Satellites to breach the digital divide

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bridging the global digital divide, using satellites in space, is the dream of the world's richest men like Elon Musk of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. They're joined in a new space race to carpet the earth in satellite constellations with national governments, private companies and the recently rescued OneWeb, under the new ownership of the British government and Bharti Enterprises. Sunil Bharti Mittal, the executive Chair of OneWeb tells us why firing hundreds rockets skywards makes business sense, even in a crowded market. And he's promised to leave no-one behind. We also speak to Caleb Henry of Quilty Analytics who tells us about the players in the market and Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation warns of the dangers of a crowded Lower Earth Orbit. Presented by Ed Butler and produced by Clare Williamson. (Image: Lift off Vr, Credits: Roscosmos and Space Center Vostochny, TsENK)

Transcript

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0:00.0	five, four, three, two, one, zero.
0:05.6	Ignition.
0:07.6	And let's off.
0:12.2	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler.
0:14.0	Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC, where today we're reaching for the stars.
0:18.9	Having spent over 25 years in building mobile terrestrial networks,
0:23.4	I can tell you it's impossible for us to connect the last billion
0:27.3	and the remotest part of the world through any other medium but a strong satellite constellation.
0:32.7	Yesterday, we are exploring the dream of putting the whole world online using satellites.
0:38.3	So there's been a dramatic increase in the number of spacecraft orbiting the Earth.
0:43.2	SpaceX ultimately plans to put up around 12,000.
0:46.5	Amazon system would be 3,226.
0:51.2	These are staggering numbers.
0:54.1	So what you heard there was in part the recent countdown and launch of one of SpaceX's
1:00.3	Starlink satellites. Starlink remains the market leader in the current race to carpet the
1:06.6	world in broadband delivering satellites. Yes, it did used to be hot air balloons and flying
1:12.5	drones. Now, though, everyone does seem to agree that the orbiting satellites are going to be
1:17.7	the best way to put all of us, whether we're on the North Pole or in the middle of the ocean somewhere,
1:23.0	all of us reliably online. Since the beginning, the World Wide Web has never been worldwide.
1:30.3	As you can hear, SpaceX are not the only players in this game, a moment there from a promotional video from OneWeb.
1:37.3	It's one of the firms now squaring off against Elon Musk's US giant to get us all connected.
1:46.5	Wherever you are, you'll have a signal.
	...

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