In the next five years, Canadians will deploy a global network of satellite Internet access.

Recently it became known that the Canadian company Microsat Systems Canada Inc. is going to implement a fairly large project, which is called CommStellation (probably, the name comes from the English word constellation, ie, the constellation). Indeed, it is planned to put into orbit a whole "constellation" of satellites, and not 5-6, but 84 whole microsatellites, which will be in low-level orbit (about a thousand kilometers).

The relatively low satellite orbit allows the use of less expensive electronic components to create such a satellite. It is clear that the power of the transmitted signal will be lower than in the case of signal transmission through ordinary, “high” satellites.
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As mentioned above, 84 satellites that form six orbital planes will be put into orbit. For each plane, there is one backup satellite, and it is easy to calculate that each plane will be formed by 13 satellites. 20 stations will be built on Earth itself, connected to the Global Network by high-speed communication channels. By the way, the satellites will be able to serve for a long time - the declared operating time of each satellite is 10 years. Each microsatellite will be able to provide bandwidth of 12 Gbit / s.

The first batch will be launched into orbit in 2014, and in order to bring all the satellites into orbit, six launch vehicles will be launched. It is given a year to put satellites into orbit, and in 2015 the global network of satellite Internet access will begin to work. Interestingly, the developers promise 100% coverage of the Earth with a satellite network signal, plus 99.999 (and many more nines later)% uptime.

Via commstellation