- il y a 2 jours
Multi-Orbit Connectivity from Space – a new frontier for innovation
Catégorie
🤖
TechnologieTranscription
00:00Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada
00:04Thank you Julia, Marie, and Claire.
00:08A refreshing panel filled with such empowering women.
00:12Thank you.
00:13Now the space boom we're currently seeing right now
00:16is due to the fact that everything is getting more cost efficient.
00:19This means that everything we put in outer space
00:23is getting lighter, smaller,
00:26and easier to place in orbit without taking that much energy and power.
00:33So in our next panel, we'll explore the two orbits
00:37where we are placing satellites with new technology
00:40and we'll also explore its differences.
00:44This will be all about optimizing and maximizing connectivity.
00:49We'll first hear from Sunila Bartimittal,
00:53Chairman from the Bartimittal Group.
00:54We'll hear also from Eva Bernicke, CEO of Autosats.
01:01And this session will be moderated by journalist Jeremy Wilkes from Euronews.
01:06Jeremy, he knows the topic all too well,
01:11so I'm sure he will be perfect to moderate this discussion.
01:14I'll hand it over to you.
01:38We're switching gears to the business of space.
01:42It's going to be a really interesting session.
01:44I think Sunil, you have a keynote speech you're going to give us.
01:47Would you just like to go ahead?
01:49The floor is yours.
01:51Thank you very much, Jeremy.
01:52A very good afternoon to all of you.
01:55Delighted to be back here at VivaTech,
01:58a place which I've been coming here for the last several years.
02:01Today I stand in front of you with a different hat,
02:05that of the chairman of OneWeb and the largest shareholder of the company,
02:10which is in the final throes of getting merged into Utilsat,
02:15where Eva, who will be talking about the combination of GeoLeo,
02:20will be taking command of this joint asset.
02:25I come from the world of telecommunications.
02:28My company Airtel has about 500 million customers in India
02:32and 14 countries in Africa.
02:35We have been building networks for the last over 23 years,
02:39yet we have not been able to cover the entire globe.
02:44The holy grail of our industry has been how to connect those
02:48who have been left behind.
02:49And mind you, many have been left behind.
02:52There are over 2.5 billion people
02:54who today do not have access to a high-quality internet.
02:59And they are really being deprived of opportunities
03:01that all of us take for granted.
03:04Come Leo, and that is where we started to see
03:08some dramatic shifts and developments.
03:12And for the first time, there was a hope
03:15that we will be able to do what the terrestrial networks
03:18have not been able to do.
03:20I was part of the original founding team of OneWeb
03:24before I stepped out and stepped again in 2020 July
03:28to take this company forward.
03:30And if some of you recall, last year when I was here,
03:33we had a serious crisis in OneWeb
03:35because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
03:39Our last 200 satellites were stranded
03:41of not having been launched.
03:43I am pleased to inform you that OneWeb network
03:47is now fully in space with 634 satellites in position in space now.
03:56Orbiting the globe at 1,200 kilometers,
03:5912 planes of 49 satellites,
04:01each delivering high-speed coverage
04:03to every square inch of the world.
04:07Look at the power of this constellation.
04:09You can raise your hand anywhere in the globe.
04:12How deep or remote you may be, you can be connected.
04:16That is the power of a Leo constellation
04:19which provides a global coverage.
04:22Our eminent and leading competitor, Starlink,
04:25is doing the same.
04:26He's at 450 kilometers with a lot more satellites.
04:30That's what you need when you are lower in the orbit.
04:32And he's also trying to cover the entire globe.
04:35But OneWeb has already done that
04:37by being present now everywhere.
04:40We are signing feverishly with partners across the globe.
04:43Mostly enterprise companies, system integrators,
04:46but importantly telecom companies.
04:49We have our network operations center in the UK,
04:52in London and in Virginia, just outside Washington DC.
04:55These are the satellite flying centers
04:57and also controlling the entire security
05:01of our satellite constellation.
05:0443 gateways and about two dozen POPs
05:08are being installed across the globe.
05:1030 ground stations are up and running
05:11and the rest are being feverishly built as well.
05:14We are moving to a time of compact antennas now.
05:18And if you will see what we are putting out,
05:23there is our new edge antennas.
05:28Oh, this is stuck here.
05:33Yeah, here we go.
05:34This is the range of user terminals
05:37that we now have at our service to our customers.
05:40They are highly efficient GeoLeo terminals.
05:43The first time anybody has produced a combination
05:46of GeoLeo terminals.
05:47It's easy to install.
05:49They are industrial grade.
05:51They are high powered throughput terminals.
