What projects compete in the deployment of satellite Internet services in the world?

Last week, Amazon launched its first two satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of the company’s Project Kuiper satellite internet service. Amazon has become the second American tech giant to join Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the internet arms race in space. At the same time, other major economies in the world – China, India, Russia and the EU – are also rushing to provide the entire planet with their own cosmic-level Internet.

Jeff Bezos’ American company Amazon has launched its Kuiper project, an initiative to deploy a system of satellites in low Earth orbit to provide broadband Internet communications. Launch of the first two satellite prototypes took place October 6 on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket.

In total, the company plans to launch about 3.2 thousand satellites into orbit. Half of them should be launched into orbit by 2026. The company plans to fully complete this mission within six years.

Amazon is not the first company to deploy satellite systems in low Earth orbit to provide uninterrupted Internet access throughout the Earth.

A pioneer in this area was Elon Musk’s SpaceX with its Starlink project, which has been underway since 2018.

The launch of the first satellite took place in 2019, and now the Starlink network has more than 4,750 active satellites. At the same time, the company received permission to launch another 12 thousand devices and submitted an application to launch 30 thousand satellites. The total number of satellites in the Starlink network can reach about 50 thousand devices.

As of September of this year, Starlink provided satellite Internet services to more than 2 million customers in 60 countries. Amazon is just beginning the long process of obtaining approvals to provide services in different countries.

For example, on October 12, it became known that the company was negotiating with Indian regulators to obtain the necessary licenses to launch its service in this country. How long this process will take is unknown. Thus, the same SpaceX has been trying for many years to obtain permission from the Indian authorities, including offering to guarantee future customers in India various discounts when connecting to Starlink. But Indian regulators are in no hurry to issue a license to the American giant.

Perhaps because the country’s authorities have long decided who should give citizens affordable and relatively fast access to the Internet – Mukesh Ambani’s Indian Reliance Jio and OneWeb, a British company with Indian roots.

OneWeb, founded by American Greg Wyler in 2012, launched its first satellites back in February 2019, that is, a couple of months earlier than SpaceX. However, unlike its competitor, it was unable to attract the necessary amount of investment to implement it, faced unaffordable expenses and eventually filed for bankruptcy.

The company’s saviors in 2020 were the British government, which eventually became a co-owner of OneWeb, and Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal (through one of India’s largest telecommunications operators, Bharti Airtel). They invested $500 million in OneWeb.

In July of this year, OneWeb went through another transformation, united with the French satellite operator Eutelsat. OneWeb’s satellite business is now part of Eutelsat Konnect, which operates in Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Russia.

The total number of Konnect satellites in low Earth orbit exceeds 600. Most of them came from OneWeb.

In July of this year, China also joined the fight for a share of the satellite Internet market. Back in 2021, the country’s government created the Guowang enterprise, which will be responsible for creating a network of 13 thousand satellites. On July 9, the company’s first prototype satellite was launched into orbit.

In addition, in July, the Shanghai government announced the creation of its own satellite Internet project G60 Starlink. The plant for the production of satellites for it should begin operations before the end of this year. According to plans, it will produce 300 devices per year. In total, the project plans to launch more than 12 thousand satellites into orbit.

Russia does not stand aside either. So, back in October 2022, its first communications satellite into orbit brought out Roscosmos as part of the Sphere project. The project itself was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin back in 2018. The government reported that in 2022–2025, 58.5 billion rubles will be allocated for it. In 2020 the cost of the project was assessed at 1.5 trillion rubles, but later its estimate was reduced to 800 billion rubles.

Currently, the project has approved funding for the launch of 162 communications satellites. At the same time, Roscosmos previously noted that for the full implementation of the project it will be necessary to launch about 400–500 satellites.

In July of this year, ICS Holding launched the first three low-orbit satellites as part of the Bureau 1440 project. The company intends to launch 700 low-orbit communication satellites by 2035 to provide broadband Internet access both in Russia and other countries. By according to experts, interviewed earlier, the payback period for the project could be five years. They believe that the project will be aimed primarily at providing communications to critical infrastructure facilities.

Kirill Sarkhanyants