The future of the internet lies in the "Air network"

According to the International Telecommunication Union, about 3 billion people worldwide are able to connect, most of them through mobile devices and cellular networks, the foreign media said in a recent article. Many people do not have Internet access, while those who can connect to the Internet are mostly slow. To spread the internet to the remaining 4 billion people and to improve the speed of the network, there are many challenges to solve. The solution is likely to be an aerial network.

Of course, some have tried such a scheme. Not long ago, the provision of Internet services from space was a particularly difficult business. Two satellite network pioneer Iridium and Globalstar were once bankrupt.

In general, there are two problems with satellite networks. Keeping them close to Earth would cost a lot of money because of the need to deploy many satellites. For example, the Iridium network has 66 satellites, which orbit 485 miles from Earth-if a much larger and much more powerful satellite is deployed to the geostationary orbit 22236 miles from the ground, it takes only 3 satellites to cover the earth, but the signal goes to them for a long time, and in many scenarios that delay is unacceptable.

However, the new generation of launch and satellite technology, as well as the concept of satellite construction, is changing the sky on people's heads, making it into data path points. Those path points are expected to become as fast as terrestrial networks touch people's mobile devices and have a global reach.

According to David McGlade, CEO of Intelsat, a traditional company like Intelsat (the world's largest satellite company by market capitalisation) is using the performance of its new generation of geosynchronous satellites to provide Internet access to aircraft, yachts and international merchant fleets, which " Not even 5-7 years ago. "

Facebook and Google

Meanwhile, two companies are surprisingly involved in the field of aerial networks, respectively, Facebook and Google. Both are exploring the provision of network connections through objects in the Earth's atmosphere, including drones and balloons.

Google's Balloon network project Whye is intended to provide networks in remote areas of the Earth through clusters of balloons. Mike Cassidy, head of the Whye project, Maik Cassidy that the total cost of providing a network with balloons could be 10% or even 1% of the satellite network.

Google's balloons float in the atmosphere and are said to be flying 20 a day. In a way, high-altitude balloons are satellites that do not have to be launched from rockets.

In the stratosphere (about 12 miles from the Earth's surface), the winds allow the balloon to fly from east to west or from west to east, depending on the altitude. In theory, this could allow Google to form a global network of balloons at any height, even though it requires thousands of balloons. The company, which works with Google, expects the balloon network to start commercial in 2016, Cassidy said.

The Whye project has been formally altered by the use of balloons that have long been used to study the climate, while Facebook (and an independent division of Google) has adopted a more influential and even broader model. In the future, solar drones that are about the size of Boeing 747 may compete with satellites and balloons to provide a network connection.

Yael Maguire, director of the Facebook Network Connectivity Laboratory, Yell Marquille, "I would say it's really difficult to use drones." "The challenges facing McGuire and Google's Titan Aerospace, which was acquired in April this year, include the need for better solar panels and batteries, automated navigation systems, and access to regulatory authorities to allow large drones to share airspace with airliners.

Other contenders for the aerial cyber War include the Earth-orbiting satellites, such as those launched by O3b NX last week. They orbit around 5000 miles off the earth. These satellites are as large and robust as geostationary satellites, but there is no delay. Perhaps to hedge the risk, Google plans to invest more than 1 billion dollars to develop satellite networks. Greg Wyler, a former CEO of O3b NX, who briefly worked for Google, is collaborating with Ilon MASC, Elon Musk, to build a network of hundreds of near-earth orbiting satellites.

The era of "Air network"

Satellites can last for decades, while balloons and drones must be constantly swapped, and larger deployments are needed to cover the planet. McGuire pointed out that the satellite communications equipment can be continuously upgraded.

Given the rapid growth in bandwidth demand, it is easy to understand that both Facebook and Google are looking to deploy a variety of technologies to provide network connectivity. In the future, people may enter the "Air network" era: distant but powerful satellites provide streaming media, while balloons, drones and near-earth satellites provide faster-responding networks.

Satellite networks have become faster and cheaper, Macgled said, and the popularity of ground-based fiber-optic networks and microwave networks has been hampered. "In the United States, about 1.5 million people connect to the Internet via satellite, and globally, only 0.2% of the developed countries were connected to the Internet by satellite in 2012."

Of course, terrestrial networks have an advantage over wireless networks: huge amounts of bandwidth. Whenever the original cable line reached a crowded point, those networks can be paved with new cable lines to deal with.

Macgled pointed out that business travellers are looking forward to: in the near future, the aircraft will have a network as fast as the ground network. In other words, watching Netflix streaming video at a height of 30,000 feet could be a spin-off of the effort to spread the web to the rest of the 4 billion population.

Translator: Lebang

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)