Chapter 3049 Come on, Let's Launch a Satellite Together

In the backyard of Page's house in Palo Alto, Brin stood there with a beer in his hand, the bottle still tilted at a 45-degree angle.

Page, who was grilling, was not much better. He also stared at Feng Yiping blankly, "What did you say?"

"Hey, hey, it's overcooked!" Feng Yiping raised his chin and pointed to the pieces of beef on the grill that were about to burn.

"Oh," Page quickly turned it over a few times, looked at the marinated meat and seafood next to him, and waved to the children, "Dear,"

His wife Lucy looked over, and Page pointed to the grill apologetically, wiped his hands on his apron, and pushed Feng Yiping and Brin into the house, one on each side.

The second oldest child in the group of children said to the oldest child, "Look, Dad must have some new ideas again, hum, and he said he would come to play with us."

Vincent had to comfort his sister, "Amanda, Dad and Uncle Paige have not seen each other for such a long time, so it is inevitable that there will be something to discuss."

Amanda retracted her gaze, frowned and whispered in her brother's ear, "The key is that it is not fun here at all."

It is indeed not fun here, because the children surrounding them are Paige and Brin's children, who are smaller than them.

"No," Vincent touched his sister's head, "It's fun,"

Amanda looked at the little guys around who were still playing with toys. Is it fun here?

She glanced over there angrily again. If you are not allowed to play with mobile phones or tablets, what fun is there in life?

Thinking about the whispers he heard from his father and mother last night, it seems that they are going to give her another brother or sister... God, this life is really unbearable!

…………

In the living room, Feng Yiping looked at Page and Brin, who were full of questions, and said, "Yes, it's a satellite. Is there anything strange about it?"

For them, satellites are really nothing strange.

American companies have always been very enthusiastic about high-end technologies, including satellites. The most successful example among them is Walmart.

In 1983, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, who was not a fan of high-tech, unexpectedly approved a plan to build a satellite system for the company.

This may be another of his most successful decisions. Ten years after the system was built, their sales quickly increased from an annual sales of only US$8.4 billion to US$93.6 billion. Now, more than 20 years later, it has reached more than US$400 billion. Last year, Walmart successfully ranked first among the Fortune 500 with a revenue of US$421.849 billion.

Although this is due to Walmart's efforts in other aspects, such as Walmart's "a network on the ground, a one-stop delivery service, and a tree management", "a star in the sky" is the core and key of Walmart's famous "four ones".

With the industry and scale that Feng Yiping is currently involved in, he can indeed learn from Walmart in this regard.

"It's just that," Page said, "didn't you just propose to Brazil a plan to build an undersea cable from New York to Sao Paulo?"

I just heard that you were going to the sea, and now you want to go to the sky?

"You are also aware of the shortcomings and limitations of these facilities, whether it is terrestrial optical fiber or undersea cable," Feng Yiping said.

Google is indeed aware of this.

Feng Yiping just proposed the plan for the first undersea cable, but Google has already invested in multiple cables, such as the "Unity Cable" that was put into use in 2010.

It is a 9,620-kilometer undersea cable connecting California and Tokyo.

They have invested in and planned to invest in more projects, including several projects with a length of more than 10,000 kilometers.

In terms of terrestrial optical fiber, they are also at the forefront. Because they were dissatisfied with the services provided by communication operators, they launched the Super Broadband Plan as early as 2010.

After hard work, the project will soon be implemented in Kansas. By the end of this year, the project will be completed. By then, they will provide Kansas with broadband services that are more than 10 times the transmission speed of traditional Ethernet. The speed will be at the gigabit level - real gigabit.

It is with Google Fiber that Kansas City has quickly attracted a large number of start-up technology companies to settle down.

Currently, Omaha, Nebraska - the place where Buffett has never moved, and Des Moines, Iowa, hope to join forces with Kansas to build the central United States into an emerging technology company intensive belt.

"Although most of the current network connections come from land and submarine fiber optic cables, the laying of these infrastructures is quite limited, which leads to very low Internet access rates in some areas. High speed in some areas will not reduce the existence of the Internet divide,"

"I am also considering that the plans for balloons and drones launched by our two companies are actually quite limited, and more importantly, the impact will also be very limited,"

"So why don't we consider more effective ways?" Feng Yiping asked them.

"Feng, are you thinking about the reasons for Motorola's failure again recently?" Brin asked.

He asked this question because if Wal-Mart is a representative of the success of satellites, then Motorola is undoubtedly a representative of the failure of satellites.

