Becoming the richest man starts with making complaints

Cao Shen never forgot that he had to educate himself. 6̳̳

Obviously, what I want to do is definitely "online" education.

Well, the prerequisite is that there must be a network.

Even if the system has super compression capabilities, it is useless without a network.

For education, Cao Shen can provide terminal equipment with his own money.

However, infrastructure like the Internet really cannot be built by oneself.

Firstly, there is not enough money, and secondly, there is no policy permission.

It is basically impossible to expect operators to build it.

After all, operators are enterprises and pay attention to profits and costs.

Let them build websites and networks in vast remote mountainous areas and maintain them for a long time. This kind of thing can be done by just doing a few face-saving projects, but if it is to achieve full coverage and be easy to use, they will never do it!

After all, it is a market economy, and the state cannot act according to the operator's lead in this regard.

The state can subsidize the construction of websites, but the large maintenance costs in the later period are far higher than the initial investment for remote areas.

Long-term subsidies are unrealistic.

Nowadays, high-quality education is a scarce resource, and wealthy people can spend money to get it.

The more remote and poor the place, the poorer the educational resources.

This creates a vicious cycle: poor people cannot receive a good education, and become poorer and poorer from generation to generation!

Cao Shen is engaged in education, not to provide the icing on the cake for the rich.

He wants everyone to have equal access to high-quality educational resources!

This matter cannot be pushed from the operator's side, so we can only start from a higher level.

In the current "bureau", everyone is focused on higher-level strategies and will not care about the economic input-output ratio with Cao Shen.

Ask him how the Internet store in remote and poor areas can make money.

They focus on things of greater long-term value and a more international level.

Therefore, there is no need to raise the issue of education. Firstly, education is a sensitive matter, and secondly, Cao Shen himself is not fully prepared.

You only need to grasp one thing and strike:

Internationalization, "enclosure"!

Establish a low-orbit satellite communication network to achieve seamless global Internet coverage...

Old Man Yu and Mushroom Cloud looked at each other.

One of the two leads the information industry, and the other covers aerospace.

Obviously, they also thought of the most famous case of low-orbit satellite communication network, the "Iridium Satellite Project"!

The "Iridium Project" is a plan proposed by the American communications giant Motorola in 1987 to use a low-orbit satellite constellation to achieve global satellite mobile communications.

The system includes 77 near-Earth communication satellites, evenly and orderly distributed on 7 orbital planes 785km above the ground, forming a constellation and forming a global connection network through microwave links.

The goal was to directly solve the technical problems of base station coverage at that time and bring human communications into the satellite era:

"Wireless communication can be achieved anywhere in the world where the sky can be seen."

Because the metallic element iridium atom has 77 electrons, the project was named "Iridium Project".

Later, Motorola reduced the number of satellites to 66 in order to reduce the scale of investment, simplify the structure, and enhance competitiveness with other low-Earth satellite communication systems.

The orbital plane is reduced to 6 circular polar orbits, with 11 satellites in each polar orbit, and the orbital altitude is changed to 765km.

The satellite has a diameter of 1.2 meters, a height of 2.3 meters, a weight of 386.2 kilograms, and a lifespan of 5 to 8 years.

In May 1998, the star deployment mission was completed.

Global communications services were officially launched on November 1.

However, the "Iridium Satellite Project" soon encountered competition from cellular communication systems such as GSM that were rapidly rising around the world.

The "Iridium Project" was too advanced and its design was too idealistic.

The satellite communication technology at that time was restricted by the performance of the equipment. The call drop rate during system switching was as high as 15%, seriously affecting the call quality.

Moreover, in practical applications, the data transmission rate is only 2.4bk per second, which cannot meet the demand well.

In addition, compared with system terminals such as GSM, satellite communication mobile phone terminals are difficult to miniaturize and expensive, and it is difficult to compete with GSM on price due to the high cost of business charges.

In the end, the "Iridium Project" quickly failed due to insufficient market penetration and huge losses.

