Company plans to beam free Wi-fi to every person on Earth from space

[Wilikon]

Coinbase, Blockchain.info and Electrum on Android's best news...?



Forget the Internet - soon there will be the OUTERNET: Company plans to beam free Wi-fi to every person on Earth from space
An ambitious project known as Outernet is aiming to launch hundreds of miniature satellites into low Earth orbit by June 2015
Each satellite will broadcast the Internet to phones and computers giving billions of people across the globe free online access
Citizens of countries like China and North Korea that have censored online activity could be given free and unrestricted cyberspace
'There's really nothing that is technically impossible to this'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2552177/Forget-Internet-soon-OUTERNET-Company-plans-beam-free-wi-fi-person-Earth-space.html

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[dank]

So this is beyond the reach of governments?  Sounds great, they need to try and do it sooner though.

[Ekaros]

Physics?

I don't think they are going to get sufficient power in shared band...

[DanielVG]

North Korea will go nuts.  If this will succeed it is more effective than sending an army.

[Rannasha]

So they're assuming that my smartphone/laptop/whatever-device has sufficient power in its transmitter to reach a low earth orbit.

I don't see this working. Because physics.

edit: Ok, I read the article. They plan on providing the service in a one-directional way only. So the satellites broadcast data using UDP and devices can pick this up, but not respond. So it'll not be any more interactive than a worldwide radio broadcast.

[Ekaros]

So they're assuming that my smartphone/laptop/whatever-device has sufficient power in its transmitter to reach a low earth orbit.

I don't see this working. Because physics.

edit: Ok, I read the article. They plan on providing the service in a one-directional way only. So the satellites broadcast data using UDP and devices can pick this up, but not respond. So it'll not be any more interactive than a worldwide radio broadcast.

Someone did some calculations and they didn't look too good for this to work at all.

So I just don't see this happening... You would need to be in middle of desert or other area with very low population. And you probably need a directional atenna. I'm not sure about realistic dimensions and what sort of tracking is needed, because these things do move relatively fast...

[countryfree]

Who will pay for this?

Sorry for asking, but the cost of launching a network of satellites all over the planet is probably in billions.

[Hazir]

Yay! Free invigilation everyone! Join BiG Brother network today! Seriously who will give money on something and does not expect to earn more...

[DanielVG]

Yay! Free invigilation everyone! Join BiG Brother network today! Seriously who will give money on something and does not expect to earn more...

yeah, there's a lot of valuable data that can be collected.  Some people will be connected to this non-stop.

[pungopete468]

Nobody ever does anything for free...

Especially something like this.

[Wilikon]

WHAT IS PROJECT LOON?


We believe it's possible to create a ring of balloons that fly around the globe on the stratospheric winds and provide Internet access to the earth below. Balloons present some really hard science problems, but we're excited about the progress so far.
To learn more, visit: http://google.com/loon.


http://youtu.be/mcw6j-QWGMo