The company’s specialists work on an innovative satellite technology that will make the internet as available as GPS is now.
The idea of global access to the internet is not new. Some companies even propose their projects to solve the task. But about four billion people in the world, mostly residents of rural areas, still can’t connect to the global network.
Google’s Project Loon launched in June 2016 is expected to solve the problem of connectivity using a network of balloons in the stratosphere. Unfortunately, the technology is expensive and requires new balloons to be launched regularly as their lifespan is limited. Google said it was ready to launch new balloons every 30 minutes and promised a connection speed of about 10Mbit/s.
Facebook offered a different approach. Zuckerberg’s company wants to build a global wireless network using the OpenCellular platform and solar-powered drones. Internet connection via drones requires high precision lasers that will transmit data in the network of aircrafts.
Both companies’ solutions seem impractical at first sight, because the optimal project would use satellites, which is too costly. But Israeli company SkyFi is trying to solve the problem. It changes the configuration of satellites to make the technology more affordable instead of inventing a new way of data transmission.
Launching a satellite costs about $60 million today. Innovative technologies developed by the Israeli company allow reducing costs to $1 million. SkyFi CEO Raz Itzhaki Tamir says 60 satellites will be enough for global internet coverage. In other words, the new technology will provide worldwide access to the network at the current cost of creating and launching one satellite.
The solution proposed by the Israeli company will help overcome a range of disadvantages of standard satellites that make their use inconvenient. It will be possible to change the shape of a satellite’s sub-reflector remotely to adjust the signal’s trajectory to landscape or weather conditions. Data transfer speed will be significantly higher than that offered by modern telecommunications networks – about a gigabit per second. Like all similar services, the new technology will be able to provide telephone and television services.
The company hopes a wide network of satellites will make the internet available for all people around the globe:
“The high flexibility of our nano-satellites and the ability to provide multiple services to different customers enables us to offer free internet access to the whole planet in the same manner as GPS services are free,” Raz Itzhaki Tamir shares his plans.
It will take a few years to improve and launch the technology, but even today it looks not only possible, but plausible. The internet may become free around the world in the next decade.
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