In March 1999, Iridium declared bankruptcy.

It will only be five months before the official launch of global operations.

The entire Iridium satellite system cost approximately US$5 billion, but was eventually acquired by "Iridium Satellite LLC" for US$25 million.

And on March 28, 2001, the service was re-provided by the new "Iridium Satellite" company.

This is really a "blood loss" lesson.

Mushroom Cloud first spoke to everyone:

“According to the different altitudes of satellite orbits, communication satellites can be divided into low-orbit communication satellites LEO, medium-orbit communication satellites MEO and high-orbit geosynchronous communication satellites GEO.

LEO satellite orbit altitude is 500 kilometers to 2000 kilometers,

The orbital altitude of MEO satellites is 2,000 to 36,000 kilometers.

The GEO satellite orbit altitude is 36,000 kilometers.

The existing mature commercial communication satellites are mainly medium and high orbit satellites such as MEO and GEO.

Because the orbital position is high, a single satellite can cover a wide area, and a small number of satellites can basically solve the problem of global coverage.

However, mid- and high-orbit satellites are also designed to have strong penetration and large signal coverage due to their high distance, so they generally use low-frequency bands.

The bandwidth of the low-frequency band is relatively small, and the amount of data it can accommodate is small, making it unable to meet the Internet access needs of massive users around the world.

Therefore, this kind of satellite information in medium and high orbits is mainly used for information interconnection and television broadcasting for specific users.

In terms of communication capabilities, it is equivalent to the 2G network of mobile communications. A very small amount can reach 3G, and only provides basic voice and low-capacity data services.

The application of high-orbit geosynchronous orbit satellites in simple communications, television broadcasts, etc. has become mature.

But its shortcomings are also obvious, including large size and weight, the need for large booster rockets, and long launch preparation time.

Moreover, this kind of satellite has only one orbital plane, can accommodate a limited number of satellites, and cannot cover polar regions.

In addition, because it is far away from the earth, the communication delay is long, the beam coverage area is large, the spectrum utilization is low, the data capacity is small, the terminal transmission power is large, and it is difficult to miniaturize the terminal, etc.

Xiao Cao said that using low-orbit satellites for global coverage is indeed more suitable for Internet applications than mid- and high-orbit satellites in terms of performance.

Low-orbit satellites, on the one hand, have short transmission distances due to their low orbital altitude, so they can use high-frequency bands.

This is because, given the transmission power, the higher the frequency, the smaller the transmission distance.

The frequency determines the size of the communication transmission bandwidth.

The upper limit of the amount of data transmitted per unit time increases as the frequency increases.

Therefore, high-throughput satellite orbits are mainly concentrated in low orbits.

As for the Internet applications that Xiao Cao mentioned, due to the large amount of data, they have high requirements for communication bandwidth, which indeed requires the use of low-orbit, high-throughput satellites to meet these requirements.

Moreover, low-orbit satellites have short transmission delays, small path losses, and more efficient frequency reuse due to their close distance.

On the other hand, this kind of satellite is small in size and light in weight. With current launch technology, it is possible to launch two or even multiple satellites into orbit at the same time.

For users, when receiving signals from such low-orbit satellites, the transmit power is almost the same as that of ordinary land mobile communication terminals, so the weight and size of the terminal are also small. "

What the mushroom cloud is talking about is that China's Beidou satellite is a medium-to-high orbit satellite and costs about 1 billion each.

Small satellites in medium and low orbits can cost US$500,000 each by 2019.

There are many types of traditional satellites but a small number. The main reason is that there are many types of payloads and different requirements, making it difficult to achieve mass production.

The small satellites in the later stages of the original world have been standardized and modularized as much as possible.

In terms of manufacturing process, it draws on the "assembly line" method of aircraft manufacturing.

OneWeb relies on this approach, and its "satellite factory" has achieved the capacity to produce 16 satellites per week.

"One rocket, multiple satellites" means using one launch vehicle to send multiple satellites into orbit at the same time, greatly improving the efficiency of commercial satellite launches.

