In the last week, a Toronto-based company, Kepler Communications announced it was working with Airbus and one of the latter’s subsidiaries on a mission to create the Internet-for-Space to grow the future space economy. To do this the partnership is building a low-Earth orbit optical data relay network that uses both laser and RF communications that meets U.S., Canada, and European standards.
Tesat-Spacecom GmbH, a German-based subsidiary of Airbus is joining Kepler to provide the European Space Agency (ESA) with a High Throughput Optical Network (HydRON) that promises a terabit-speed optical network. It will be the world’s first operational optical multi-orbit network offering space-to-space and space-to-Earth communications. Kepler has already put two optical pathfinder satellites with its technology on board in the last year. Future launches are planned to create a constellation of satellites that will deliver 2025 space-based high-speed Internet connectivity for commercial companies and government agencies.
Each satellite will deploy a Tesat-Spacecom SmartLCT scalable terminal to provide connectivity at distances of 45,000 kilometres (28,000 miles). This will facilitate satellite-to-satellite and satellite-to-ground communication. Each SmartLCT can provide data transmission rates of up to 1.8 Gbps. Although impressive, that number falls far short of the ultimate 200 Gbps goal.
What other companies or agencies are in the business of developing optical laser communications for use in space? The obvious one is NASA which has been working on an optical space network for low-Earth-orbit (LEO) and Deep Space. NASA launched in November 2023, the Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T). It was installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in Japan’s external-mounted Experiment Module and has been operational since December 2023.
Another optical laser communication system was put into play on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launched in October 2023. Psyche is on a mission to an asteroid that bears the same name and lies in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. The spacecraft has optical laser communications technology called DSOC onboard. In December 2023, NASA demonstrated its capabilities by transmitting a preloaded high-definition cat video, the tabby used is named Taters. The transmission was sent from 30 million kilometres (19 million miles) away and travelled at 267 Megabits per second (Mgbs). It took less than two minutes to reach the Caltech Palomar Observatory receiver.
Using lasers to communicate from Deep Space is no trivial task. The transceiver has to be isolated from other parts of the spacecraft to eliminate any chance of vibration altering the laser’s trajectory. DSOC also has to compensate for time and distance which changes the position of the receiver. That’s why laser communication from Deep Space is more difficult than that which is deployed in LEO. The distances are much shorter in LEO and constellations of satellites with laser optics communication there can create an interoperable network providing high-speed connectivity.
Another NASA laser optics project is upcoming with the Artemis II mission launching near the end of this year. The Orion capsule includes O2O, an optical communications system. O2O has a terminal created by the Laser-Enhanced Mission Communication Navigation and Operational Services (LEMNOS) Pipeline project. This terminal is designed to send 4K video and high-resolution images, science data, procedures, and flight plans to and from the spacecraft and serve as the communications link to mission control. Transmission rates for O2O are 260 Mgbs.
NASA also has plans to build a lunar Internet using a satellite network and ground-based receivers. It wants to replicate something similar for Mars. RF communications between Earth and the Moon have very short latency, the time gap between when a message is sent and when it is received. The delay is about 2.5 seconds per transmission. A voyage to Mars, however, would have much longer latency gaps. That poses a problem. Astronauts on Mars using RF communications when the two planets align on opposite sides of the Sun (378 million kilometres from each other), would take 21 minutes between each transmission. When the two planets are closest (78 million kilometres) the transmission times each way would be 4.3 minutes.
Developing laser optic communications infrastructure between Earth and Mars would require a network of satellites in place at points between the two planets to ensure transmissions can deal with the changing orientation between the two. A laser-optic network would be faster than RF and would increase the amount of information being sent back and forth.
In 2016, I looked at this subject for connecting Earth and Mars. NASA’s announced aim back then was to achieve a 40-times improvement in data speed and bandwidth rates using a combination of laser-based and improved RF communications with the latter sixteenfold faster.
