Opinion: LEOS loom large – again

According to the spin at the time, Bill Gates was investing and so were several other high profile billionaires, but whether they ever did or whether that was urban myth Internet style, who knows?

Or more importantly who cares enough to go and fact-check it now? AFAIK most went bust and few satellites got launched.

The logic seemed good – rather than launch one satellite right up in outer space at great expense, launch lots for less money and have them whizz by with overlapping footprints.

It was claimed that this was going to make 10c phone calls available to the whole planet.

What seems to have stalled the plans was that it actually cost more than “a little” to launch the things and … Skype.

Yeah, VoIP appeared and gave us 10c phone calls anyway without using any strange satellite system. However, VoIP only works if you have Internet access. And lots of people on planet earth don’t.

Around 3 billion don’t according to, well, the Internet. I’ll wait while you check it and return.

Okay? Now, there’s another push for LEOS emerging and this time it’s backed by Google, which has deep pockets and is running out of eyeballs to fund its advertising-as-revenue modus operandus. Google also has the backing of the bankers at HSBC and broadband behemoth Liberty Global.

The object of their investment is an outfit called O3b, which is an acronym for the “other 3 billion” who don’t have Internet access and are therefore out of reach for Google’s advertisers.

O3b wants to fix this by launching a bunch of LEOS and hooking them into 3G mobile towers. Oh alright, yes there will probably be some benefits for the potential victims, er, recipients of this largesse.

O3b says it will deliver “widespread e-learning, telemedicine and many more enablers to social and economic growth which reflect the true value of the Internet” which can’t be all bad, even if they do have to endure a mountain of Flash advertising in return. But will it fly?

The first LEOS surfaced, so to speak, during the dot-com boom at the turn of the century, and most crashed to earth, at least in the financial sense, and those that continue to fly silently overhead are either not doing very much communicating or are providing relatively high-cost links to places where there really isn’t any other choice.

Think deserts, the Polar Regions and the middle of the oceans. Is there a remote chance that this time the LEOS will finally deliver on their promises?

Or this time next year will they still be spinning in space waiting for the next bunch of bored billionaires looking for ways to turn philanthropic? As they say, watch this space. But look up.

again collaboration large leos loom networking opinion