Rassvet marked the horizon – Kommersant FM

An analogue of Starlink may appear in Russia in three years; the company Bureau 1440 plans to launch a high-speed commercial satellite Internet service. According to Vedomosti, the start of the project is scheduled for 2027, before which time they promise to launch 250 satellites. And the Rassvet grouping will be fully operational by 2030.

With successful testing and a successful launch, satellite Internet will be in demand even in large cities of the country, noted editor-in-chief of the media “Pro Space” Alexander Baulin: “Numerous satellite constellations at low altitude require a receiving antenna and a base station that will distribute the received Internet and throw it back to satellite.

Making many small devices in low orbit instead of several large, but geostationary ones is a modern trend. This applies not only to Starlink, but also, for example, Amazon Kuiper. Samsung and some other companies have similar projects.

In this case, the satellites, firstly, duplicate each other well. If one of a hundred devices breaks down, it will not even be noticeable. Secondly, there is less delay, because if they rotate in orbits from 500 km to 1 thousand km, then the signal travels back and forth 30 times faster than to the geostationary station and back. You can use the Internet for everything, not only, for example, for games, but also for stock trading, where low latency in information transmission is very important.”

Potentially, Russian satellite Internet will be able to reach up to 2 million users throughout the country. The system will allow 12 million subscribers to connect to ultra-fast Internet. The company assured that it had received consent to set up the necessary frequencies for the distribution of the Internet from two states. Which countries are we talking about, however, is not specified.

At the same time, Starlink, following the example of which the domestic project is being created, is not available, in particular, in Belarus and Iran. However, abroad, the Russian satellite network will most likely lose the fight for users, says cosmonautics popularizer Vitaly Egorov: “For the Russian satellite project, the greatest difficulty now may be the problem with sanctioned electronics. The main task is to find suppliers and ensure stable supplies to Russia throughout the entire period of development and launch of production.

If it is planned to launch 250 satellites by 2027, then it turns out that we need to produce about a hundred pieces per year. This is quite a difficult task.

Today, mass production of such devices has been achieved only in two companies – Starlink and OneWeb. In Russia, there is only talk about this for now. At the same time, the project is focused primarily on the domestic market. Probably, if its organizers really achieve their goals by 2027 and try to enter the international market, then, most likely, these will be third countries that are not afraid of restrictions from the United States or Europe.

At the same time, it will not be possible to compete with either Starlink or OneWeb, because these are different markets, different start times and different actual services. Here, the production of terminals is a separate difficulty. Because creating a satellite Internet terminal at a price lower than what is available for terminals produced for geostationary spacecraft, that is, for the space Internet that already exists today, is a very difficult technological task.”

The global satellite system Starlink began launching its satellites four years ago. Investments in the Space X project did not exceed $30 billion. Only this year, according to its head, Elon Musk, the network began to make a profit.

What investments will the Russian project require? Alexander Khokhlov, a member of the North-Western organization of the Russian Cosmonautics Federation, answered this question to Kommersant FM: “The weakest point of this group is that it is Russian. Accordingly, the number of countries that will buy communication services from this company will be significantly less than, for example, from OneWeb or Starlink.

But even they face difficulties in obtaining a license to work in a particular country. Many states do not want an absolutely free, open Internet on their territory. For example, it may be that the frequencies used by Starlink are occupied by the military.

At the same time, at the altitudes to which they plan to launch the devices, 250 satellites are enough. But to launch them, the company will have to buy services from Roscosmos. It must be remembered that each launch of a Soyuz-2 rocket with an upper stage can cost approximately 1 billion rubles. So there is a risk that Bureau 1440 will not find enough investment.

I’m even surprised that they have already reached technical implementation. They probably hope to work with the government. Because it is very difficult to find such a number of clients in order to recoup this connection in Russia and in a few friendly countries.”

This is not the first time that Russia is trying to implement an analogue of Starlink. Roscosmos has been talking about another project called “Sphere” since 2018. Last year, the first satellite was launched into orbit; it is expected that the system will be implemented before 2030. According to the state corporation, three years ago 7 billion rubles were allocated to finance priority work on the project. For 2024, the budget has been doubled, and by 2025, about 60 billion rubles will be invested in Sphere.

---

Everything is clear with us – Telegram channel “Kommersant FM”.

Elena Tyuleneva