limited, about the size the New
Mexico. Their narrow reach, however, is compensated for by their
multitude. Sometimes, it’s hard to
put your imagination to work, if the
capital required to make it happen is
an astronomical sum (if you’ll pardon the pun). But both these enterprises have attracted the pocketbooks of big-name players. Searchengine titan Google and an investor, Fidelity, have plunked down $1
billion into Musk’s venture, which
carries a price tag of a staggering
$10 billion. Richard Branson’s Virgin
Galactic and Qualcomm, on the
other hand, are backing OneWeb.
The media splash made by these
recent announcements has eclipsed
the success of 03b, which has been
in the business since before all the
hoopla began.
The Channel Islands-based company (OneWeb) was the first to
offer broadband service to a sizeable geographic belt, running 45
degrees north and south of the
equator. By placing a constellation
of a dozen satellites at 5,000 miles,
it’s been able to cut the delay to
11
CubeSat satellites
0.15 seconds, making connections
more energetic. The cost of putting a satellite in orbit depends
on its size and how far away from
Earth it’ll be deployed. They can
weigh anywhere between one kilogram (such as CubeSat) to over
1,000. O3b’s products are 700 kilo-