Less is More

Let's illustrate the range of possibilities of space-based communication. In the words of Dr Daniel Voelsen, a Senior Associate in the Global Issues Research Division at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the global Internet infrastructure will?acquire a whole new dimension.

We started with wires and telegraph poles 180 years ago. The Second World War brought the first disruption with microwave technology, followed by fiber optics. And from there accelerated with microchips. Miniaturization. solar power space-based system Virtualization. The result is Less weight.

Now Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) have the full package.

Telecommunications has mass. Buildings, poles, copper wires, steel towers, mobile sites infrastructure. The digital added submarine cables and data centers. Mass is expensive to put in space. Mass consumes too much energy.

There are 5 million towers in the world, of which,142,000 are in the United States. There are 426,000 tower sites in Europe today. Perhaps ITW Africa 2025 will have a panel: "NTNs in Africa" Chris Davison

To put infrastructure in orbit, we need less mass because in space, mass is expensive. Any concept with better price performance will disrupt the incumbents: Telecoms and the Internet.

The only mass we need is Critical Mass

Towerless, Fiberless, IXPless, Siteless

All the photogenic blasts off of rockets. Return to Earth of the rocket stages. Satellites glowing against the darkness of space. All that is the construction of the new Internet infrastructure right in front of your eyes.

What 5G promised, Non-Terrestrial Networks will deliver. Private networks. Possible 6G architecture concepts that enable the native integration of satellites.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Knopp, Chair and Professor, Research Center SPACE, University of the Bundeswehr Munich talks about possible 6G architecture concepts that enable the native integration of satellites. talks about possible 6G architecture concepts that enable the native integration of satellites?

THE ECOSYSTEM

How can we get critical mass?

OTT

Telcos will provide the critical LTE spectrum and serve as roaming partners with the local operators

ISPs

IXPs Data transfer between the three constellations takes place at Planetary Exchange Points (PXPs)

Inter-Satellite Communication: optical inter-satellite link (OISL) architectures will be the backbone in space.

The good thing about this is: There are no political borders in space

Peering with Starlink

Starlink has an open peering policy, subject to certain technical, commercial, and legal requirements.

Users with specific engineering requirements can peer with Starlink over internet exchange points IXPs where Starlink peers.

IXPs are located in the Starlink points-of-presence (PoPs) and the IXP peering LAN and route servers can facilitate interconnection directly to your network

Fiberless edge data centers backhauled by optical satellite links

Just staying with Africa. The Sahel region, from Mauritania, all the way, to Djibouti has the right climate across the landlocked countries. And so does Southern Africa. All countries in this region can quickly deploy containerized edge data centers, that have everything that data centers have in African coastal cities. All backhauled by Lasercoms. Fiberless.

What we know about the bandwidth of LEO satellites

In recent news reports, Starlink representatives claimed that individual Starlink satellites can reach a data throughput of 17 Gbit/s. If Starlink were to station 10,000 satellites, this would theoretically lead to an overall data transfer capacity between the satellites and users on Earth of 170,000?Gbit/s, or 170?Tbit/s. In the event of a full deployment of the planned 48,000 satellites, this capacity would rise to 816?Tbit/s.

To put these numbers into perspective: the recently announced Facebook-owned submarine cable “2Africa” that connects the entire African continent with Europe is supposed to have a transfer capacity of 180?Tbit/s.

In March 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis in Europe, the Internet Exchange Point (IXP) DE-CIX in Frankfurt reported a new world record of data throughput amounting to 9?Tbit/s.

Imagine countries spending billions to rip and replace Chinese gear just to have the Chinese constellations delivering service from orbit.

How does a tech revolution start: Proof of Concepts. Gains momentum. Achieves critical mass, then takes over. It is never a forklift.

People won't get it until it booms. In 1989 I was working in Nigeria. But was curious about the nascent mobility. Visiting friends in Canada Asked people. Will mobile communications take over?

