Who has not connected to the web? We connect remote regions with balloons, drones and an armada of satellites

Data centers are literally the place where the Internet lives, these are the nerve nodes of the Global Network. Nevertheless, the organism itself, the system, is growing, but the capabilities of the data centers remain the same, and this is not enough for the entire planet. Now Silicon Valley and technical specialists from around the world are trying to solve the problem of connecting developing countries and individual regions, remote from the network infrastructure at a considerable distance, to the Network using non-standard tools and technologies.

The main initiators are Google, Facebook, Ilon Musk, Bill Gates and Richard Branson. So far, the time frames for projects implemented by these companies and their managers are not very clear, but there is no reason to doubt their implementation. Let's see what the powerful people of the world are planning to do to connect the remaining autonomous regions and why.

First, the answer to the question "Why?"

Then, that in the modern world, the Internet is the basis for progress and economic development. The network brings together people, businesses, opportunities that previously seemed incredible. The benefit of connecting all the new territories can be very large, and those who implement such a project will receive good profits and resources.
')
In order to understand how the Network is integrated into the economy, it suffices to recall the situation in the United States 20 years ago. The beginning of the development of the network, AOL, sites with static pages, the primary communication of users. And now - HDTV, online auctions, instant sales and purchases of goods, trading on the exchange.

Currently, 3.2 billion people can be considered users of the Network. This is only 38% of the world's population. Despite the fact that it seems that the Internet is accessible to all, it is not. More than 4 billion people are not able to connect to the Internet. Even in such a developed country as the United States, about 17% of the population do not have access (for a number of reasons) to the Global Network.

But most of all "unconnected" in Africa, the agricultural regions of India and Indonesia. Here, telecommunications companies plan to use other methods of connecting users to the Network than in other countries. Most likely to connect using wireless technology. They are now being developed by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Virgin, SpaceX. Facebook, among other things, is also actively promoting its own platform for providing basic connectivity to the Network for residents of these regions - this is the Internet.org project.

Telecommunication companies, delivering communications to such regions, will benefit from the connection of new users and the development of new connection technologies, which will continue to serve faithfully. Now let's talk about such technologies.

Balloons: Project Loon

Google Inc. has already pretty advanced in its project to connect remote regions with balloons. These are not even balloons, but stratospheric probes launched to a height of several tens of kilometers. Further, a stratospheric probe with the appropriate equipment on board covers a certain region with communications, and residents of this region receive a high-speed communication channel.

On board the balls - electronic systems, antennas for communication with other balls and ground stations, as well as batteries. There are Project Loon balls and solar panels, which produce about 100 Wh of energy, supporting the work of electronics around the clock (during the day, the excess energy enters the batteries, which charge at night when there is no sun).

Stratospheric balls move in the atmosphere of the Earth according to paths pre-calculated by Google’s algorithms. Here winds are actively used, with the help of which the whole system of balloons is structured. Now Google engineers have learned how to transmit a signal from the ball to the ball, which allows us to provide large areas with communication using a minimum of ground stations.

The final testing system will be held in Sri Lanka, however, this will happen no earlier than March 2016.

Solar Drones: Project Aquila

And this is a project from Facebook, the social network does roughly the same as Google, only uses aircraft with solar panels on the body instead of stratospheric probes. Not so long ago, an unmanned vehicle, a test working model, was shown by the company. This whole project is called Project Aquila.

The mass of the aircraft is about 0.5 tons. Despite the massiveness, the device can be in the air for about three months, at an altitude of 20-27 kilometers. From this height, the drone transmits and receives a signal, providing communication to the residents of the regions over which it plans. Project Aquila does not depend on the weather, as the gliders are above the cloud cover, and the weather conditions are more or less constant at that altitude.



All this works quite interesting: the ground station, using a laser guidance system, detects a UAV. The device, in turn, having detected the laser signal, specifies its coordinates, and includes telecommunications equipment. Unfortunately, the communication channel is provided by a laser, so in bad weather the channel capacity decreases. The capacity of such a system under optimal conditions is 10 gigabits per second.