05:53You can put them on our aircraft for aviation services
05:57or in maritime on the boats and cruise liners.
06:00You can put them into critical installations, oil fields.
06:04Importantly for defense and mission critical application,
06:08you have specialized antennas.
06:10And if you see from the bottom third,
06:12is a man pack which you can carry on your back
06:15and go wherever you, however remote or deep you want to go.
06:19All these are capable of providing upwards of 100 to 150 Mbps speeds.
06:27Importantly 30, 35 milliseconds of latency.
06:30In the GeoSatellite, the problem that we always had
06:33was the latency which was at 560 milliseconds.
06:36And this has been solved in the Leo constellation.
06:42There are some very good testimonials that are coming through.
06:45The service has been operational in Canada, in Alaska,
06:49in Greenland, in Northern Europe.
06:51And we are truly changing lives of communities,
06:55helping the government reach those areas
06:57which have never been reached before.
06:59Ladies and gentlemen, this was a dream some years back.
07:03Today I can tell you from the real live pilots
07:08that have been going on
07:09and some commercial applications in these countries,
07:13I can tell you with great confidence
07:14and the telecom provider of over 25 years,
07:18the solution for connecting the entire world has finally arrived.
07:24The world is going to go more and more towards satellite communication.
07:28Our Gen 2, which will start to take place in 26, 27 onwards,
07:33will add more capacity, will add more features.
07:36Just like you see the mobile networks moving from 4G to 5G and beyond,
07:40you will start to see these satellite networks doing exactly that.
07:44In closing, enterprise customers, government customers,
07:49cellular backhaul and remote communities
07:52are all going to be customers of Leo connectivity.
07:56We hope that by the time we will take assembles next year,
08:01this will be providing coverage and services to the entire globe.
08:05Thank you very much.
08:09Thank you, Samir.
08:12So it's happening.
08:13It's not just a, we plan to do this.
08:16Those satellites are up there already.
08:17Can you just break down for us, Eva,
08:19exactly why a low Earth orbit and a geostationary orbit,
08:23combining those two is an interesting thing to do.
08:26Why would you do that?
08:27What's the cool stuff you can do with those two kinds of satellites?
08:32So as Sunil was saying,
08:34the Leo satellites provides the big advantage of a low latency,
08:39which pretty much means that when you use the Leo orbit
08:42or the low orbit satellites, you get into an experience
08:46which is similar to what you get with terrestrial networks.
08:49You don't really notice a delay as you do with the geosatellites.
08:54To use stationary satellites, add those five to six hundred milliseconds,
08:59which at least for some use cases, if you're gaming, if you're on teams,
09:04if you use various types of SaaS software in your company,
09:07is actually prohibitive.
09:09So by combining the two, we can get the best of two worlds.
09:13Because the big advantage of Leo,
09:15and with today's new modern software-based geostationary satellites,
09:19we can actually provide big chunks of capacity
09:23and concentrate them in fewer places.
09:25So think about a way to set the latency sensitive,
09:30gaming, net banking, teams on the low latency Leo network.
09:36But as soon as you switch to maybe Facebook or Netflix,
09:39we'll set that, because it requires big capacity,
09:42we'll send it to a geosatellite.
09:44Because that way you'll get your download,
09:47it will not disturb the use of the Leo cases.
09:50So by combining the two...
09:51I at home won't see any difference.
09:52There won't be a moment when I feel,
09:54oh no, we just switched between Leo and Geo.
09:56That's what we're in a trial.
09:57We trialled with NATO not so far ago,
10:00and you actually don't notice it.
10:01You don't notice this switch between it.
10:03Yes, for the download it might take a little bit longer,
10:06that half second longer on the Geo network,
10:09but for big chunks of film and other things,
10:13I think we're getting used to that,
10:14because that's even the case on normal networks.
10:17So you won't notice it, you'll have a seamless experience.
10:20But we also need to bring this into a single terminal.
10:23Today you need two terminals and two antennas,
10:25and over time we want to bring this into one seamless product.
10:29One box in my home or in my government institution or whatever.
10:33As far as I've understood your business plan
10:35is much more towards the government customers,
10:39administrations, et cetera, is it?
10:41There are actually several use cases.
10:43Sunil pointed to some of them which are clearly connected,
10:47unconnected villages, enterprises,
10:51whether it's mines or whether it's oil fields.
10:54But it's clear that SATCOM has always been a big use
10:57in military and governmental business.
10:59So there's clearly also a segment of the market
11:02that's linked to military and governmental use.
11:05There's a big chunk of the segment which is linked to mobility.