What is the current speed record for optical laser communications? In 2022, a cubesat with an optical laser system aboard demonstrated transmission rates of 100 Gbps. Called TBIRD, standing for TeraByte InfraRed Delivery, it was 100 times faster than the fastest than most city Internet networks. Transmissions were to an optical receiver in California. TBIRD’s data rate was 1,000 times greater than the fastest RF. As fast as TBIRD was it only takes us halfway to the promised 200 Gbps threshold that I mentioned at the beginning of this posting.
Will private industry, universities or national space agencies from China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan be the first to develop high-speed optical laser Internet services at the 200 Gbps threshold?
China has been advancing the technology of laser optic communication. In June of last year, it demonstrated a growing capability from space.
Russia launched two satellites in the last year with onboard space-based optical laser technology.
South Korea is building satellites with onboard laser optic communication technology.
Japan’s JAXA has been working on laser-optic communication since 1995 and is building the capacity to launch a network of satellites with the technology onboard.
Joining these national projects are a dozen companies developing space optical laser systems or selling technology already available to provide communications between satellites and Earth ground stations. Kepler, the aforementioned Canadian company, is one of these.
Broad-scale deployment for military and non-military constellations of satellites is well on the way to becoming a reality. SpaceX’s latest foray into inter-satellite optical communication using lasers in its recent deployment of Starlink satellites shows that this is already happening.
]]>The key to making Starlink coverage work comes with the number of satellites SpaceX has put into orbit and the ones it plans to add. As of last month, more than 5,500 were circling the planet. Global coverage will require approximately 6,500 more.
SpaceX eventually wants its constellation to grow to 42,000 with a variety of satellite types to provide different levels of service. Some of the satellites will be deployed using a higher level of security to meet U.S. military requirements. It was recently tested in the Arctic and is being called Starshield.
The closest parallel to Starlink, before it arrived, was the deployment of geostationary satellites to beam television signals to homes equipped with dishes. Satellite TV uses satellites placed in geosynchronous orbit. Geosynchronous orbits are at a distance where the satellite travels at a speed that aligns with the rotation of the planet to make it appear stationary. Starlink satellites orbit at much lower levels and do not maintain the same positional orientation as receivers on the ground. With Starlink, a signal sent to it is shared by the next satellite to provide a continuous connection.
Starlink doesn’t have one type of satellite. Concern by astronomers has led to cosmetic changes to make the satellites dark against the night sky. The astronomers were complaining that the satellites were interfering with the night viewing of stars and planets.
Recently, Starlink developed two new satellite versions with the designation V2 (not to be confused with Nazi Germany’s V2 rockets which were used to bomb London in World War Two). The two versions are designated large and mini. The former has yet to be deployed because it has been designed for future launches on SpaceX’s Starship. The other is called the V2 Mini. But it is far from small being three times heavier at 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) compared to prior Starlink satellites. The V2 Mini provides faster feeds and speeds to improve network performance which has started to experience slowdowns as more customers sign up.
The V2 Mini series has decreased the number of satellites that each Falcon 9 can put into orbit. Where 60 of the older Starlink satellites at a time could be put into orbit. Now, each Falcon 9 flight carries a maximum of 21.
How calling on Starlink works today is similar to placing a phone call using your home WiFi network and an app like WhatsApp. This type of connection is called Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP). If you are too far from the WiFi router, the phone call will not connect. If away from your home network you are not able to make direct phone calls using the Starlink network unless doing it from another Starlink-connected location with shared network access.
That’s about to change if the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) pilot project passes muster. The goal is to provide direct-to-cellular communications between everyday cellular phones and the second generation of Starlink satellites. The current trials involve 840 satellites with direct-to-cellular payloads with approximately 60 serving handsets in the United States. The U.S. carrier, T-Mobile is the testbed.
In October, Starlink began to advertise a Direct-to-Cell phone service providing voice and text in 2024 and data services in 2025. It intends to expand coverage to include carriers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Japan.
Current U.S. carriers other than T-Mobile have been filing complaints with the FCC about direct-to-cell service stating it could disrupt ground-based wireless connections that use land-based cellular towers.
