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Weekly#133

  • Internet from Space
    • Elon Musk
      Each of Musk’s satellites weighs around 113kg, less than half the mass of standard satellites, which orbit at a 35,000km height. The new satellites will be launched into low Earth orbit, which is only 750km from the surface of the earth. That will improve latency, a major challenge with existing satellite internet: from low Earth orbit, latency is predicted to be around 30ms, compared to the typical 500ms latency experienced by existing satellite internet customers…
      …Micro-satellites also cost less: $350,000 to build and launch, as opposed to the tens of millions of dollars of larger ones (link)
    • Virgin
      The broadband space race has received a $500m boost after Airbus, Coca-Cola and Virgin Group joined other funders in backing a venture to bring the internet to the most remote corners of the planet.OneWeb, based in the channel island of Jersey but with offices in California and Washington DC, plans to send 648 micro-satellites into space by 2019. These will do away with the expense of installing mobile phone masts or laying miles of cables, instead beaming a broadband signal direct to small, solar-powered user terminals on the ground. (link)
    • Samsung
      A paper published by Farooq Khan, president of Samsung Research America in Dallas, details an interconnected net of 4,600 low-orbit satellites that could bring each of the world’s 5 billion people 200 gigabytes of internet per month. Samsung expects global internet traffic to reach one zettabyte per month by 2028. (link)
  • Google’s search business might not be as water-tight as people think it is
    (Business Insider)
    gwi search data
  • Apple’s Car: If True, ‘One of the Most Important Moments in Transportation,’ Says Morgan Stanley (Barrons)…The addressable market for mobility is on the order of $10 trillion (10 trillion vehicle miles x $1/mile), more than 13% of global GDP. This figure ignores the value of the time of the driver, infrastructure, social and environmental costs……Apple might have ideas on the “non-productive” time that you spend behind the wheel — a collective 400 billion hours annually by all drivers: “What is the value of 400 billion hours a year? How much value could Apple create from this time or said another way how much are consumers willing to pay to recoup this time? It’s time to start thinking about… time.”
  • The Entrant’s Guide to The Automobile Industry (asymco)
  • The steady forward march of Facebook Inc.’s many messaging apps continues. Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users (WSJ)

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

 

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