In the 1980s, mobile phone calls were not so reliable. Once, the wife of Motorola engineer Barry Boettiger complained that she could not contact her customers and friends with her mobile phone while on vacation in the Caribbean.

After this guy who was supposed to be a super strict wife returned home, he and two other engineers from Motorola's satellite communications team working in Arizona came up with an exciting solution: build a wireless phone that can support wireless calls everywhere in the world. global satellite mobile communications system.

They designed a constellation that required a total of 77 satellites. Because it has the same 77 electrons as the metallic element iridium, this plan was called the Iridium satellite project. In the later implementation, due to technical and cost considerations, only 77 electrons were used. 66 satellites.

In 1998, Motorola spent a lot of money to successfully build the Iridium satellite system. However, due to various reasons, including the rapid development of ground communication technology, the project quickly became heavily in debt after its completion. In the end, the Iridium satellite system ended up costing 200 million. They were packaged and sold to the U.S. military at a reduced price.

Motorola alone spent US$3.4 billion on this project. It can be said that Motorola's subsequent decline has a lot to do with the loss of the Iridium project.

Feng Yiping smiled and said, "I have read relevant information, but there are many reasons for the failure of the Iridium project. Moreover, the failure at that time does not mean that it will fail now,"

"We know that satellite communications is not actually a new technology anymore. The problem is that satellite communications and satellite Internet services are expensive and far beyond the reach of the general public."

"The key is, the functionality is still limited,"

At that time, satellites sounded like high-end gadgets, but due to technical limitations, the Internet speed they could provide was actually very slow, and they could not even support online video playback.

But the average daily cost for users may be as high as $200 per day.

"But in recent years, satellite technology has also improved greatly, making satellites smaller and smaller but with better and better functions."

"The rocket recovery systems being developed by Musk's SpaceX, Amazon and other companies can significantly reduce launch costs,"

"Coupled with technologies such as multi-beam antennas, on-board processing, and spectrum multiplexing, as well as new TCP versions and improved TCP acceleration mechanisms, TCP performance based on satellite links has been significantly improved... These have made satellite broadband communications a Reality,"

"I have consulted experts and they believe that it is not a big problem to allow the network to transmit data in a vacuum at close to the speed of light. Therefore, it is completely possible to design satellites that are 50% or more faster than fiber optic cables that can transmit data on the ground. system,"

He concluded, "With the development of broadband satellite communication systems and space networking technology, the Internet has gradually expanded from terrestrial networks to space networks, and satellite communications have gradually entered the Internet application era, which is an irreversible trend."

"Yes," Page also picked up a bottle of beer. "This year can be said to be the first year of Internet satellites."

What he is saying is that OneWeb has announced not long ago that it has launched the world's largest satellite Internet plan, launching 648 satellites to establish a global low-orbit satellite network, and will subsequently launch 2,400 satellites to provide broadband Internet access. Enter service...

Although it seems that they do not have the financial strength to realize such a huge plan, and they have not found reliable investors yet, their plan has indeed attracted the attention of many institutions and companies in this field.

Feng Yiping took out his mobile phone, "Let's not talk about the Internet gap caused by imperfect infrastructure. Let's just say that 99% of intercontinental communications are currently transmitted through submarine cables, while less than 1% are transmitted through satellite systems. %, you can see how much room there is for growth in this field,”

“I have a report here. It may be that in the next few years, the revenue of the satellite broadband industry will only be a few billion dollars. But with the implementation of network planning and changes in consumer Internet habits, after 2020, the industry’s revenue will be only a few billion dollars. Revenue will exceed US$20 billion and is likely to increase to US$50 billion by 2030,”

"We trust your judgment," Page said, "but Feng, at least 1,000 satellites?"

"Yes, at least 1,000," Feng Yiping picked up a strawberry and said lightly, as if he was talking about 1,000 strawberries, "but in the end it may be 2,000, or it may be 3,000,"

"Don't worry," he smiled, "the cost of building such a satellite will not be too high, probably only 500,000 to 1 million US dollars each."

Page looked at Brin and smiled bitterly. One pill is not expensive, but yours is at least 1,000. Plus the launch costs, plus the ground receiving station... How can this be a small project?

"Please," Feng Yiping put his hand on their shoulders, "no one knows better than us what a network with no dead ends and faster network speeds means to the entire industry and the development of our company."

"Think about it, if the optical fiber at home can be connected to space signals, and the download speed can reach 200 MB, and the upload speed can be at least 50 MB... Such ubiquitous satellite signals can also allow your car to be connected to the Internet at any time..."

"That would be, what a wonderful scene!"