It's an initiative many governments are pushing for because of its ability to connect all of Earth's citizens to the internet."
Constellations for satellite communications have had a chequered history. Two of the best known satellite phone and data services companies, Iridium and Globalstar, had to go through major financial restructuring when their initial business models failed.
O3b took several to put its financing in place despite the backing of some big names like Google and the TV satellite operator SES.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Credit: BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)
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