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Mobile World Congress: Low Earth Orbit Satellites To Reset Remote Communications

Mobile World Congress Barcelona

Low earth orbit satellites will be a hot topic at this year’s Mobile World Congress, the world’s premium annual telecommunications conference in Barcelona next week.

These “LEO” satellites will vastly improve mobile and data transmission speeds compared to present day geostationary satellites that could be 80 times the distance above the earth.

Better data transmission rates mean more comfortable and acceptable internet speeds in rural and regional Australia – wherever LEO technology is installed. Edge computing and machine learning on satellites and ground stations will massively benefit businesses.

Currently there are roughly 8310 LEO satellites orbiting earth compared to 552 geostationary satellites in wider orbits. More than 60 percent of LEO satellites (5236) belong to Elon Musk’s Starlink, showing his dominance of the market.

Starlink says it may increase that to 42,000 in coming years. Best of luck dodging 42,000 of these clever little buggers when, one day, you rocket into lower space on an intrepid Virgin Galactic pleasure flight.

Musk will shortly face some competition from Amazon which plans to roll out a more sober 3,236 LEO satellites, initially at least.

The congress attracts a who’s who of the telecommunications industry, along with media and analysts. It features displays and discussions about technologies being developed and deployed across the globe. Telcos, fibre optic companies, satellite system developers, phone vendors and semiconductor makers share solutions to world telecommunications problems.

We saw some of this last year when Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek demonstrated a prototype microprocessor that lets everyday smartphones stream decent quality video calls from the middle of nowhere via LEO satellites.

Telstra and Optus have both signed agreements with Starlink to integrate LEO satellites with their ground telecommunication networks. That will allow calls to satellites to connect with regular ground network users. However, we are yet to see a rollout, or the handsets capable of this.

Last week we saw the beginnings of Telstra upgrading its ground station backhaul service by connecting them to LEO satellites, following a deal inked in 2023 with UK’s OneWeb. Some 300 mobile stations are being upgraded and Telstra says it may even replace some ground communications with the now Eutelsat OneWeb LEO service.

Telstra says it can offer up to 25 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of LEO capacity for its most remote mobile users.

Amazon aims to launch its Project Kuiper satellites into low earth orbits between 590 and 630 kilometres above the earth. We hope to hear more details at the congress, given the first prototype successfully launched in October last year.

Amazon’s satellites will be handy given Amazon Web Service (AWS) is building ground stations which can train machine learning models. Data can be processed and forwarded in more precise, summarised form, saving bandwidth. Amazon calls this “satellite as a service”.

The LEO satellite explosion is not only for big players. Australian start-ups are involved in a range of businesses that leverage LEO satellite services.

Starlink's LEO satellites can deliver fast speeds and low latency. Source: X

Starlink’s LEO satellites can deliver fast speeds and low latency. Source: X

In an interview with ChannelNews Australia, Sunshine Coast start-up exci said it was working with AWS to expand its AI-enhanced rapid bushfire detection service, which had already proven effective in California.

CEO Christopher Tylor says exci’s approach is to use a combination of data from geostationary satellites, data and images from LEO satellites, and ground-based cameras that detect fires within minutes of ignition. Rapid detection is vital given fires spread at up to 25 km/hr, causing massive damage in moments.

In North America, exci deployed 1,000 cameras to monitor 130 million acres, and processed more than 1.5 billion images from the cameras and satellites, according to its website.

Some 66 percent of fires were detected within a minute of ignition, 95 percent within five minutes, and all within 10 minutes.

In Australia, exci’s system monitors 25 million acres from north Queensland to Tasmania. Mr Tylor wants to cover the rest of the east coast and western Australia. “I think 3,000 cameras would cover the whole country.” He says Amazon’s building of ground stations would reduce a current bottleneck in data transfer.

Australian start-up Arlula is another riding the waves of the LEO revolution. It has a deal with US satellite intelligence provider BlackSky which delivers high resolution satellite imagery and data in as little as three hours.

BlackSky gained a reputation for its tracking of Russian military movements, exposing its preparations to transfer nuclear weaponry to neighbouring Belarus, and the movement of Russian navy ships in the Black Sea. Now its technology is being applied in Queensland.

LEO satellites the size of washing machines can also produce stunningly high resolution images and data from a few hundred kilometres above the earth. This opens a spectrum of applications.

Australian start-up Spiral Blue has been developing edge computer hardware that lets LEO satellites process data in the sky. Its first system, SE-1, successfully completed a space qualification mission last year.

This latest revolution in satellite communications is being showcased under the theme “connecting everything” and will be the subject of the Satellite and Non Terrestrial Networks Summit at MWC next Wednesday. Its timing happens to fit in with Australia’s current developments in this area.

As expected, AI and Generative AI applied to the mobile and communications industry is on everyone’s lips and will be infused into all sorts of discussions and products at the conference. Interestingly, previewers are warning of what they call “AI washing”, where vendors make claims about AI integration that amount to nothing new.

Quantum and blockchain along with new VR/AR technologies are packaged together as the “game changers” theme,  there’s digital transformation in the manufacturing sector including robotics with a quoted staggering value of US$767.8 billion by 2026. There’s workshops around digital inclusion, diversity and sustainability technology.

Then there’s the phone vendors whose handsets once defined the conference – they are still there in force. This year we’ll see a large contingent of China phone makers reasserting their presence: Xiaomi,  Motorola, Honor, ZTE, HMD, Lenovo, OnePlus, and the curious “Nothing” are among an arsenal of brands exhibiting. Huawei will be present in the enterprise space while Samsung will be promoting its semiconductor solutions and business technologies.



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