Tag Archives: Telesat

Filling the Sky with Satellites

The skies are quickly filling with communications satellites. Following is a short list of the many ventures that have or will soon be launching large numbers of broadband satellites.

Starlink now has over 10,000 operational satellites in orbit, with the ultimate announced goal of reaching 42,000 satellites. The company is not sitting still and will be introducing its new V3 satellites sometime this year, that promises to provide 10 times the download and 24 times the upload capacity of the current V2 satellites. That should mean a big boost in the capacity of the Starlink constellation and faster speeds. Starlink is likely to maintain a major advantage over competitors through its use of the reusable Starship rocket.

Amazon Leo (formerly Project Kuiper) currently has around 212 satellites in orbit. The company was recently granted a two-year delay by the FCC of its original commitment to have an operational network by this summer. The company also recently got approval from the FCC to increase the constellation size to 7,700 satellites. The company is working to accelerate satellite launches and launched 32 satellites in February using the Ariane 64 rocket. Amazon Leo has contracted for 18 additional launches with Arianespace.

Eutelsat OneWeb is currently operating a 648 satellite constellation in twelve polar planes that is providing broadband to enterprise, government, and maritime customers. Its key markets today are in places like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan. The company has ordered over 300 additional generation 2 satellites that should start being deployed later this year.

Blue Origin, a rocket company, plans to launch a constellation of 5,408 TeraWave satellites starting at the end of 2027. The company is promising speeds up to 6 Tbps. The constellation will be comprised of optically connected satellites using both low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO). The satellites will be interconnected using optical lasers. The target market for Blue Origin will be enterprise, data center, and government customers who need a reliable primary or secondary broadband connection. They think their primary market will be in remote, rural, and suburban areas around the world, where the cost of providing diverse fiber paths is too expensive.

Telesat’s Lightspeed satellite business got its start in December 2026 with the launch of its first two satellites. It plans are to launch 157 satellites by the end of 2027, with an ultimate goal of 298. The first 156 satellites will focus on support for NATO and allied nations. After that, the company hopes to be able to provide global coverage for enterprise customers, including the aviation, maritime, energy, and government sectors.

China’s Guowang (the National Network) has launched 164 satellites and has plans to launch 12,992 satellites to compete with Starlink. The company plans to launch 310 satellites in 2026, 900 in 2027, and 3,600 per year starting in 2028. There will be two separate constellations, one at 500 to 600 kilometers and a second around 1,145 km.

Quinfan (also known as Spacesail or G60) is being developed by Shanghai Spacecom Satellite Technology (SSST). The company currently has 108 satellites in polar orbit as part of its first constellation of 648 satellites. The company has announced long-term plans to reach over 15,000 satellites.

Meanwhile, there is another space race happening for companies wanting to provide direct-to-device cellular service. The key players are Lynk Global, Skylo, a partnership between SpaceX and T-Mobile, a partnership between AST SpaceMobile and AT&T/Verizon, and a partnership between Globalstar and Apple.

Edging Closer to Satellite Broadband

A few weeks ago Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched two test satellites that are the first in a planned low-orbit satellite network that will blanket the earth with broadband. The eventual network, branded as Starlink, will consist of 4,425 satellites deployed at 700 miles above earth and another 7,518 deployed at around 210 miles of altitude.

Getting that many satellites into orbit is a daunting logistical task. To put this into perspective, the nearly 12,000 satellites needed are twice the number of satellites that have been launched in history. It’s going to take a lot of launches to get these into the sky. SpaceX’s workhorse rocket the Falcon 9 can carry about ten satellites at a time. They also have tested a Falcon Heavy system that could carry 20 or so satellites at a time. If they can make a weekly launch of the larger rocket that’s still 596 launches and would take 11.5 years. To put that number into perspective, the US led the world with 29 successful satellite launches last year, with Russia second with 21 and China with 16.

SpaceX is still touting this as a network that can make gigabit connections to customers. I’ve read the FCC filing for the proposed network several times and it looks to me like that kind of speed will require combining signals from multiple satellites to a single customer and I have to wonder if that’s practical when talking about deploying this networks to tens of millions of simultaneous subscribers. It’s likely that their standard bandwidth offering is going to be something significantly less.

There is also a big question to me about the capacity of the backhaul network that carry signal to and from the satellites. It’s going to take some major bandwidth to handle the volume of broadband users that SpaceX has in mind. We are seeing landline long-haul fiber networks today that are stressed and reaching capacity. The satellite network will face the same backhaul problems as everybody else and will have to find ways to cope with a world where broadband demand doubles every 3 years or so. If the satellite backhaul gets clogged or if the satellites get over-subscribed then the quality of broadband will degrade like with any other network.

Interestingly, SpaceX is not the only one chasing this business plan. For instance, billionaire Richard Branson wants to build a similar network that would put 720 low-orbit satellites over North America. Telesat has launched two different test satellites and also want to deploy a large satellite network. Boeing also announced intentions to launch a 1,000-satellite network over North America. It’s sounding like our skies are going to get pretty full!

SpaceX is still predicting that the network is going to cost roughly $10 billion to deploy. There’s been no talk of consumer prices yet, but the company obviously has a business plan – Musk want to use this business as the primary way to fund the colonization of Mars. But pricing is an issue for a number of reasons. The satellites will have some finite capacity for customer connections. In one of the many articles I read I saw the goal for the network is 40 million customers (and I don’t know if that’s the right number, but there is some number of simultaneous connections the network can handle). 40 million customers sounds huge, but with a current worldwide population of over 7.6 billion people it’s miniscule for a worldwide market.

There are those predicting that this will be the salvation for rural broadband. But I think that’s going to depend on pricing. If this is priced affordably then there will be millions in cities who would love to escape the cable company monopoly, and who could overwhelm the satellite network. There is also the issue of local demand. Only a limited number of satellites can see any given slice of geography. The network might easily accommodate everybody in Wyoming or Alaska, but won’t be able to do the same anywhere close to a big city.

Another issue is worldwide pricing. A price that might be right in the US might be ten times higher than what will be affordable in Africa or Asia. So there is bound to be pricing differences based upon regional incomes.

One of the stickier issues will be the reaction of governments that don’t want citizens using the network. There is no way China is going to let citizens bypass the great firewall of China by going through these satellites. Repressive regimes like North Kora will likely make it illegal to use the network. And even democratic countries like India might not like the idea – last year they turned down free Internet from Facebook because it wasn’t an ‘Indian’ solution.

Bottom line is that this is an intriguing idea. If the technology works as promised, and if Musk can find the money and can figure out the logistics to get this launched it’s going to be another new source of broadband. But satellite networks are not going to solve the world’s broadband problems because they are only going to be able to help some small limited percentage of the world’s population. But with that said, a remote farm in the US or a village in Africa is going to love this when it’s available.