New Space Race: This man is building the interstellar Internet

"Ilon MASC: Tesla, SpaceX and the pursuit of a dreamy future," Ashlee Vance, the author of the Ashley Wans, is a technical contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek, Businessweek reported January 26. A book (to be released by Harper Collins Press in May 2015). This is what he interviewed former Google executive Gregg Willer (Greg Wyler).

Gregg Willer A friendly, sociable person who talked about his business plan with religious zeal. He is also a very energetic person who is difficult to stay in a certain place. So, when the tech entrepreneur who lived at Florida State's Point advised Vance to interview him in Puerto Rico, Vance had to accept it. He and his family packed a plane and planned to stay in the Puerto Rico capital on their way to San Bart island.

His wife and children have lunch on the plane, and Vance will talk at the airport about the ambitious satellite company he founded. He texted: "Bring a piece of cheese pizza and a sausage, the children love you!" "10 minutes later he texted again," take a can of Diet Coke. "For weeks, people who know Wyler have been telling Vance that he is an eccentric, creative thinker who gives the impression of being disorganized and impulsive." They will say, must endure these, because he is a genius.

So it's not surprising when he sends a text message and cancels it out--they start out later than planned--Vance finds himself at San Juan's hotel, with two pizzas and a can of Diet Coke. He texted: "I'm so sorry, I've tried my best, I've been so busy this morning ..."

Wyler, a 45-year-old, who seems to be out of action, has started a series of companies, and one is more adventurous than the other. When he was more than 20 years old, he was designing and selling computer parts, and then he decided to join the disconnected world. He started a telecoms company, laying fibre-optic networks in Rwanda, and then he started a satellite company to provide high-speed, low-cost Internet services to islands and other remote areas.

Now he starts his third venture, launching his engineering headquarters in OneWeb, Silicon Valley, in an attempt to build a complex, Leo satellite network that provides Internet services to everyone on the planet. Speaking at the Conference on Science and Technology, Wyler has been talking about "the other 3 billion people" for the past more than 10 years. This is the world's other half of the population, for a variety of reasons cannot be online.

Companies such as Google and Facebook have received widespread attention for their plans to provide the Internet to the developing world. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, invited time to follow him to the Indian countryside, reporting on his business and philanthropic development, although he did not disclose specific plans for how Facebook helped the poor in India. Ilon MASC launched its own Space network program and gained 1 billion of dollars in investment from Google and Fidelity.

When Vance finally contacted him, he said: "People are giving me a look at Zuckerberg's article and others are calling me after the article is published." It's good, he's more admired than I am. I have been trying to make people understand that connectivity is the foundation of social and economic development. Then he said as politely as possible: "Another good thing is that I know our system can run." ”

Wyler smiled frequently, combining his exaggerated features-the odd chin and puffy face-to make him look like a comic figure painted by a street painter. He spoke quickly and without interruption, like walking and talking. He grew up near Boston, and his father was a famous insurance lawsuit, and his mother doted on him. As long as he wanted to, he could do well in class, but his thoughts were often unrestrained, and his achievements lingered between a and the "complete general".

If he is interested in a course, he can be very focused, such as in high school he likes computers and cars. He taught himself computer-aided design (CAD) software, which is very helpful to his ability to design complex equipment. Soon he began to design the product. One of his first ideas was to radically improve the fuel-filling system of the Ford Mustang. He saw the name of the Ford Engineering Director in a technical journal and he called the man unexpectedly.

Wyler said: "We talked about cars, it was an eye-opening experience, I found another world." Before the advent of the Internet, it was difficult to find people who were very interested in mysterious topics. After graduating from high school, Wyler went to the University of Jersey, Cincinnati, and later transferred to North Adams State College in western Massachusetts. He studied finance and computer science at school and then went to law school at the Illinois Polytechnic in Chicago.

1992 at law School he had the first real business idea: A new design for the radiator, a large piece of metal that would heat the PC's main processor. He founded the no overhead Consolidator company, which manufactures custom PCs and continually improves thermal design. Eventually he designed a PC that did not need a fan.

1994 Wyler also founded the silent Bae company to sell his radiator. "He calls 3-5 times a day, not one call a day," said Jim Rappaport, Boston fund, a Wyler investor. He is very stubborn. "Later he said in a conciliatory tone, Wyler will silent BAE Machine and IBM computer contrast show, let him surprise." After they did business together.

Wyler between Chicago and Boston, completing law school while running the company. He often worked 36 hours in a row, so he designed a completely opaque basement cell to focus on the computer screen. 5 years later, Silent BAE developed the world's best PC radiator, 50 cents per piece, 80% lower than other products. Later, Silent Bae received orders from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other companies, which were eventually molex by electronics manufacturers to buy about 100 million dollars.