Microsoft White Spaces

Microsoft is also not sitting idly by. The Redmond giant is planning to put into operation new communication stations that operate in the unused frequency spectrum, White Spaces. The company is already implementing its project in Kenya, where Microsoft has joined forces with Mawingu Networks, Jamii Telecom Limited and the Kenyan government, planning to connect residents of remote regions of the country to the Network. In Kenya, about 80% of residents do not have access to the Network.

White Spaces was originally planned to be used for television broadcasting, but this did not happen. But this spectrum is much better suited for data transmission over long distances than conventional wireless networks. Earlier, television companies claimed that the use of these frequencies will adversely affect the operation of television equipment, as a result of which the quality of the television network will deteriorate. Repeated inspections conducted by experts of the US Federal Communications Commission showed that these fears are baseless, or almost baseless.

By the way, the issue of using White Spaces is being actively addressed in the United States, so far at the legislative level.

Satellites: the battle of billionaires

In addition to balloons, drones, unused frequencies, there are other possibilities for connecting the inhabitants of the Earth to the Global Network. These are satellites. Only not huge communications satellites, which cost billions of dollars, but networks of small simple satellites, which are inexpensive, and their capabilities are quite extensive. However, such projects are also worth a lot, and the company, even a very large one, alone cannot implement the implementation of such a project. Now there are several main players in this field.

Spacex . Billionaire Ilon Mask plans to solve the problem by launching about 4 thousand small communications satellites into orbit. The weight of each satellite is about 113 kilograms. The cost is about one million US dollars. Thus, the total cost of the project is more than $ 4 billion.

Already, Musk is in talks with the authorities of Florida and Colorado about the possibility of building a satellite manufacturing plant in this region. Now the company is not yet ready to launch all 700 devices, only 2 satellites will go into orbit to conduct various tests and test the operation of the systems. Two identical Ku-band (satellite frequency range 12-14 GHz) of the satellite will be launched into an orbit of 625 km. The expected operation time of these test devices is 6-12 months.

The main purpose of the launch is to check the operability of the communication platform, antenna design and some other aspects of the system. The satellites will interact with ground stations in Fremont, Hawthorne (California) and Redmond (Washington). According to the test results, the project team will evaluate the design of the satellites and the entire platform, with the approval of the final version.

OneWeb : This company was founded by Greg Weiler, the pioneer of satellite communications. Relatively recently, the company received about $ 500 million in investment from a number of partners, including Qualcomm, Airbus, Coca-Cola and the Virgin Group, the company of Richard Branson, which will provide satellite launch. “Our mission is to make the Internet accessible to everyone, connect remote regions to a single network, and help increase the standards of quality of life in the poorest regions of the Earth,” Branson said.

He also added that OneWeb, along with Virgin Galactic, will be able to turn these plans into reality. According to the plan, 648 small communications satellites should be launched into the low orbit of the Earth.

O3b Networks : company representatives also announced the use of a network of satellites, only the satellites here are different, and will be at an altitude of about 1,200 kilometers. The company has already deployed an initial group of satellites, and has entered into contracts with 35 customers from countries with problem communications. These are the Cook Islands, Samoa, Micronesia and Papua New Guinea, among others.

Wireless and data centers

How will all this affect the data center operators? So far, it is rather difficult to give an accurate forecast, but preliminary conclusions can already be made.

Thus, the implementation of such plans will have a short-term and long-term impact on data center operators. In the first case, data centers can cooperate with satellite operators to provide the latest cloud services, where all necessary information will be stored and processed. In the second case, we will probably see the already complex MEO / LEO systems.

You can talk about expanding the market of network equipment, cloud services and everything else that is associated with telecommunications. If the projects discussed above are indeed implemented, this will have an extremely strong influence on the telecommunications industry.