This year, in his annual exercise in crystal ball gazing: “Top 10 technology trends for 2019,” Cisco ANZ CTO Kevin Bloch gave prediction number seven as “Faster and wider – 5G and nano satellites.”
On 5G he said: “Anticipation and expectation of 5G is probably higher than any other new technology in history.” On nano satellites, “Massive cost reductions through efficiencies in rocket launch and re-use as well as technology advancement, promise to enable a new generation of nano satellites to belatedly and cost effectively connect some of the most remote places on earth.”
I agree on both counts. However there has been nowhere near as much anticipation and expectation, or media coverage, around nano satellites as there has around 5G. The focus has been on ‘faster’ rather than ‘wider’.
Yet for those areas and peoples of the world who have little chance of getting 2G let alone 5G, the impact of nano satellites promises to be greater than that touted for 5G.
In a separate document Bloch listed two sources of information on nano satellites. A Forbes article from November 2018: 2019 Is The Year Nano-Satellites Will Deliver Internet Access To All, and an article of mine: Interest grows in Sky & Space Global’s nano satellites services.
Co-incidentally this week I had a chance to catch up with the CEO of Sky and Space Global, Meir Moalem, and his company’s game plan demonstrates well why the impact of nano satellites could be so great.
Sky and Space Global (SAS) is listed on the ASX, has its head office in London and most of its operations in Israel. Moalem explained that the ASX listing came out because it had been presented as an attractive option when the company was looking for funds, rather than the company taking a strategic decision to go public.
SAS: first nanosat for communication
SAS, according to Moalem, is the most advanced of the would-be nano satellite operators, and the first to use nano satellites for communication purposes.
It expects to launch its first commercial satellites and to be generating revenues by the end of 2019. It already has three prototype satellites in orbit, plans to launch its first commercial satellites this year, has secured funding to the tune of $A35m and has signed agreements with 29 organisations that intend to resell its services.
The SAS system is designed to provide real time voice and low speed data, text messaging and support IoT applications. As such it is, essentially, a cellular network in the sky. The network passes traffic between satellites until it reaches one that can “see” the destination terminal.
Communication with the satellites is from a small unit a few centimetres square and SAS is also working on developing a smartphone that will be able to communicate directly with its satellites.
Clearly to support the low latency needs of voice communications through a network of ‘cell sites’ when each of those cell sites circumnavigates the earth in 90 minutes, a speed of 8kms per second, is no small challenge.
Three million with no communication
SAS’s first constellation of satellites will provide coverage of a band either side of the equator, a region where, it says, more than three billion people have no access to reliable, affordable communications.
And, says Moalem, even those that do have communication have very limited capabilities. “There are large parts of the world where there is no cellular coverage and there never will be because it will be just to costly.
“Africa is a content of 1.2 billion people and 600 million of them are not connected. Out of the 600 million that are connected, 80 percent of what they do is texting and what they are texting is money because they don’t have bank accounts.”
Certainly 5G will be a great leap forward from 4G but, despite the hype, nowhere near as great a leap as the provision of voice and real time data services to half the world.