Only more than 20-year-old Wyler became a multimillionaire, and with the money he began to dabble in real estate, and was successful in the dotcom boom through several rapid technology investments. Then everything changed. On the October 1, 2002, Wyler drove to his mother's house in Winchester, Massachusetts, where his mother missed his call and felt the wrong thing. When he found the front door of the house was open and the house was quiet, he walked through the house into the garage and found his mother lying in a pool of blood, his head smashed, and someone murdered her.

"The case was clear to Wyler when the police arrived and he said to a detective:" He killed her and my father murdered my mother, "The Boston magazine reported in the case. In the report, Wyler about his childhood clash with his father and left home to live with his grandparents. He claims that his father's physical and mental abuse of his mother has caused a rapid deterioration in the relationship between his parents in the 1 years before the murder, as his mother filed for divorce.

His father decided to sue his mother for some silent BAE Wealth-which is probably the cause of the conflict. His father denied the charge of abusing his mother. "Someone went into my mother's house and killed her and left without anything," Wyler said to the magazine. All doubts point to One direction, One direction only. The police didn't accuse his father of being guilty until today, the murderer didn't catch it. His father declined to comment.

Today, Gregg Willer is unwilling to talk about the murder. He says his trajectory has changed since the incident. "My mother's death has made me want to do more and better, and I've decided that whatever I do, I have to be on the mission," he says. "At the end of 2002, at a friend's wedding in Boston, Wyler met the chief of Staff of the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, Siokine Ludasinva (Theogene rudasingwa). Two people hit, Wyler feel found their mission.

He began to find ways to connect more schools to the Internet and dreamed of turning the country into a technology hub. Wyler said: "At that time the world did not consider Internet infrastructure as the top priority." I think this is wrong, when you have a good internet connection, your economy will grow. "1 years after his mother's murder and the chance to get married, Wyler founded the telecoms company TerraCom, which provides mobile phones and internet services for Rwandans," he said.

He manages the company in America, but he often flies to Africa. Workers--including Wyler occasionally--laid hundreds of of miles of fiber-optic networks and built Africa's first 3G wireless network. The TerraCom service is faster and is cheaper than the state-owned Rwandan telecoms, with more users after 1 years of operation. In 2005, TerraCom bought Rwanda Telecom for 20 million dollars. For a while, the Rwandan president, Kagame, even praised Wyler's work as the centrepiece of the country's modernisation.

But the merger of two companies has created a management nightmare. John Dick, TerraCom's main investor and Liberty Global director, who has a 20 billion dollar annual revenue, said: "There are too many Rwandan telecom personnel, poor equipment and a total disaster." "Wyler and Dick later asked Huawei, the Chinese telecoms equipment company, to help design a more efficient, more economical system, but the joint venture is still unsustainable, and some Rwandan government officials have complained about the Wyler of the company."

"Obviously the merged company should be owned by Rwanda," Dick said. The Government of Rwanda acquired the joint venture in 2007. Wyler said: "I think we have made great progress, but some political problems are difficult to deal with." It was easier to sell the assets when I wasn't even involved. ”

Wyler said he withdrew not because he was not interested, but because TerraCom had an unresolved technical bottleneck. The biggest bottleneck is the terracom fiber network and global Internet connectivity issues. Data can be transmitted internally in Rwanda, but connections to the outside world can only be achieved through slow, expensive satellite connections. Wyler that many countries face this problem, and his mission is even greater. He decided to start a company to provide the Internet to more countries-linking these countries to the rest of the world.

Driving from the Felix Eboue Airport in Cayenne, French Guiana, to the seaside city of Kuta for 1 hours, there is nothing to see along the way, mainly the rainforest of the Americas. Occasional billboards have appeared on the rocket ads of Ariane Space Corporation, Airbus or other European aerospace companies. The Guyana Aerospace Center is one of the busiest space launch sites in the world.

The only reason for building a space center in a tropical jungle is physical conditions. It's about 300 miles north of the equator, which makes it less fuel to launch satellites to the equator, which is the fastest and shortest orbit in the Earth's orbit. Due to this advantage, the payload from the 20-35% rocket is higher than that in other major launch centers.

European countries have cooperated to build the facility, which covers an area of 270 square miles, close to the Atlantic Ocean. The advantage of this position is that once the rocket fails, there is enough room for it to crash at sea. The Space Center has multiple launchers, large assembly workshops, liquid oxygen and aviation kerosene manufacturing centers, and launch control centers. Since the area is off-limits to hunting, there are a lot of things that have nothing to do with rockets, such as sloths and monkeys and snakes on the road.

