GB Broadband On The Road?

[RV_]

Most of my posts about broadband deployments have fallen on deaf ears despite the fact that the better the pipes the cheaper the free wireless or wired/fiber service to our RV parks can be.

 

I have been talking about Musk's privately owned Space X partnering with Google in Jan 2015, and getting an initial investment of $1 Billion to develop the mini sats and deployment systems for LEO satellites. Musk intends to have a worldwide constellation of these mini sats providing GB wireless broadband and other wireless services.

 

Bill Gates saw it and in 1998 through their demise, he was a primary investor:

 

Excerpt:

 

"Teledesic was a company founded in the 1990s to build a commercial broadband satellite constellation for Internet services. Using low-earth orbiting satellites small antennas could be used to provide uplinks of as much as 100 Mbit/second and downlinks of up to 720 Mbit/second. The original 1994 proposal was extremely ambitious, costing over US$9 billion and originally planning 840 active satellites with in-orbit spares at an altitude of 700 km.[1] In 1997, the plan was scaled back to 288 active satellites at 1400 km.[2]

The commercial failure of the similar Iridium and Globalstar ventures (composed of 66 and 48 operational satellites, respectively) and other systems, along with bankruptcy protection filings, were primary factors in halting the project, and Teledesic officially suspended its satellite construction work on October 1, 2002.[3]

Teledesic was notable for gaining early funding from cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, and for achieving a radio frequency spectrum allocation in the Ka-band for non-geostationary fixed satellite services."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic

 

I was excited and read every step until 2002, and posted a lot of it here. Now remember at that time there was a monopoly on launch services, and soon after a so called private company, United Launch Alliance (ULA) which were Boeing and Lockheed took over US military and government launches. The ULA never built their own rocket engines for their atlas rockets but bought them from Russia! Our supply was curtailed after we objected to Putin's invasion of an adjoining sovereign country the Ukraine. Space X just happened to be ready to launch using its own US built rocket engines. Like the others he has had a few failures along the way but keeps getting better and better and the ULA has not caught up with tail first recovery of the launch vehicle, nor build their own engines yet. As well, Musk has lowered the costs of a launch to less than half of what the ULKA charges, as well as developing a multiple satellite launch system that carries multiple payloads, each launched out like kernels of corn popping off a cob.

 

In 2019 Space X plans to launch a worldwide GB wireless system and it will have handoff technology like cell phones hand off from tower to tower as we ride down a highway with us never noticing.

 

If they do deploy the systems as described, by 2020 RVrs will be able to use wireless broadband at GB speeds for what they pay now, anywhere.

 

Excerpt:

 

"Fiber broadband: Is it a waste with 5G and Elon Musk's satellites on the horizon?

 

With all the hype surrounding Google Fiber and its competitors, will we look back on the whole experiment as a colossal waste of resources or a long overdue harbinger of better internet?

 

Google Fiber has succeeded in reigniting competition for faster internet across the US. However, now that Google Fiber has reached a similar conclusion as Verizon FiOS did a decade ago -- that digging expensive ditches and laying cables might be a 20th century way of solving the problem -- what's going to happen to the fiber broadband movement?

 

For example, AT&T had been on a gigabit tear in 2016, as it increased its fiber-to-the-premises roll-outs to a total of 29 different metro areas across the US, with plans for dozens more. That compared to nine metro areas for Google Fiber in 2016, with another dozen or so on the potential list. AT&T even thumbed its nose at Google in the process.

 

Meanwhile, cable providers like Time Warner Cable upgraded internet speeds by 6x for free to keep customers in the fold. Even smaller ISPs looked for ways to join the fiber revolution, such as CenturyLink, which reported in 2016 that it had found ways to get FTTP deployments down to $500-$800 from the tradition $1,000 or more it cost to lay fiber to each home or business.

 

Now that Google is retreating from FTTP rollouts in favor of fixed wireless (powered by its Webpass acquisition), it's unclear yet whether its fiber competitors will lose their enthusiasm for FTTP. Since Google chased out the Google Fiber CEO and laid off 9 percent of its staff last fall, AT&T has gone very quiet about its Fiber plans. Instead, it's been touting its 5G trials and its new "AirGig" technology to deliver gigabit internet over power lines.

 

Telecom companies are naturally questioning whether they should continue these laborious, expensive deployments of fiber when wireless gigabit is only a few years away. So-called "fixed wireless" replaces a cable or fiber modem with a box that has a wireless chip like the one in your smartphone plus a strong antenna. Once 5G arrives, these boxes will be able to operate at gigabit speeds -- with no new ditches to dig and no cables to lay.

At the same time, Elon Musk's SpaceX is planning a global network of 4,000 low-orbit satellites that would blanket the entire planet with gigabit internet. If approved, SpaceX said these satellites would offer low latency in the neighborhood of 30ms, which is comparable to today's cable and DSL connections and much faster than the 600ms that has plagued traditional satellite internet providers. SpaceX wants to start launching these satellites in 2019. Qualcomm, Boeing, Virgin, and others are considering similar plans for satellite internet.

 

Another factor to watch is DOCSIS 3.1, the cable internet standard that allows cable companies to offer gigabit speeds over existing cable lines. Since cable already reaches over 60 percent of US households, this could also mean a massive upgrade to gigabit speeds in the years ahead. Comcast, America's largest cable internet provider, has already started rolling out gigabit cable upgrades.

 

The big question is whether Google Fiber, AT&T Fiber, Verizon FiOS, or any of their competitors will have the stomach to stay the course on FTTP.

 

Much more in the article here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/fiber-broadband-is-it-a-waste-with-5g-and-elon-musks-satellites-on-the-horizon/?loc=newsletter_large_thumb_featured&ftag=TRE17cfd61&bhid=19724681974700635514865380622813

 

So we see most amazing new tech driven by Musk's prices and timelines to take us to the next level in both broadband and voice comm by 2019 or 2020. All the rest have to do is catch up. And don't forget Google has been in bed with Space X since two years ago almost exactly.

 

IN two years I expect folks to say they never believed it would happen, or that they kept their money with and on the big cable and cellular/home phone providers. Heck, Century link has claimed to have found a way to cut the price of fiber to the home to $500 from $1000.00.

 

Most folks think the terms 5G and AirGig are about cellular services and they are. But they are also futureproofing the value of their investments.

 

And then there is Space X.

 

Mark my words, in two years the average RVr will be able to get wireless with no perceptible lag, and watch streaming movies on the road, and later, the RVs and Tow vehicles will let the drivers watch too.

 

It is happening.

 

[Dutch_12078]

Keep an eye on OneWeb as well. They're making similar claims with far fewer sats that they say they'll begin launching next year. I understand Musk and OneWeb's Greg Wyler are friends, so it'll be an interesting rivalry to watch.

[RV_]

Dutch,
Thanks I will. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation it will be a race, however, I believe Musk and Google are going with the less expensive satellite builders.

We'll see. It will be interesting regardless.