This technology is relatively mature in the original world.

In January 2020, SpaceX fired 60 rockets. And the company's next-generation heavy-lift rocket plans to achieve 400 rounds per rocket.

China has also mastered many core technologies such as separation and release, and multiple satellites into orbit. In 2015, the Long March 6 rocket was successfully launched, with 20 satellites in one rocket.

In addition, rocket recyclable technology can further reduce the cost of satellite networking.

Taking SpaceX as an example, the first launch using a brand-new rocket was quoted at US$61.98 million, and the quoted price for the 10th launch was US$29.9 million.

If there is a compromise, based on the fourth launch quote, the launch cost of a satellite is about US$600,000.

Of course, satellite launch quotes are based on weight, which is about US$5,000 per kilogram. If satellites can be made lighter, future launch costs can be further reduced.

China has also mastered some rocket recovery technology. The Long March 8 launched by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in 2020 used the remaining fuel to land vertically in the first stage and can be reused.

Cao Shen looked at the mushroom cloud, nodded and said:

“The most famous case of low-orbit satellite networking is the ‘Iridium Project’.

Although the original Iridium satellite project failed, the Iridium satellite system pioneered personal satellite mobile communications.

It also verified the possibility of low-Earth orbit constellations as mobile communications.

Thirteen years have passed now. With the reduction of launch costs and the advancement of communication technology, high-bandwidth, low-latency satellite communications based on low orbit have become possible.

Low-orbit satellites require a large number of satellites because the area covered by a single satellite is relatively small.

This makes ground control and system maintenance more complicated.

In this multi-satellite system, the issues that have a greater impact on communications are beam switching and inter-satellite switching.

Low-orbit satellites move at high speed relative to the earth, so the terminal needs to frequently switch to other beams or satellites during the communication process to continue talking.

Taking the early Iridium satellite system at that time as an example, its minimum switching time interval was 10.3 seconds and the average switching time interval was 277.7 seconds.

Implementing handover requires a series of signaling operations, and frequent handovers increase the signaling load on the system.

This leads to the more frequent handovers, the greater the probability of handover failure. In the end, the original handover success rate of the Iridium satellite system was only 85%, which is far from the handover call drop rate of the land mobile communication system.

A closer analysis of the main reason for the handover drop was that the bandwidth resources of the low-orbit satellite communication system at that time could not meet the minimum bandwidth requirements for the handover call.

But thirteen years have passed, during which communication technology and microelectronics technology have developed rapidly.

The signal processing capabilities and communication bandwidth of communication systems are also constantly improving.

Judging from the use of low-orbit satellite communication systems such as "Iridium II" and "Globalstar" that are still in operation, these early technical problems have been effectively solved.

Therefore, I think it is completely feasible to build a low-orbit satellite communication network with current technology. "

Mushroom Cloud also nodded slowly:

"Yes, from a technical point of view, thirteen years have passed and it is indeed more feasible.

However, the original Iridium satellite project failed not only for technical reasons, but also for commercial reasons. "

Saying that, Mushroom Cloud glanced at Old Man Yu:

"Right now, we assume that there are no technical issues.

According to what you said, Xiao Cao, there are 3 billion people here who have not yet accessed the Internet, which is considered a "sinking" market.

However, if the low-orbit satellite network is successfully established, it will provide global coverage.

Of course we also hope to have a higher utilization rate.

However, the technology of terrestrial communication networks is already very mature, and users have already developed in-depth usage habits.

It is probably very unrealistic to use satellite communications to replace terrestrial communications. "

The meaning here is that if we spend a lot of effort to build a network, the 3 billion remote and poor people will not have enough appetite.

Cao Shen said:

“If low-orbit satellite communications use the Ka-band from 27GHz to 40GHz, the satellite communications bandwidth can be increased from hundreds of Mbps to Gbps.

This bandwidth has exceeded 4G and can be compared with the planned 5G.

Despite this, terrestrial networks will always be dominated by 4G or 5G in the future.