December 18, hundreds of locals entered the main launch control center to watch the launch of the Russian-produced Soyuz rocket. In French Guiana, the launch day is the main entertainment, wearing high heels and summer clothes women, uniformed soldiers will enter the launch Control Center Theater District, watch and listen to the commentator live. The Soyuz carries four satellites from the O3b company, founded by Wyler in 2007. This is the third launch of the company, which plans to send these satellites into the equatorial orbit and to form a satellite network with eight other satellites already on orbit.

The internet has been available through satellite transmission, but the speed and response times are comparable to those of modems in the early 90. The satellite is positioned on a 22,000-mile-high geostationary orbit and transmits data to and from the ground receiving station. Because of the distance, it takes more than 500 milliseconds for the signal to come back in the satellite. While half a second sounds nothing, it's enough to make it impossible to use Skype, FaceTime and any cloud apps.

Wyler's plan is to launch the O3B satellite into Earth's orbit about 5000 miles from the ground. At this distance, it takes about 150 milliseconds for the data to be transmitted back and forth, similar to a fibre optic network. But there are also bad places: satellite orbits are lower and coverage is smaller. Therefore, O3b will launch a large number of satellites, so far there are 12 satellites in orbit, the future will also launch more satellites. The cost of launching the four satellites--each satellite size--is about 300 million dollars--about the same as a restaurant fridge. The company has raised more than $1.3 billion trillion from Google, HSBC and SES, the world's largest satellite operator.

The December launch ran into minor problems, and in about 30 minutes the Russian team leader gave each cell a mobile phone, and as the satellite did not signal, O3B chief executive Steve Colle (Steve Collar) paced the theater, but eventually the satellite came to a head, and all of the company's satellites started, began to send 120 internet signals, and the company was free to direct the sending of signals. Each signal can cover a range of 400 miles in diameter: Anyone in this range can access the fiber's speed.

Under normal circumstances, telecommunications companies can sign an agreement with the o3b, tree up 14 feet high antenna to receive signals, and then through the wireless towers and cable network distribution to enterprises and consumer customers. O3B services have brought the gospel to Pacific islands, such as the Cook Is. used to connect with a geostationary satellite, see no movies, play online games, and when hospitals try to talk to New Zealand experts, the images are delayed and blurred.

"The service is reliable but slow and expensive," said Jules Mahe, former CEO of Cook Is. Telecom, Jules Maher. "He also considered pulling the submarine cable from Tahiti, but the price was too high." "Our main island has only 10,000 inhabitants, cost 30 million dollars, and investment cannot be recovered." "Mach's company has been a o3b customer since March." He has a good impression of the service. "Businesses pay only 10% of their previous costs, but at 12 times times the original rate," he says. ”

The service has had an impact on demographics-some young Cook Is. have opted to stay at home and not go to New Zealand or Australia, partly because they can attend classes online. They no longer feel that if they stay, the world will forget them. "No one wants to stay in a closed place," Mach said. "O3b contracted 35 clients, including those in Papua New Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, American Samoa, Malaysia and Afghanistan.

Cruise companies and offshore oil platforms are looking for o3b services. Cruise-provided geosynchronous satellite network services typically charge 75 cents per minute-1 USD. Bill Martin, Chief information officer at Royal Caribbean Cruise, said: "You have to make a loan to get online, I'm not totally joking." Bill Martin "The company now obtains satellite signals from O3B to serve three cruise ships and provide free passengers to attract people."

"Young people don't want to get online, which is a big advantage for us," Martin said. "The Royal Caribbean cruise will get more bandwidth than all the other cruise ships on the ocean." Although 12 satellites were already orbiting and running, O3b was in operation in 2014 and was not formally commercially released until December. The price of the service will be based on the price charged by the customer of the telecommunications company, but usually the customer pays the same price as the fiber. In the months O3b became the Pacific's largest Internet service provider, saying it could achieve a profit-and-loss balance in the year, with an annual revenue of $100 million trillion.

"We can launch more than 100 satellites, and when we launch more satellites, our networks are more efficient and prices will fall," Kohler said. "A few weeks after the launch of the O3b, Wyler said in a deadpan way, it was exciting to start a new company in the garage. The garage is located in Atherton, California, on the west coast. His newly founded company OneWeb temporary headquarters occupies the entire first floor of the building. In the living room there are several mechanical engineers, there are some communications experts in the restaurant, there are several satellite experts in the kitchen.

The floor was full of Ethernet cables, and in the garage there was a workshop with a 3D printer and something that looked like a 15-foot-long barbecue fork. Engineers used it to assemble 280-pound moons. The company's legal name is Worldvu,oneweb is its operating brand. OneWeb is a o3b version of the Wyler plan to use 648 satellites and launch them to 750-mile low orbits. Engineers expect data to be transmitted on satellite and ground for 20 milliseconds, the fastest Internet service that can handle any application.