The V2 Mini satellites are the ones supporting the Direct-to-Cell pilot project. Each is equipped with an advanced eNodeB modem that acts like a cellphone tower located in space which allows for network integration similar to standard roaming, a feature of land-based telecommunications networks. The concern expressed by carriers other than T-Mobile is that the antennas onboard the V2 Minis could transmit and receive calls that interfere when placed in proximity to land-based cellphone towers operated by other phone and Internet providers. The pilot is scheduled to last 180 days and should prove or refute this concern.
If telecommunications can be liberated from being tied to land-based networks, it means uninterrupted coverage over the entire planet for not just cell phones but also Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. It means access from anywhere including remote locations where currently there is no cellular coverage.
Is this new? No. The Iridium network uses its satellites and 400,000-plus specialized handsets to serve its customers. But what Starlink is providing does away with the need for an expensive second cellphone.
Considering the ubiquitous use of inexpensive smart cellphones today amounting to close to 6 billion, Starlink Direct-to-Cell will be as revolutionary as the first deployed terrestrial cellphone network was in Japan back in 1979.
]]>The advent of 5G means latency restrictions over data networks will come to an end. For manufacturing this is not an incremental improvement over previous communication protocols. It’s revolutionary. I will let Dijam tell the rest of the story.
Gone are the days when we wished for a seamless collaboration environment interconnected by a powerful network. Why? What was thought to be impossible has become a reality with the advent of 5G (which stands for fifth generation) networks. When it comes to manufacturing, 5G is making a noticeable difference.
Its true potential is realized when integrated with Industry 4.0 technologies. What are these?
What 5G allows is high-speed generation of data that can be translated into real-world manufacturing applications. Based on data analysis, these technological capabilities not only improve productivity and efficiency but also enable more informed decisions. From manufacturing to supply chain strategies and logistics, IoT sensors can harness the potential of 5G to create a connected, intelligent ecosystem, transforming the way companies operate.
5G is the successor of 4G, the fourth generation of mobile network technology. A quick comparison between the two is warranted. 5G can be up to 100 times faster than 4G. That means for the average consumer downloading a feature-length movie, the wait time is reduced from 50 minutes to 50 seconds. Another key measurable difference is delay or latency, going from 50 to as much as 200 milliseconds in 4G to 1 millisecond with 5G. It takes the average human 250 milliseconds to react to a visual stimulus. 5G is 250 times more responsive which is an important advantage for an autonomous robot or vehicle.
In the 2010s, 4G set the standard as the fastest and most innovative cellular technology. 4G’s promises included enhanced cell density, improved Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities and greater bandwidth. LTE, a wireless broadband standard, was introduced with 4G. The combination of 4G and LTE continues today to support traffic over cellular networks and the Internet to this day.
The beginning deployment of 5G began in 2019. Deployment was slow because telecommunications providers had to dramatically expand infrastructure to support its emergence. They are still in the process of making those changes to their networks.
The low latency that 5G networks provide means reductions in the delay between sending and receiving data. For real-time communications and control in manufacturing, warehousing and distribution this is critical. Low latency ensures millisecond response times making 5G suitable for time-sensitive tasks in industrial automation, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and other automated systems.
The higher data transfer rates, the feeds and speeds, allow for rapid and seamless two-way communication and the transfer of large amounts of data. This is essential for high-definition spatial data and video streaming, complex sensor data, and other data-intensive applications.
With 5G support for IoT devices has dramatically increased. A 4G network can support up to 2,000 devices per square kilometre. A 5G network can support 1 million. For telephone networks, utilities, and the energy grid, 5G represents a generational leap. For industry, it means the deployment of sensors, actuators, and devices making it possible for autonomous vehicles, smart factories, and smart infrastructure.
5G introduces the concept of network slicing, allowing a network operator to create dedicated slices or subsets of the network for specific uses. Dedicated network slices can control mobile communication, environment monitoring, smart homes, smart agriculture, smart meter reading, live streaming, video uploading, mobile healthcare services, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), smart grids, and industrial control services, all requiring millisecond-level latency and near-100% reliability.
5G’s eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) is key to making augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) work for manufacturing, warehousing, distribution and other supply chain applications.
