O3b satellites to enable connectivity for the world's "other 3 billion"

If you thought Verizon was taking its sweet time rolling out FiOS to your neighborhood, imagine how long it would take to connect the entire continent of Africa. Verizon wouldn't bother trying, but satellite company O3b, in partnership with Google, is doing just that. The pair plan to bathe that continent (and others) with soothing Internet waves via 16 medium-earth orbit (MEO) units. Latency is said to be only 120 milliseconds, with maximum download speeds at 1.25Gbps. That's seriously fast, about the same as Japan's Kizuna (set to cover disconnected Asian regions), but before you cancel your 1.5Mbps WildBlue account and go on a bandwidth safari know that these new orbital hotspots are destined to act as backbones for use by smaller ISPs. They'll in turn provide wireless access direct to customers over 3G or WiMax, throttling things appropriately.

[Via ZDNet Government]

[thedesolate1 @ Sep 11th 2008 10:17AM]

I can see the headlines " Google Brings Pr0n To The Masses In Africa"

[cesium @ Sep 11th 2008 10:23AM]

No, that was the job of the OLPC

[burriot_avatar @ Sep 11th 2008 10:27AM]

Based on research I've done using National Geographic the whole continent is a pr0n paradise!

[loosely_coupled @ Sep 11th 2008 6:01PM]

This was exactly what Hughes/DirectPC needed back in the day. Instead of a constellation of low-orbit satellites, they used 1 or 2 geo-synchronous satellites that are 100 quadrillion miles away. This caused high latency and only minimal bandwidth was available...

[Fernando @ Sep 11th 2008 10:21AM]

Throttling things appropriately sounds like a Comcast Scam to me.

[Sisyphus @ Sep 11th 2008 10:44AM]

Its okay. Mona Shaw is taking care of those shysters:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359.html

"Taking a Whack Against Comcast
Mona Shaw Reached Her Breaking Point, Then for Her Hammer"

[shade @ Sep 11th 2008 11:51AM]

Yeah, Comcast is the worst ISP I've ever had, I could notice a huge decrease in seeding/downloading torrents. (Not a pirate, was downloading linux, bittorrent is the best option since I never know when my internet connection might drop out, *COUGHCrappyComcastCOUGH* I wish we had Cox as an ISP here in Jacksonville FL, we only had one problem with them, and it wasn't even their fault, broken wall outlet, and they fixed it for free regardless. I'm sick of the broadband monopoly ComCast has here. I can haz satellite internet plox? A Gig and a quarter a second would be orgasmic, compared to the 9 MB/s I usually get.

[strider_mt2k @ Sep 11th 2008 10:23AM]

Okay then, definatively: WE CAN HEAR YOU NOW.

Just shut the hell up already. :|

[BdgBill @ Sep 11th 2008 10:31AM]

Just what we need.....More Nigerians on the net.

[Nate L @ Sep 11th 2008 10:54AM]

Seriously. I don't feel like having my credit card numbers taken.

[thedesolate1 @ Sep 12th 2008 10:09PM]

Should be good for torrents considering the **AA's probably has little power over that in some remote regions...

[Taylor @ Sep 11th 2008 10:37AM]

Some interesting commentary on getting this O3b to all of Africa...

http://whiteafrican.com/

[kjb434 @ Sep 11th 2008 10:49AM]

So we have over 2000+ satellites (working and non-working) currently up there. Let's throw another one up for fun!

[Xentreos @ Sep 11th 2008 11:11AM]

Hang on, what? 120ms from what would have to be a geosynchronous satellite? That would only get you one way, up to the satellite. Unless the satellite happens to have a full backup of the internet somewhere on board, latency would be 240ish ms at the minimum based on my rough calculation (36000km * 2 / 3e8).

[Eric @ Sep 11th 2008 12:24PM]

The satellite is about 22,000 miles up when in geostationary orbit. At the speed of light it would take the signal 233 milliseconds to travel from the ground to the satellite back to the ground. Because this requires user input, you need to double that because the transmission must go from your computer, to the satellite, to the ground, back to the satellite, then back to you.

This means that based on physics alone and the time require to process the signals the delay must be between 500 and 900 milliseconds. This is what makes internet from satellite based sources not usable unless you are sending people specific data, the internet equivalent of dropping rice from airplanes.

Either this is idiotic reporting or faster than light travel has been invented.

[ZO @ Sep 11th 2008 12:30PM]

Which part of MEO did you not get?

[aemond @ Sep 11th 2008 1:08PM]

They says "cheaper medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellites" not geostationary satellites. They are closer so the lag should be smaller.

[Langdon Alger @ Sep 11th 2008 3:10PM]

The orbit is neither GEO (geosynchronous) nor GSO (geostationary). At (roughly and on average) half the distance of GEO/GSO, MEO would have half the one-way latency of 240ms (233ms to be exact, for GSO) or 120ms. I don't really get Eric's dizzying "user input" scenario of "from your computer, to the satellite, to the ground, back to the satellite, then back to you." Latency is parallel across multiple links, not serial, so you don't add them all up. It's only the lag until the first byte arrives, not for all subsequent packets as well. Also, this isn't your typical TCP communications we're talking about. Satellite comm hardware uses much greater packets that cause fewer ACKs to be sent for a much larger chunk of data. Look up "TCP acceleration."

"Communications, unity ... community!" Mmmm?

[johnzilla @ Sep 11th 2008 12:11PM]

Well, I guess if anyone can do this, Google can. Several companies have tried and failed (Teledesic, etc). We'll see.

[tONY @ Sep 11th 2008 12:48PM]

Screw Africa, how about service in Unityville Pennsylvania, or cellular service?

[Taylor @ Sep 11th 2008 4:57PM]

Man, you're really pulling at the heart strings....

[Perplexio @ Sep 11th 2008 2:15PM]

Now maybe all those long lost relatives I have in Africa will be able to get in touch with me before they die and leave me with millions if only I give their solicitor my bank account and routing information!

[JBDragon @ Sep 12th 2008 12:15AM]

Is there really a large enough market in Africa for people to afford to pay for INTERNET service? Seems like a money looser to me. Satellites aren't cheap.