Are we going to see internet revolution

 Bharti enterprises bid for OneWeb a U.K based satellite  manufacturer.

Sunil Mittal owned Bharti a key player  in the revolution of mobile telecommunication in India, earlier in 1995 when mobile services launched in India. Since then, Airtel has been a key player among telecom operators in India.

Oneweb founded in U.K the company during its setup plan has praposed, mega-constellation in low earth orbit to deliver wireless internet services to anywhere in the world. 

And they mean it,anywhere in the world, be it Sahara or Thar desert, Antarctica,  remote areas of Sikkim,  Andaman Island or anywhere in this world. 

Strange ! yet not surprising.

What is mega-constellation?

It is a network of thousands of satellites all orbiting and working togeather in a robust system. Consider cellular tower on earth to be replaced by mega satellites  in space.

What's the need of it?

It comes to two factors.

One the cost of hardware for these types of satellites  has come down.

Second, increasing demand of data all around the world effectively with low cost. So, providing high speed data on any part of the world. It's priority now.

Though, its not a new concept, companies like Hughes are already in the play, specially for rural part of the world, where fiber cable option is not possible. Today internet is more expensive and half the rural population  is still uncovered.

Satellite Latency

Traditional satellites orbit are very far away from earth, called geo stationary satellite. Ionization does impact on the signals travelling from geo stationary satellite to earth.

And the distance of satellites  from earth increases latency in the network. So, latency play a key role in streaming over a network. More the distance  between a satellite  and recieving station, the more time will the signal take to recieve at the display  station.

Most satellites today operate in what is called geo stationary orbit, which is around 36000 kms above the earth and it is fixed, stationary over a specific  place.

To meet the challenge  of "latency " the praposed system by few companies including OneWeb,Amazon, and Telesat a collection of satellites would be orbiting on "low earth orbit" , which would cut down the latency issues drastically and speed would be 20 times faster than the current GEO satellites.

In fiber optics speed of transmission of light is 40% slower than in space or vacuum, hence low earth orbit system is quite extensive  and fast.

Now, since the satellite would be much closer to earth surface,  one must need more satellites  in a group to cover larger part of earth and to transmit to large users in numbers. Even the capacity of satellites  be adequate in order to respond effectively.

To recieve  the signals from these mega-constellations, companies  need heavy investment to install large capacity  of recieving antenas or recieving stations on the ground. 

Facebook  and google both working on these own satellites, facebook hasn't  revealed its plan yet, though google is one of the key investor in SpaceX system. SpaceX has launched around 120 satellites and some more in futureto come.

SpaceX has the idea to launch atleast  30,000 satellites with 1 million earth stations for customers. 

Demerit of the program 

Astronomers have a great concern over this mega constellation of satellites to be stationed over Low Eart Orbit. Some astronomers took their twitter handle to express their concern over this issue.

" Their main concern is, if SpaceX launch all 12,000 satellites,  they will outnumber stars visible to naked eye" 

In an endeavour to business expansion plan, Airtel went ahead to invest in OneWeb, and claim 45% holding in the company. Jio planned fiber optic cable network,  but Jio still need  number of cellular  towers on various places. Airtel on the othet hand with OneWeb will have mega satellite tower in space.

It is expected that installation of satellites  in space would cost less as compared to the cellular  towers as in the case of Jio.

What prompted Airtel to claim stake in OneWeb ?

OneWeb faced financial problem,  a cash crunch and went on to file for bankruptcy in March 2020.

Now see the difference in our lateral government  and U.K government. U.K government went ahead in finding a suitable investor  for OneWeb and they found Sunil  Bharti Mittal CEO of Airtel, who now claim to have 45% stake in OneWeb along with U.K government who also owns 45% stake.

Other key investors are Virgin group and Hughes.

What's  the motto of U.K government behind this project? 

Why a government went on to save a private company from bankruptcy by investing $500 million.?  

Britain has been becoming weak and frozen in European Union in various key projects, and on various geo political situations.

So, U.K government  was of the interest in supporting OneWeb largely to form a strong basis for a new  national system.

Reasons for Airtel to join hands with OneWeb? 

Airtel  being the largest telecom  operator in India and Africa,  they have a large customer base where half of the population  is without internet or not cost effective.

By offering wire satellite internet,  Airtel can grab a huge market and can pose a reasonable challenge to Jio in domestic  market.

Can Airtel will lay the foundation of a digital revolution?  Yes! I'm sure and confident, being led by Sunil Mittal in particular. His strong and acute business  accumenship with a highly capable team will make him successfull in this venture.

Best of luck to Airtel.

Hope for the best days to come for internet data speed.

What do you think, you can afford to pay to Airtel for this revolutionary service, or you have any concerns over it.

Do share your valuable thoughts.

I salute You and the divinity within you.

My other blogs are:

https://mimaping.blogspot.com/2020/10/matrices-determinants-and-birth-of.hthtml

https://mimaping.blogspot.com/2020/09/complex-numbers-and-its-significance.html

https://mimaping.blogspot.com/2020/09/global-surveillance-magnetosphere.html