Our country is planning to build about 5 million 4G base stations.

A high-throughput communication satellite is assumed to have the same performance as a 4G base station.

So to achieve the same experience as 4G, 5 million satellites are needed.

This is obviously unrealistic. "

Of course, this is under normal circumstances.

In fact, Cao Shen has a system, and as long as you have network coverage, I can use it!

Cao Shen continued:

“So, I think satellite networks will be a complement to terrestrial networks in the future.

In addition to covering the 3 billion people, the more critical scenario is to use it in "Internet of Things" services.

Satellite communications are not restricted by geography and have wider coverage capabilities.

It has high stability, strong resistance to physical attacks and natural disasters, and is almost unaffected by local natural disasters and emergencies.

In addition, in terms of cost, the marginal cost is extremely low. It does not rely on ground infrastructure and directly realizes skyline relay transmission.

This is unlike terrestrial operators, who must lay new base station groups every time they open up an area.

These advantages are more suitable for use in the Internet of Things that require higher reliability and wider geographical distribution.

Scenarios such as ocean-going ships, deserts, wilderness, and airplanes cannot be covered by ground communications.

Moreover, many scenes will have fewer people but more machines in the future.

For example, energy construction scenarios such as wind power, solar power generation, and oil extraction.

For example, outdoor power grid line monitoring, forest farm monitoring, fire warning, etc.

Moreover, the number of connections in the Internet of Things will far exceed the number of human network connections in the future.

I predict that in ten years there will be 70 billion connections on the Internet of Things.

And the resulting communication needs are intense.

Just like the autonomous driving we mentioned today, this is a case of the Internet of Things.

In the future, the connection between people and machines and the connection between machines will occupy greater network resources.

Once our country's low-orbit satellite network is completed, we will have the opportunity to build a large-scale Internet of Things that integrates global space and earth.

At this time, traditional terrestrial communications will become a supplement to the entire network. "

Seeing the mushroom cloud start to turn red with excitement, Cao Shen did not intend to stop there and continued:

“Besides, you also know that orbit and spectrum are prerequisites for the normal operation of communication satellites.

Because the coverage area of ​​a single low-orbit satellite is small, the number must be increased to achieve global coverage.

This will make the already limited orbit and spectrum resources even more tense. Countries around the world will definitely have fierce competition on this issue in the future.

The ITU, the United Nations agency in charge of communications technology affairs, chooses a first-come, first-served basis for allocating and managing global wireless spectrum and satellite orbit resources.

Moreover, the possession time is time-sensitive. If the satellite is not launched as scheduled, the original orbit and spectrum will become invalid.

Therefore, sooner or later, low-orbit satellite networks will become an important area of ​​international competition. After all, in addition to business, this is also a battle for the strategic value of space orbits.

We in Dongguo recommend making arrangements as soon as possible.

After all, we still have advantages in aerospace technology..."

This is not sensational to Cao Shen. In the original world, the competition for low-altitude orbits is very fierce.

As of January 2019, the number of satellites in orbit around the world was 2,062.

Among the low-orbit communication satellite plans announced by foreign countries in early 2019, the total number of satellites is approximately 23,892.

Even SpaceX applied to the ITU again in October 2019. In total, this company applied for 42,000 orbital slots.

The orbital heights of these low-orbit satellites are mainly concentrated between 1,000 and 1,500 kilometers, and the frequency bands are mainly concentrated in the Ka, Ku and V bands.

The orbital height range is very limited, and the frequency bands are highly concentrated, so competition is fierce.

First come first served, no later!

In addition, industry giants such as Oneweb, SpaceX, and Amazon, as well as Internet companies such as Google and Facebook, have joined the low-orbit communication satellite competition camp and launched their own low-orbit communication satellite construction plans.

In early 2010, Google launched the "O3b Plan" in conjunction with HSBC and European cable TV operator Liberty Global.

The original meaning of O3b is "Other 3 billion", which refers to the 3 billion people who still cannot access the Internet. This project later established the famous OneWeb, which is also SpaceX’s biggest competitor.

