Connect Everyone, Everywhere. How Cell-Towers-in-Space will Change the Way we Communicate
We’ve all had that moment where we take our phone out to make that all important call and see the dreaded ‘no-service’. For many of us this is just a temporary interruption to our day but for over 3 billion people this is a regular occurrence. Building the infrastructure on the ground to cover these areas is prohibitive due to these mainly being in remote locations. This is where the cell-tower-in- space comes into play. A LEO constellation that allows for worldwide service.
At the forefront of bringing this to reality is Lynk and I recently talked to Charles Miller, Co-founder and CEO to find out more on the technology behind this.
Q: Firstly, congratulations on your recent successful test in the Philippines
A: Thank you, we’ve been working on it for a while.
Q: So far you’ve demonstrated an SMS being sent, will your technology also allow call and data packages to be used?
A: We are going to start with messaging. Our technology supports data today. The only reason we are starting with SMS is because there is so much demand. When you are starting with a few satellites and there are hundreds of thousands, millions trying to get onto your network, they just swamp your satellite. The way to serve the most number of people when we start launching
satellites and start providing service is to do what is called low erlang traffic which is messaging. Your providing the highest value for the limited capacity you have and serving the most number of people that you absolutely can. So you start with messaging until you get enough capacity and just flip the switch once you have enough to start doing data.
Q: As you launch more satellites and as your constellation is growing, that’s when you can flip the switch and allows some calls / data go through?
A: Absolutely, and if you take it from the perspective of the end user, until you get around 1000 satellites, you don’t get continuous services. We’ve taken the satellites down in LEO, much lower than Iridium or Globalstar, so you have a much better link budget and much higher speeds. And if you’re thinking VOIP or broadband data, it really sucks if you can only do it for 3 minutes every 15 minutes or hour. But if you’re doing messaging, it’s asymmetrical because you just put the message in the outbox and then the satellite comes over and send the message and downloads your messages. That’s actually quite a good service. For many people that’s how they use messaging today, you
know there is going to be some delay but it’s going to get there. We send a message to a friend or family member, forget about it, look at our phone an hour later and see that we have a response.
Q: Where do you see being your main markets for the direct-to-satellite connection?
A: We’ve planning to serve worldwide, we’re spending more time in areas that have more dis- connectivity, so planning deals in Asia, Latin America, Africa, where there is a lot of demand but there is also interest in North America. Europe is coming but is a lower priority as they have pretty good connectivity and the same for Japan and South Korea. We think eventually that everyone wants this service. When the tsunami or hurricanes hits and it takes out the network, this becomes an instant backup.
Q: Do you have a timeline on when you will launch your service and what market will you start in?
A: We have 27 commercial contracts today. We can’t start them all at once, so prioritizing certain ones. I don’t want to announce today, but we are shooting for this Spring. Part of this is driven by MNO’s. At a later date, we will announce who we are going to start with.
Q: How would people access your service once available, do you plan to do direct to consumer or would this be something that the MNO’s offer as part of their packages?
A: Our plan is never to go direct to consumer. We think MNO’s are great partners and we want to be a great partner for them.
Q: Can you share any details on the cost of this service, traditional Sat Phones are notoriously expensive to make call from, does Lynk aim to make this more affordable?
A: Absolutely, but this is down to our MNOs. Some might offer a ’try it for 30 days for free’, ‘try 100 messages for free’. There are really two business models we are signing up. Some of them are doing a revenues share, with a minimum amount per message and the MNO will offer as a premium service, which we’ll let them price as they see appropriate for their market. The other model is that the MNO wants to give away the service to all their existing customers / premium customers and then we charge them a usage rate. Those customers will probably sign up as it looks free to them, we will get our ‘revenue per message’. We don’t know which one will be the best business model, we are letting MNO’s decide which way they want to go and we will have an experiment on a global scale.
Q: Given the recent products from Apple that contain direct-to-satellite capabilities in the US, along with Qualcomm & Samsung showing interest in bring this to future products, do you see this impacting your business?
A: Not at all, both of these are great validation of the value. We started working on this years ago, and people asked, “is this really a big thing?” This now put the question off the table. Everybody can see how this is a really big, powerful technology saving lives as well as connecting the unconnected commercially. But the services that Apple is providing with Globalstar and Qualcomm, if they get Android handset manufacturers, through Iridium is the tip of the nose of what is possible. The key thing to understand is it is great that they are doing this, and these things will save lives, but these solutions do not have the ability to scale and serve the real needs.
Apple and Globalstar are only one way. It takes around 20 seconds to send the emergency message and you may have doubt in your mind if it got through. You might buy a phone that has it enabled but it is very limited and Apple can’t charge people for the emergency messaging service. The Iridium & Qualcomm service is a little bit better. It has two way communications, and are going to be able to have first responders go back to the person and send directions that might save your life. It still will be extremely limited capacity, due to do the amount of commercial SMS messaging that people want. Because there is limited capacity, about 10MHz spectrum, and they already have a bunch of customers, including the DOD, they are going to have to charge a premium service for the messages. It will be a great business for Iridium, and they are probably going to charge dollars per SMS because if the charge 25c per SMS it is going to swamp their network.
Both of these do not provide what this type of service really needs - to connect billions of people for SMS everywhere. And when I say billions, there are 3 billion each year who have a phone who have an extended period of dis-connectivity and another billion that purchase their first phone. For the average person, messaging is the most used app on their phone, and they do many dozens of messages a day. So if you take a billion times by dozens of messages a day, you can get a feeling about what the capacity is needed to make this work across the world and neither Iridium or Globalstar are there, so that is what Lynk are doing. We have designed for this from the beginning when the company was started in 2017 that we are going to provide broadband directly to everyone’s phone everywhere, all the time.
Q: There are several companies also attempting to offer a similar service to you, what makes Lynk unique in this market?
A: We are the only company with proven technology, the only ones with the key patents, and the only ones with a commercial license to do direct-to-mobile phone. There are other companies talking about it or attempting it, but none are at the same point as Lynk. That’s the difference between a company that started in 2015 and started seriously in 2017 and a company that has jumped in the last year.
Q: Can you provide an update on the launch schedule for your Satellites?
A: We are planning on launching more this year and ramping up quickly to scale this over the next several years to where we eventually launch 5000 satellites. There is a very detailed plan on exactly that, and it is only limited by financing.
For more information on Lynk and how they are changing the way we connect, visit www.lynk.world