Wyler has a gray hemispherical object that is about the same size as a car tyre. This is the OneWeb roof antenna. Unlike the ordinary satellite TV pot, Wyler's equipment is only placed on the roof, the round edge facing up on the line. OneWeb will have a lot of satellites and will not receive any signals. Therefore, O3B requires telecommunications companies to install large, dedicated antennas, but OneWeb use this simple equipment on the line, whether it is schools, shops, hospitals or individuals are very convenient. It will be used as a local Internet hub connected to nearby devices via WiFi or wireless signals.

Wyler said: "You don't have to buy an antenna, just close to the school or medical center, mobile phone and tablet can log in." He expects the antenna to cost about 200 dollars and promises to be durable and easy to use. "It won't be broken for months, it's waterproof, no buttons," he says. You don't have to think about how to use it. "There must be overlap between OneWeb and O3b's business, but Wyler believes that 2 services can complement each other because of different markets."

O3b will focus more on the business-to-business market, providing large amounts of bandwidth to countries, telecoms companies and large ships. If a ship enters the range, O3b can provide oneweb unmatched capacity. But OneWeb's coverage is greater and can serve both businesses and consumers. Wyler remains a major shareholder in O3b. From another perspective, OneWeb can be used as a global Internet backup system. If the fibre optic network is severed and a region cannot connect to the Internet, OneWeb can provide services temporarily.

The network can also be sent to aircraft, when the surface of natural disasters, communication system suddenly interrupted, very useful. OneWeb can theoretically place a large number of antennas immediately and then establish an Internet connection for rescuers and others immediately. Wyler says he is not competing with global telecoms companies, but is wholesale antennas and satellite services to existing telecoms companies, which can resell antennas and Internet services when needed. Ultimately telecoms companies, rather than oneweb, determine service prices. "We want to see prices that consumers can accept," he says. ”

There may be a lot of problems before the OneWeb network is completed. Two of companies,--teledesic and skybridge--10, have tried to build similar networks years ago, spending billions of of billions of dollars in failure, leaving investors in the field for years. But Wyler and others argue that these actions are somewhat advanced and that the advances in basic technology are now sufficient to achieve the idea.

OneWeb says it will be able to cover as large a region as India with three satellites. Although these satellites operate in grid form, the company must find a way to transfer communications signals from one satellite to another, figuring out how best to allocate bandwidth among all the people using the same satellite millions of times per minute.

Only a small number of companies produce satellites, and they often design one-off satellites for specific purposes. OneWeb will need these manufacturers to produce satellites on a large scale, as well as the unprecedented goal of launching a satellite every 20 days, in cooperation with most rocket launch companies. "This is the best thing that the satellite industry has done, only Greg can do it," said David Bettinger, David Beddinger of iDIRECT, the former chief technology officer at the satellite communications company. ”

So far it has invested 6 million of dollars in the Wye forecast, allowing OneWeb to run more than 2 billion dollars. The company received investments from Virgin Group and Qualcomm, and Virgin founder Branson joined the OneWeb board, saying that 2 companies had invested "tens of millions of dollars". "We have the ability to launch nearly 2500 satellites, and if we do well, it would be a very profitable business, and there would be a charitable implication and a much-needed service," Branson said. ”

Wyler hopes to get OneWeb running by 2018. At the same time, competitors are speeding up their actions to connect the world. Google has considered investing in OneWeb as part of the company's extensive internet connection, but Wyler and Google CEO Larry Page have decided to go all the way. Google has its own dive program, with huge weather balloons to install communications equipment, floating in remote areas to establish a wireless network. Facebook also has plans to study any technology that bridges the Internet connection gap from drones, lasers to rural base stations.

The biggest challenge may come from the Basque, who often rushes into the rooms of Wye and then announces plans to build his own version of the Internet Space Network. Musk's plan is to produce thousands of satellites in the SpaceX plant, launch them with their own rockets, and use them to handle most of the world's Internet traffic. "The satellite Bigreg we want is a complex order of magnitude, and I think there should be 2 competing systems," he says. ”

Branson retorts that Wyler is the only person with an idea on all technical issues and has access to the right international wireless band to launch Internet services from space. Branson and Musk and Wyler are good friends. "I don't think Elon can do anything about competition, and it's logical to cooperate with us if Imam wants to enter this field," he said. ”

In an interview with Atherton and Wyler, the conversation turned to what people thought of him as both brilliant and capricious. "I'm the leader," he explains, and is good at pointing out how things are going, setting up the right team, attracting investors and getting the machines running. OneWeb may keep Wyler longer. Once he lets the company run, if there is no catastrophe, he will complete the mission that his mother gave to himself after his death. "It's a second internet for everyone," he says. "(Mushulin)

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)