In 2015, Google invested another US$1 billion in SpaceX. One of its purposes was to build a space Internet.

In the same year, SpaceX launched the Starlink project, planning to launch approximately 42,000 satellites to form a low-orbit satellite communication system.

In 2017, Facebook established a subsidiary, PointView Tech LLC, and invested millions of dollars in the development of an experimental satellite. The satellite, named Athena, will transmit data 10 times faster than the Starlink satellite network.

In April 2019, Amazon launched the Kuiper project, which plans to launch 3,236 low-orbit communication satellites to provide fast and low-latency Internet access services around the world.

In addition to Internet giants, companies including Boeing, Airbus, Samsung and other companies are actively carrying out research and development of low-orbit communication satellite systems.

For low-orbit satellite networking, China's Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation have proposed two constellation plans, "Hongyan" and "Hongyun" respectively.

300 and 156 low-orbit communication satellites will be launched respectively to form a space communication network. The construction of the two systems is scheduled to be completed in 2023.

At present, the first experimental satellites of both systems were successfully tested at the end of 2018.

The investment in the first phase of network construction of the "Hongyan" and "Hongyun" systems is estimated to be about 30 billion yuan. Our country will also enter the era of low-orbit satellite communications.

Currently, SpaceX's satellites in orbit form the constellation "Starlink", and the theoretical bandwidth can reach more than 1 to 2Gbps.

It provides users with a maximum downlink speed of 60Mbps, and the uplink speed fluctuates greatly, and is basically guaranteed to be around 10Mbps.

China Unicom’s 4G network standards are TD-LTE and FDD-LTE.

The theoretical downlink speed of TD-LTE is 100Mbps and the uplink theoretical speed is 50Mbps.

The actual downlink speed of China Unicom 4G is about 50Mbps, and the uplink speed is 10 to 20Mbps.

Therefore, "Starlink" users can already watch ultra-high-definition videos and play online battle games smoothly.

Mushroom Cloud held Chengquan in his hand and hammered the table hard:

"Cao Shen, you are right!

Deployment of low-orbit satellite networks is far from commercial significance, but also the strategic value of orbital space.

In addition, the Internet of Things will be a network with higher data value than the Internet.

The Internet is an information network, and there is indeed a large amount of content and interactive information between people.

But the Internet of Things is the data between machines and people, machines and machines, and machines and controls.

It also constitutes the context in which the entire world operates.

The value of the Internet of Things is great, and the data of the global Internet of Things is very critical! "

Old Yu, who is in charge of the information industry, also sighed and said:

“It cannot be said that it is completely impossible to use terrestrial communications to establish and operate base stations in other countries and obtain IoT data from other countries, but it is very, very difficult.

The Internet actually has borders and national borders.

However, satellite networks can truly realize globalization and realize global data interaction and flow.

Cao Shen, the suggestion you made today is no longer a commercial issue at all.

This is a national strategy!

On behalf of the country, I would like to thank you for giving us such important and valuable ideas through your understanding of technology, products, markets and competitive landscape.

Really, great! "

The handsome old man stood up slowly on his chair, looked at everyone, and then solemnly said to Cao Shen:

"Cao Shen, I thank you too.

At the same time, I solemnly promise you that we, Dongguo, will do our best to build a low-orbit satellite communication system that can meet the needs as soon as possible! "

Stretched out both hands and held Cao Shen's hand tightly:

“This is a big country’s commitment.

Communication connects everything, and the world will never lose connection! "

Hot temperature and trembling strength came from his hands, and Cao Shen saw the light in the old man's eyes...

The most important weapon of the country should be like this!

——————

"Communication connects all things, and the world will never lose connection."

It comes from the "Hongyan" constellation, a low-orbit satellite communication network under construction in my country.

From the stars, swan geese send messages.

This chapter contains a lot of popular science, with the purpose of letting everyone understand what the world is doing, what our country is doing, and what it can do in the future.