11:10So the cool time where you were deconnected on an airplane,
11:14those are going to be gone.
11:15You can actually work on the airplanes.
11:17That might be bad news for some of us.
11:19That's the good and the bad news,
11:20is you'll be connected on the plane.
11:21And when you're trained to Brussels,
11:23I hope we'll be able to provide you with a team quality internet.
11:27Because mobility is another big chunk
11:29where of course the fixed network has a little bit of a challenge.
11:33Sunil, where do you see the growth geographically on our planet?
11:37I mean, Europe's a pretty connected place,
11:39although it does drop off when I get the trend between Paris and Brussels.
11:42But where is the growth, do you think,
11:45in this kind of connectivity?
11:47Is it everywhere?
11:48Where's growth?
11:49Where is the growth?
11:50The growth, as I said, first of all,
11:53there is a very large communities which are uncertain.
11:56And the critical needs which, as Eva described,
11:59the geo-networks cannot fulfill.
12:01They can complement, but they cannot fulfill those needs.
12:05Take the case of critical applications, mission critical,
12:08where you have to send real-time data.
12:10You just can't do it over a geo-network.
12:14Just to give you a small example, fighter jets up there scrambling,
12:18they need real-time communication.
12:19You can only do it through a low-latency application.
12:23Teams call, a very critical call that has to happen in a remote place in Canada,
12:28which doesn't have fiber or a 5G network.
12:31How do you do it?
12:31You can only do it through a 30 millisecond, 35 millisecond low-latency type of services.
12:38Demand is there.
12:39We're already signing up massive capacities of take-or-pay in many, many countries,
12:44including my own country in India.
12:46India, we have covered 96% of the population, and it's 1.4 billion people.
12:51Yet in terms of geography, we are only talking about less than 70%.
12:56Entire Himalayas, forests, deserts in Rajasthan are all uncovered,
13:02and there are small communities and critical applications.
13:05Oil fields, minerals, mines, they need all these capacities.
13:10And the total capacity, mind you, on satellite networks are not huge.
13:15Take the case of OneWeb, we have about 1.4 tbps capacity globally.
13:21So it's not a huge capacity, it will go very quickly.
13:25I understand that we want to be connected, and we want to be connected everywhere.
13:30But why is it that it's better to be using a possibly unreliable rocket,
13:36we know they do occasionally explode, and then spending a lot of money on it,
13:42spending a lot of money on building your satellites,
13:43when you could be building terrestrial networks that could kind of do a similar kind of thing?
13:48Or am I misunderstanding it? Are they both actually going to work together?
13:52Yes, I think the important thing is that where you have a chance cost-effectively
13:57to build a terrestrial network, you're not going to launch it into space.
14:02Where you cannot do that, you will not do it, whether it's the Himalayas,
14:05because there it's almost as expensive of building terrestrial as just launching into space,
14:09on the oceans, for connecting whether it's cruise ships or more commercial maritime,
14:15there are a lot of places where the terrestrial network will not reach.
14:19And that's where satellite becomes super interesting, because it is ambiguous global coverage.
14:26And let me add to that, I have 200,000 base stations in India, 200,000 towers, I'm sorry,
14:33a million base stations, 200,000 towers, we have 50,000 towers in Africa,
14:38that's a lot of carbon footprint, there's a lot of electricity going into it,
14:42and we just cover our own areas.
14:46With 588 base stations and towers in the space, I'm covering the whole globe.
14:52Operating cost is very low, there is no carbon footprint being left.
14:56Look at the advantages you're doing.
14:58If I have to cover the whole globe with a radio terrestrial network,
15:01you're talking about millions and millions of towers,
15:04and yet there are places like ocean and mountains you can never reach in.
15:09Why is it that you're going for this LEO and GEO approach, though,
15:12and the others aren't?
15:14Because Amazon Kuiper is not doing it, SpaceX aren't doing it.
15:17Is it because they can't, because they haven't got the right kinds of satellites in GEO?
15:21Well, part of it is because a lot of them have actually started with a pure LEO approach,
15:27a simple network.
15:28I guess you can compare it to just rolling out 5G everywhere,
15:32which is definitely an approach.
15:33You actually see several GEO players dabbling in a different type of networks.
15:38Telesat has had a project with LEO for a long time.
15:41SES in Luxembourg have a slightly higher LEO project for some time.
15:46So everybody's asking themselves, how can we actually address this market of LEO?
15:50And I think all GEO satellite operators today are realizing that they need to be able to propose to their
15:56customers
15:57some low latency solutions.
15:58And that's discussions we have with quite a few of them.
