OneWeb and SpaceX are competing to bring internet to the Arctic

Rival satellite internet companies OneWeb and SpaceX are vying for lucrative deals to provide broadband internet in the northernmost latitudes of the Earth. The launch of 36 OneWeb satellites this week approached its goal of transmitting internet to the region by the end of the year. SpaceX’s Starlink, which already provides internet to thousands of consumers through a beta program, is eyeing the same area.

Billions of dollars in government funds are at stake for companies that can connect the region. The Arctic is almost a broadband desert for the US military, and the UK is willing to spend a lot to connect rural areas to the Internet.

SpaceX is reportedly receiving a share of the new $ 6.9 billion Project Gigabit program from the UK, which aims to provide “ultra-fast” broadband internet to areas with little or no internet access. OneWeb is also in talks with the program, said the company’s head of government affairs, Chris McLaughlin. The Verge. UK-based OneWeb, which was rescued from bankruptcy last year by the British government and Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Global, believes it has an advantage in this race.

McLaughlin ruled out the incursion of SpaceX founder Elon Musk into the UK rural internet show as “a classic piece of Mr. Musk’s cuteness.” Musk’s offer for the subsidies, McLaughlin said, “tries to suggest that there is a huge pot of gold waiting in the English fields that he can collect”.

“We also talked to [UK Minister for Digital Infrastructure Matt Warman], and indeed with his boss, and indeed with his boss’s boss, about what could be done with OneWeb, ”McLaughlin said in an interview, predicting that the Gigabit awards would go to several telecom operators that will work together. OneWeb hopes to be able to “repay trust in the UK government” in its offer for rural internet subsidies, he said, in return for government aid to get OneWeb out of bankruptcy.

Image: Roscosmos

“5 to 50”

The launch of 36 Internet satellites on Wednesday night put OneWeb’s total constellation at 146. The company’s initial plans to cover the Arctic with Internet by 2020 were hampered by bankruptcy. Now, he has a new goal of “5 to 50”: a countdown of five launches to allow coverage everywhere north of “50” degrees latitude. A December launch marked the first, Wednesday’s launch was the second and the company plans to reach its fifth launch in June.

Unlike the SpaceX constellation, which orbits the planet closer along the equatorial lines, OneWeb orbits from pole to pole, meaning that the northern and southern regions of the Earth, traditionally tranquil with internet, will soon be an intersection of satellite moved to the company’s network. McLaughlin said that the next generation of OneWeb satellites is likely to have optical links, which allows the satellites to communicate with each other in space. This could reduce the need for expensive ground stations in areas that are difficult to access in the Arctic.

OneWeb has not launched projects for user terminals or monthly pricing plans, and its planned constellation of 648 satellites is much smaller than that of SpaceX. But “less is more,” says McLaughlin. Satellites at higher altitudes can radiate to wider areas of the Earth (imagine lighting a table with a flashlight, and the cone of light gets wider the further you move it away). The disadvantage of satellites at higher altitudes is greater latency, or the time it takes for data to be transferred between the satellite and its destination.

SpaceX’s Arctic Objectives

SpaceX, on the other hand, is further ahead with its satellite network, driven by large rounds of financing and money from its billionaire founder. It launched more than 1,300 Starlink satellites in an orbit lower than the OneWeb constellation, and that’s only a fraction of its planned 30,000 constellation. The company launched an open beta for consumers in the US, UK, Canada, Germany and New Zealand this year, offering a Starlink terminal kit for $ 499 and $ 99 per month thereafter for at least 10,000 users, with many enthusiastic about the network speeds of 120 megabits per second.

SpaceX obtained last-minute regulatory approval to launch its first 10 polar-orbiting Starlink satellites in January, and is lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to obtain permission to launch dozens of other satellites in polar orbits, where it can “bring the same high-quality broadband service to the most remote areas of Alaska, ”he said in a document.

SpaceX sees this area as particularly valuable to the US military, and the company has been procession the Pentagon in recent years. While the U.S. Northern Command is looking for commercial options to bring faster Internet to the Arctic, an increasingly disputed domain between the US and Russia, Pentagon officials have visited SpaceX (and OneWeb) along the way. And the Air Force’s Global Lightning program, which in 2018 awarded SpaceX $ 28 million to test Starlink on military aircraft, is approaching a new phase to distribute satellite internet contracts in Arctic regions.

Image: US Northern Command

Military interest in better Internet in the Arctic became clear last year, when General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the former commander of the United States Northern Command, asked Congress for $ 130 million for a polar communications program that would leverage Starlink and OneWeb. Months later, General O’Shaughnessy retired to consult SpaceX privately, according to two people familiar with the move, speaking anonymously to discuss personnel matters. While the Wall Street Journal reported last year, it is not clear whether O’Shaughnessy is fully employed by SpaceX or is a paid contractor. SpaceX did not return requests for comment. O’Shaughnessy, through a spokesman, was not immediately available for comment.

An increasingly important Arctic

In recent years, the United States Armed Forces have endeavored to rethink their strategy in the Arctic, as a rapidly changing climate melts the region’s polar caps, redesigning the main shipping routes and opening new ones for ships and submarines. The boost to broadband in the Arctic is part of this change in strategy. Commanders need better communications and Internet access for ships and planes, now that the region’s barriers to movement are literally melting, shaping a new stage of competition between the United States, Russia and China.

“It’s been an important region for some time, but it’s growing in importance,” says Chris Quilty, partner and satellite industry analyst at Quilty Analytics. “Most of the communication satellites that exist today are flying over the equator and they cannot see the polar region – it is a very high altitude with the curvature of the Earth.”

Some satellites in higher orbits provide data services for the polar regions, but these are limited, especially for the growing military demand for data. OneWeb and the proposed satellite network of the satellite operator Telesat, which will partially orbit the Earth from pole to pole, aim to fill the Arctic data gap. SpaceX is awaiting FCC approval to send 348 more satellites into polar orbit, meeting the demand for “federal broadband users for whom there may be significant national security benefits”.

As SpaceX’s Starlink enters polar orbit, the orbital design already approved for the OneWeb constellation gives it an arctic advantage. For OneWeb, “all satellites cross the polar region, so the greatest concentration of their capacity is in the polar regions,” says Quilty. “This opens up the opportunity to move out of a position where there is a shortage of data, where there will be an enormous amount of data available.”