Bob Larson
A 75-year-old woman, who lived outside the Georgian capitol of Tbilisi hoped to dig up copper wiring to sell for scrap. Instead, she cut through a fiber-optic cable and stopped communications to millions of people in neighboring Armenia staring at blank screens for 12 hours. She had cut off their country’s Internet.
The 2011 incident shows how easily this can happen with underground cables, and those under the sea are even more vulnerable. Every few days, an earthquake or boat anchor damages one of the roughly 430 sea-floor cables. Tonga went offline for nearly two weeks after an underwater cable was cut.
Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos plan to reinvent the Internet and build wireless satellite Internet networks. Amazon CEOJeff Bezos revealed Project Kuiper: a plan to put 3,236 satellites in orbit to provide high-speed Internet across the globe. Bezos finances his own rocket company, Blue Origin, which should secure him a competitive price for the dozens of launches needed for his satellite constellation.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX has just received a clearance to put 12,000 satellites in orbit at various altitudes for his Starlink satellite constellation.
Having Internet beamed from space is more of a priority for isolated areas than it is for cities, where users have fiber optic or cable connections. With satellite constellations, it doesn’t matter where you live. A small two foot dish antenna is all you need to receive high speed broadband Internet from the sky
Regardless of who wins the space race, this is a great use of technology to improve our Internet connectivity to the world!
~ Bob Larson is a technologist and Marketing Director for 50 Plus.