16:01Is there enough of a market actually for the number of players that are trying to get into this?
16:07Because as I say, you're not alone.
16:09Is there a good business case?
16:11Because connecting a few Canadians or Alaskans is nice,
16:14but I don't think you can run a business on that.
16:17Yeah.
16:18See, that question is a single question where I get literally no pushback whatsoever from any investor.
16:24The market for connectivity is there.
16:27Is it going to be, we estimate relatively conservatively around 16 billion, 1, 6 billion in 2030?
16:36Other estimations are multiples of that.
16:39But nobody questions the need for connectivity everywhere and the willingness to pay for it.
16:44It's just a question of how fast and how big can it get.
16:46And that's about us to supply the capacity for it.
16:50What's the biggest growth area do you think then?
16:53Because I guess we all agree that we know we're going to need more data.
16:56Is it governments actually where you see the most potential?
17:01I think right now we're seeing a lot of growth in mobility.
17:05Of course, some of that is post-COVID us, but mobility, whether it's aero or maritime, has a super rapid
17:12growth.
17:12A lot of interest actually from Telcos, as Sunil was saying,
17:15because this gives an option for potentially backhaul from mobile masks that would not be profitable
17:22because of the fiber connection out there.
17:25And I think we'll see the governments coming back fairly strongly in a slightly slower purchasing process,
17:30figuring out how exactly they can use it.
17:32But I think we all know that at least European militaries will probably be starting to think about
17:37how they can use Satcom a little bit more going forward.
17:40Sunil, can I get your thoughts on that, on the biggest growth areas?
17:43Yeah, so I mean if you look at the world, divide the population,
17:47if you say five billion are connected today by hundreds of operators,
17:51and the two billion plus which are yet to be connected,
17:54can they be served by three or four strong broadband satellite players?
17:58The answer is obviously yes.
18:00Just by connecting those people by three or four constellations would be a game changer.
18:05But what Eva mentioned is very important.
18:08As a telecom company, my customers when they ask me to connect the entire network
18:12that they have across the country, many a times there are parts that I can't cover.
18:17We go with a reset approach into islands, into deserts, which are very, very poor in service.
18:24So now I have it in my back pocket.
18:26I connect through fiber, I connect through 4G, 5G network, or I connect through a Leo terminal.
18:32So I can tell a customer, you're fully covered, just leave it with me.
18:35So every telecom company can choose that option.
18:38And by the way, if the customer insists he wants a 5G network, you plonk a tower and you backhaul
18:44it through Leo,
18:45which I could never do before.
18:47So if I am, for example, in the desert, looking for some great connectivity,
18:52I would have to have the specific terminal then fitted to my vehicle or with me, right, to make it
18:58work.
18:58You recently did some testing with NATO. Can you talk to us about that? Because it's interesting.
19:05A Geo antenna and a Leo antenna, this was a military-style antenna, fitted on the roof of a Range
19:11Rover.
19:12So this one was driving around and actually achieving around 195 megabit download while driving around.
19:20And that's the kind of service when we actually show what you can do with that, which is well-functioning
19:26team calls,
19:27big downloads of files of one gigabit, where militaries get, oh, this is actually something I really can use for
19:33it.
19:34Of course, there's a fighter jet that also needs amounts of capacity coming from,
19:37but this is actually a true broadband experience fitted on the roof of a military vehicle.
19:43Yeah, so let me add, you know, you have a number of flights coming into JFK or Charles de Gaulle
19:48suddenly.
19:50Leos will not be able to serve the capacity at a single place with so much demand.
19:54That's the time when you combine the Geo immediately.
19:57You do, you know, uplink through a Leo and you bring in a lot of download,
20:01which is not mission critical in terms of latency through a Geo.
20:05That creates a ton of extra capacity. So the complementarity between the two is fabulous.
20:09I want to talk about sustainability, but let's quickly just talk about another kind of key word that government institutions
20:16like to talk about,
20:17which is resiliency. How do you make this system resilient?
20:21Make sure that it's always on, it's always going to deliver what the customer wants.
20:26And resiliency is super important, but multiple network also gives you that.
20:32Multiple network gives you that. The Leo system is in it by itself more resilient because there are many more
20:37satellites.
20:39And I have asked the question sometimes, what if somebody shoots down one of your satellites?
20:43Well, I can, the 650 satellites is actually 20% over provision. So in it by itself, it's fairly resilient.
20:51That needs to go away more than 20% of the satellites before it actually starts not providing the same
20:57service.
20:58It's a little bit different with the Geo satellite because it, but it's much further out.
