47,000 satellites: Battle of billionaires heats up, how they're going to affect you

SATELLITE SWEEPTAKES. The space-age sweepstakes involves a fascinating, yet breathtakingly, simple idea: knit the world closer together by providing internet access to every nook and cranny, especially in rural and poorer areas. The solution: Use satellites as cell sites. But it’s a complex, challenging system, due to previous attempts that failed commercially.

THE RACE IS ON: There space race is on between the world’s leading billionaires, with a coterie of name-plate companies backing them. It’s Elon Musk vs Jeff Bezos vs Richard Branson.

HIGH-END, HIGH-SPEED DATA SERVICES. In theory, due to their low-Earth orbit, the satellites would give high-end data services — to stock traders and others willing to pay a premium to have a few milliseconds off their transmission times. The satellites should also deliver super-fast internet coverage for regions too poor or remote to attract it on the ground.

LOW-EARTH ORBIT: LEO satellites operate from 500 kilometers (310 miles) to 2,000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Traditional communication satellites are stationed far higher, at roughly 36,000 kilometers: They travel in so-called geosynchronous orbits, moving at the speed of the Earth’s rotation and appearing to float motionless above a fixed point.

LEO ADVANTAGES: A shorter trip is a faster trip. The time needed for data to be sent and returned (called latency) — is lower for LEO satellites than for those farther away. As signals can travel more rapidly through the vacuum of space than through fiber-optic cables, LEO satellites could potentially rival or possibly exceed the fastest ground-based networks.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket inside a hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. With 180 satellites already in space, SpaceX plans to launch its next group of "Starlink" satellites aboard Falcon 9 as soon as Monday, January 20, 2020.

OneWeb has a grand vision — a 700-satellite network that flies 1,200km above the ground to cover the whole world with WiFi signal, including the half of the planet currently without connectivity. With its high throughput — at >1tbps across the constellation — and global coverage, OneWeb promises to transform the lives of those who are currently "underserved", or simply un-served, by web access.

FASTER CONNECTIONS: Most of the current communications satellites are in a geostationary equatorial orbit (altitude: about 36,000 km). A constellation of smaller satellites at low-Earth orbit would make them better positioned to quickly receive and transmit data, as signals can travel more rapidly through the vacuum of space than through fiber-optic cables. LEO satellites could then potentially rival or possibly exceed the fastest ground-based networks.