SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN REGULATORS FACING THE CHALLENGES POSED BY LOW-ORBIT SATELLITES, OFFERING UNLIMITED GEOGRAPHICAL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN REGULATORS FACING THE CHALLENGES POSED BY LOW-ORBIT SATELLITES, OFFERING UNLIMITED GEOGRAPHICAL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET.

PART 1: SATELLITES AND ORBITS

At the request of several Telecom engineer colleagues and certain friends, consisting of enlightening them on the phenomenon of low earth orbit satellites offering access to the Internet on almost the entire surface of the Earth, I am pleased to give below after some useful information for understanding the phenomenon of the StarLink Network which seems to pose a decision-making problem for the Telecom Regulators of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The hive of African Telecom Regulators is buzzing! DO WE ACCEPT THEIR ACTIVITY ON OUR TERRITORY? YES NO! And the question that remains asked in both directions: WHY?

WE WILL APPROACH THIS MATTERS METHODICALLY.

When regulating any service whatsoever, you must first know what it consists of, then check whether the regulatory texts in force cover all legal and safety aspects. Later, we must ensure that we remain at regulatory equidistance between operators and service providers, in this case, the space service.

 Then you have to know how to classify the novelty in a range of services already covered by the regulations so as not to create double standards, otherwise adapt the said regulatory texts to adapt to the new context.

We will therefore briefly introduce existing space technologies (used to date) and emerging technologies, which are beginning to pose challenges to Telecom Regulators in Sub-Saharan Africa.

THE PROBLEM THAT CONCERNS TODAY is the provision of global internet access, which seems to escape any control of the Regulator, by low earth orbit satellites.

A)   LET'S START:

WHAT IS A SATELLITE?

We will talk here about artificial satellites, unlike satellites orbiting celestial bodies, called natural satellites.

Artificial satellites, in my condensed definition, are platforms carrying electronics for communication with Earth, and various control and navigation systems (remote control and telemetry/energy, to keep everything in position).

This so-called Satellite platform, because placed around the Earth, is delivered in several versions for multiple special missions.

The satellites that interest us here are called Telecommunications satellites. They orbit the earth at several heights above the ground, called “Orbits”. There are satellites in low orbit (they cannot remain fixed in a given place above the Earth, and are therefore obliged to move to ensure their geographical mission: they are called Orbiting satellites, because seen from the Earth, they parade one behind the other in space).

B) WHAT ARE THE ORBITS OF SATELLITES AND OTHER BODIES?

The different orbits occupied by satellites to date are, including other bodies:

• Airplanes at intercontinental cruising altitude (9–15 km)

• Weather balloons (40 km)

Low orbit (180–2,000 km) (LEO)

StarLink satellites (328–580 km)

• International Space Station (330–410 km)

• Hubble Space Telescope (547 km)

• The Van Allen Belt (1,000–2,000 km)

Medium Orbit (2,000–35,780 km) (MEO)

• GPS satellites (GPS provided by the US Space Force) (20,200 km)

Geostationary Orbit (35,785+ km) (GEO)

• The Moon (384,000 km)

The satellites which, seen from the Earth appear not to move, therefore in the "same place" in the sky, are the satellites in so-called Geostationary orbit, which rotates at almost the same speed as the Earth on itself.

At this distance of 36,000 km above the Earth, with 4 beams (4 Satellites), these satellites cover the entire surface of the Earth, but it takes a lot of power from the ground antenna stations for the satellite to receive an intelligible signal to be transmitted: we therefore use so-called parabolic antennas to concentrate and amplify the signals transmitted and the signals received. The times it takes for the signals to go to these satellites and return (called latency times) are quite long for near real-time commands, which is a big disadvantage in these new times when we are talking about IoT.

Orbiting satellites, as indicated above, have their altitude much lower, thus minimizing the power required to communicate and drastically reducing round-trip connection times to the satellite. It is this important advantage which conditions the current enthusiasm of all satellite operators to launch networks of Orbiting satellites, at low altitude.

These offers must be able to enable very high bandwidth and high-speed internet connections. The latency time to go to the satellite and return is then very low, which is highly sought after by Internet users.

IN PART 2, WE WILL TALK ABOUT LEO SYSTEMS that are planned to launch in the coming months and years.

It is an irreversible movement, just like the Privatization of Telecom, the appearance of cellular telephony, etc.

IT IS THEREFORE USELESS TO WANT TO PUT YOURSELF THROUGH SUCH A CURRENT, with the risk of being swept away!

YOU ARE WELCOME TO THE NEXT ARTICLE IN PART 2.

                         Basile GNON

To view or add a comment, sign in

More articles by Basile GNON

Insights from the community

Others also viewed

Explore topics