Good news for offshore and remote site Internet

DArcy

.
Feb 11, 2017
1,690
Islander Freeport 36 Ottawa
Should be interesting to see how this plays out. Iridium went bankrupt due to lack of market uptake. The original Iridium company couldn't service the dept and the assets were bought out a price much lower than the cost to launch the constellation. They launched around the time of massive cellular phone infrastructure growth which didn't help. Now we have great terrestrial cell coverage over the majority of even sparsely populated areas of the globe so the only way a new communications platform might be sustainable would be to make it cost competitive. Hopefully we, the tiny minority that actually want connection outside of cell phone coverage, will reap the benefits of this low cost global system.
And kind of cool, my company is manufacturing amplifiers for this constellation :)
 

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,758
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
OneWeb is about to launch the first of more than 600 internet satellites
https://qz.com/1560552/oneweb-launches-internet-satellites/

The objective is to make it fast (5G) and affordable.
That is interesting. I live in one of the slowest broadband states in the US, yet we have 1 gigabit speed at my house.

Despite Maine's fiber optic '3 Ring Binder'; a foundation of 3 loops of main fiberoptic lines into various parts of our state nearly a decade ago, the last miles are slow to materialize.


Our town took the initiative to build it's own leg of the 3 ring binder. It seemed like a pretty small cost to me as a taxpayer, but we're slow to adapt. There is a lack of general understanding why broadband is important, especially in remote areas. Many of our politicians think all it takes is a highway sign on our NH border, "Your Business Could Be Here!" , to bring jobs to Maine. Seems we vote one dolt out and another takes his place, like whack a mole.

It's ironic that the focus is on creating a complicated satellite 5 G in my state is gaining steam, as state of the art fiberoptic lines circle the remote areas.

As long as it's privately funded, remote communities will be for it. All the while, 1 Gig. broadband speed is zipping by a few miles away.
 
Last edited:

Gunni

.
Mar 16, 2010
5,937
Beneteau 411 Oceanis Annapolis
Some entity spent a ton of money on that Maine fiberoptic network and will have to maintain the system connections and amplifiers. Verizon has struggled to make their Fios network economically viable, and a massive fiberoptic system was installed in Washington DC that largely fell to ruin in short order. These kind of infrastructure investments are tough to pull together. It is easier to fund a wireless cellular data system and potentially a sat network under the assumption that your customer network is dispersed and under a much larger area of service. That is how data service is being proposed for broadband have-nots.
 

TomY

Alden Forum Moderator
Jun 22, 2004
2,758
Alden 38' Challenger yawl Rockport Harbor
Many experts think fiberoptic transmission is the closest we have to being 'future proof'. Beyond anything wireless so far. There is opposition from other utility suppliers against local municipalities like ours building and owning their last mile connections.

Phone, cable TV, slow internet are pretty hard to sell if a fiberoptics connection runs down your street.

Fiber certainly isn't new but it's future looks bright. Nothing will do it all. Satellites aren't maintenance free.

A good case is a nearby island in Penobscot Bay. Islesboro Island, about the size of Manhattan, spent the money to run an underwater fiber optics cable to the island from the our ring of fiber optic cable. They own the cable.

The result is that the 600 year round residents (seasonally the population at least triples) now have 1 gig upload speed for a cost of about $30.00 per month. A savings over any other lower speed option available at more cost.
 

Gunni

.
Mar 16, 2010
5,937
Beneteau 411 Oceanis Annapolis
The Maine Fiber Company. Public / private partnership. They are middle-mile providers so they rely on local utilities building out to end users. At just over $30 million that was pretty good investment for the State of Maine. Appalachia should do something like this.
 
Oct 22, 2014
20,992
CAL 35 Cruiser #21 moored EVERETT WA
Caution is a consideration in these projects...
Out here we have the community funding and acquiring and maintaining Public rights-of-way to install the public needed infrastructure.

Then we encourage (require) the installation of infrastructure such as gas, electrical or internet in the public right-of-way only to have the city announce a tax on the revenue of the infrastructure users for the privilege of using the right-of-way.

And who is then billed for the privilege tax? You got it the same folk that paid and maintain the right-of-way. The community... We are really fools sometimes.