21:02So it's a bit more protected as a space environment for it. But just the fact of having the two
21:07where you can reroute over an alternative network.
21:11And when you look a little bit further, we will also start to see what we call inter-satellite links,
21:16where the traffic is actually rooted between satellites rather than coming down to earth and going into the internet.
21:22So I think that will give you a much more resilient system in general.
21:25Okay, yeah, because that's talked about, isn't it?
21:28Yes.
21:28To have those conversations between the satellites as well.
21:31You are sending a lot of satellites into space, not as many as SpaceX have been doing.
21:36Amazon Kuiper are going to start doing so as well.
21:38They were talking to me this morning about sustainability and how much that's built in to what they're doing.
21:44Just talk to us about OneWeb and sustainability.
21:46End of life of these satellites, how does that work out?
21:50What happens to them?
21:51How often are you replacing them, et cetera?
21:54Sustainability is a big issue when you work in space, which is by definition not a super climate-friendly sector.
22:01However, number of satellites counts, right?
22:04Number of launches and satellite counts.
22:06And there, as you say, we have around 650.
22:08There's multiple of thousands in SpaceX.
22:12The second one that counts is also how do you clean up after yourself when you have satellites that don't
22:17work?
22:17And I think that's where we're looking for some regulation.
22:21And regulation is starting to come also in LEO space.
22:25In the geostationary, there's been regulation for a long time.
22:27So there's a nice graveyard for geosatellites where we park them when they kind of go to sleep.
22:33In LEO, we need some kind of regulation and it's starting to come now.
22:37So how do we steer them into the atmosphere so they burn up on entry, which is a typical way
22:43of getting rid of trash in LEO?
22:45But there needs to be some regulation.
22:47And I think it is one of the big topics that we need to have alignment with, especially with the
22:51U.S.,
22:52because that's where a lot of this is going on.
22:55Yeah, so I would add to that.
22:56It's a very good question because, in the end, we have to be responsible citizens as well.
23:01One web was designed from day one with that particular thing in mind.
23:05Number of satellites were always 650, which is a tolerable level for any level of constellation,
23:12which has spare satellites included in that.
23:15The design of the network was such that you could bring the satellite down safely.
23:20The material used in the satellite has been, you know, engineered from day one to burn out when you bring
23:25it back into the, you know, de-orbit them.
23:28There's a grappling device on each satellite, so when you have to get them off through, you know, debris collection
23:34devices, it's very easy to do it.
23:37So all these things have been very well thought through.
23:39And out of our satellites that we have put up, four satellites had some issues, and they have been safely,
23:44you know, dealt with, you know.
23:46That part is very important that the regulations do not allow a space grab, if I may use the term,
23:53by people who want to put 10,000, 20,000 satellites out there.
23:57That could be a risky proposition.
23:58Yeah, we have to be responsible about that.
24:00Final question before we wrap up.
24:02Just paint us a picture of how you imagine using OneWeb in the future, because services are going to start
24:09happening.
24:09What's the thing that's going to change for you now that you've got this system and it's going to start
24:15working soon?
24:17Well, what I see today is that there's not a single operator of connectivity around the world who does not
24:24want to talk to us.
24:25Whether it's a telco that needs it for the last holes in the network, whether it's mobility operators that need
24:32it for their cruise ships or maritime,
24:34whether it's air carriers that need it for their flights, there are very few who are not super curious about
24:41that.
24:42And that's a fantastic place to be in, because that curiosity is going to drive new use cases.
24:47We will have use cases both in military, in mobility, in fixed broadband, and then I think we are opening
24:54up also for connecting other things and people.
24:56Imagine connecting objects in a totally different way, whether it's cars, whether it's vessels that are digitized and sailing by
25:04itself.
25:04That's the kind of use cases that I think we're just starting to dream about.
25:08Sonil, a final thought from you. One use case that you think is a real kind of killer app?
25:14The killer use case.
25:15Killer app. Look, let's be honest, the most powerful position that we are giving from Leo is high speed, low
25:22latency broadband connectivity.
25:24You can imagine the use cases. The world has brought up so many killer applications on the back of 5G,
25:314G, fiber.
25:32We are giving you the same quality of service in places where you could never imagine or hope to have
25:38before.
25:39That's a killer application. Do what you can to do with it.
25:42And I think there are smarter people out here who are going to devise propositions which will ably use this
25:48great facility that we are offering.
25:52Hey, Bert, Sonil, thanks very much for that fascinating conversation.
25:55Thank you.
25:56Thank you.
25:58Thank you.
25:58.
Commentaires