Connectivity Technology Blog

While we have been talking mostly about LEO satellites in the satellite technology related posts on this blog, Astranis , a startup based in Califonia has been designing small geostationary satellites for internet connectivity. Known as MicroGEO, these smaller and more powerful satellites cost a fraction of what traditional geostationary satellites cost. They can be built faster (12-18 months) compared to the traditional large geo satellites (3-4 years) and can bring connectivity to smaller areas quickly.  Back in 2019, Astranis signed Pacific Dataport Inc. of Anchorage, Alaska, an Alaskan telecommunications provider, as its first customer. The intention is to cover the entire state of Alaska, including the Aleutian Islands, with Ka-band connectivity for broadband, according to officials from Astranis and Pacific Dataport. Last month Astranis announced $250 million Series C financing round, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. According to the press release : Astranis is solving one o

5G has enabled many different Service Providers (SPs) to offer Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) as an alternative to a fibre based connectivity. We can always discuss the pros and cons of this approach but not in this post.  In a few cases, the operators have given fancy names to these FWA products. Saudi MNO, Mobily, calls it " 5G Air Fiber " while the Philippines MNO, Globe, calls it " Globe At Home Air Fiber 5G ". Then there is also satellite based "Smart Fibre From Space", as detailed by RTT here . The reason we are talking about Air Fibre in this post is because there is an alternative as proposed by a young US company called Tarana Wireless . There was a feature on them in Bloomberg last week but this Fierce Wireless webinar is a good starting point as well. South African ISP, Supersonic, has started offering this solution since Feb 2021 : Starting from R399 per month, customers can get fast, consistent download speeds of 5Mbps and upload of 2Mbps. This