"Nah. It is too expensive. It is only for the Yuppies. Bankers and lawyers."

Same year. I asked my Siemens colleagues in Munich. "This is something that t will deployed in the city centers. Airports. Maybe rich neighborhoods. Then it will be over."

One year later I wrote an article for the first computer magazine in Nigeria: "Computers in Africa". There I explained that Iridium's recently launched had the potential to revolutionize telecoms in Africa. But it turned out the device was way too expensive. Mobility took off only when this was solved with GSM and the cheap devices.

This time is different: The beauty of NTNs is that they connect directly to an off-the-shelf cellphone, potentially eliminating the need for bulky satellite phones.

How do we know the time is right? When the incumbents are under pressure.

The continent's six major operators-Airtel Africa, Axian Telecom, Ethio Telecom, MTN, Orange , and Vodacom- are leading the charge, joining forces to forge closer collaborations with governments.

These operators have been complaining they can no longer invest, alone, to carry data traffic over the terrestrial mobile networks. They need tech majors to contribute to the CAPEX. These complaints will get louder once NTNs take off.

The African Big 6 terrestrial mobile networks should not fight the trend, The trend is their friend. Did it happen before? Yes. Take the fixed line operators for example.

When GSM started,, fixed operators were leasing space in towers. Selling copper pairs to backhaul sites, carrying voice traffic, and selling capacity on their submarine cables. They didn't stop there. These fixed-line operators bought licenses and created their MNOs too.

When the internet kicked off, fixed-line operators discovered a gold mine. Dial-up Internet. They quickly expanded their already overloaded telephone switches with fax traffic, to carry dial-up modem traffic.

Next came ADSL and fixed-line operators transformed a product that generated $5 in revenue into a product that generated $20. We may see some of these quick side-step dances for terrestrial mobile operators to capitalize on NTNs.

If you cannot beat them, join them.

“Satellite constellations are great” AT&T’s CEO John Stankey has praised AST SpaceMobile in an interview on CNBC, saying: "Satellite communications are going to be great" People are going to have always on connectivity, and there will be no more [dead spaces] and this is why we are doing what we are doing with AST which will make sure that your device can be connected no matter where you are"

This time is the MNOs turn to capitalize on the new NTNs

According to GSMA Intelligence, 91 individual operators representing approximately 5 billion connections globally (60% of the total mobile market have formed partnerships ith satellite operators

AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have entered into a definitive agreement, extending until 2030, to provide their first full space-based broadband network directly to devices (mobile phones).

Safaricom PLC Partners with AST SpaceMobile to Compete with Starlink’s Presence in Kenya

CMC Networks s has added Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite connectivity to its portfolio of solutions.

SpaceX and T-Mobile 's Starlink-Based Satellite Cell Coverage Moves One Step Closer

Starlink to be a ‘formidable competition’ for airtel -backed Eutelsat OneWeb , says Sunil Mittal

Redundancy and diversity cost money. All players saved on CAPEX by routing all traffic via submarine cables and didn't build the terrestrial alternative routes that could have provided redundancy and diversity. The bill arrived -as it always does- with the submarine cable cuts along the coast of Africa from August 2023 to June 2024. NTNs will take over as technologically redundant connectivity and slowly take over from there.

All that lip service paid to connect the unconnected. All that money collected as Universal Service Funds didn't make a dent in the unconnected. NTN operators should go to governments to invest those funds into NTNs to provide access to the unconnected.

In the US "the FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF), which has invested over $25 billion since 2008, to encourage investment in high-cost and rural broadband, both fixed and mobile." But they still need more funding.

In the United States the billions granted to provide broadband to remote areas can move to NTNs. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $65 billion to ensure every American has access to affordable, reliable high-speed Internet through a historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment. To put this into perspective, only 81 countries have a GDP bigger than $65 billion. NTNs can end the American gravy train of funding for broadband that never achieves its original purposes.