For AR and VR applications which require continuous and seamless data flow, 5G is a must. It means VR users can experience ultra-high-definition content without lag or buffering. For AR applications, high-speed real-time data streaming means digital information and 3D digital twins can overlay what a user sees when working to manufacture, assemble, operate or maintain machinery.
5G transforms the mobile AR landscape by enabling richer and more complex experiences. On smartphones, AR with 5G networks delivers more detailed, interactive content for retail applications. AR with 5G in warehousing provides pickers and packers with visual cues and directions for locating items. AR with 5G also assists in the management of inventory by providing real-time reporting on stock levels. VR with 5G allows for simulations to train warehouse staff when facing new processes or building layouts.
In supply chain training applications, 5G significantly impacts AR/VR through advanced simulation and modelling. In engineering 5G with AR/VR can help with design and prototyping. And 5G with AR/VR helps customer support by enhancing communication and collaboration.
5G complements edge computing by bringing computing resources closer to the sources of data generation. Edge computing refers to a computing paradigm where the network and devices relevant to users are moved closer. The IoT device density that 5G can support makes this possible. The immediate benefits for applications requiring automated or quick decision-making mean data delays are minimized and efficiencies gained.
If densities of 1 million IoT devices per square kilometre aren’t enough, and if a millisecond response time doesn’t cut it, then wait for 6G. Compared to 5G, 6G networks will run 100 times faster with peak data rates of 1,000 Gigabits per second. 6G will accommodate up to 10 million IoT devices per square kilometre and AI running on 6G will be revolutionary. When will we see 6G deployed? The first pilots in North America are expected to be in place by 2028, with wider commercial use available by 2030.
]]>In this posting, Jane describes a function of the technology that is common to smartphones. Every month my Android phone tells me where I have been. It only knows my location if I carry it. A-GPS chip built into the phone listens for the GPS satellites located in low-Earth orbit and as each passes overhead a combination of four or more calculate my approximate phone location and thereby, me.
But I will let Jane tell you how geolocation technology has morphed into geofencing.
Don’t be fooled by the term geofencing. It has nothing to do with rock collecting or sword fighting. Instead, it’s about using location-based services on people’s phones or drones to track their whereabouts. When you know where a person’s device is located, you know where they likely are. You can then send targeted advertising, monitor work activity or even warn them if they and their phone are entering unauthorized airspace.
In this posting, I describe geofencing’s most interesting uses.
A geofence is an invisible boundary drawn around a geographic area. It can be a city district, a building, or even a room. Geofencing uses geolocation which identifies the IP address of a device containing an A-GPS chip. Without geolocation, you cannot set up a geofence which can trigger an action when the device you are using enters or exits a virtually fenced area. Set your phone to enable location-based services, and you can be geofenced.
Drone enthusiasts should take note. If you fly your device above a military base, airport or prison in the United States, you will likely cross a geofence and prompt a geolocation alert. In the best-case scenario, a phone will receive a message informing you that you are in restricted airspace and advise you to turn back. Many no-fly geofenced zones, however, don’t send out a warning and can disable a drone. In this case, the drone will drop from the sky like a rock once it crosses the virtual boundary. So watch where you fly!
Know the whereabouts of vehicles equipped with a GPS-based fleet tracking device connected to a geofence. This is particularly important for vehicles delivering hazardous materials or time-sensitive packages. A lost shipment of explosives like fireworks, airbags or dynamite can present a massive liability. Geofencing lets you see when the vehicle has made it to its destination safely.
Geofencing can be used to create highly targeted advertising. For example, when you walk into a concert venue, you start getting promotional ads for tickets to a future event. When walking through a mall, your phone sends you menu offerings from the local food court. Walk into a store with geofencing and you receive a message promoting what’s on sale. A precaution, athough this method of advertising is effective it can also be very expensive.
Imagine a car dealership with a rival across the street. How can you use geofencing to attract the rival’s customers? Draw a geofence around the competition. That way when a potential customer crosses the virtual boundary you created, they will receive advertising on their phones from across the street. Hence the term, geoconquesting, a way to take location-based marketing to the next level.
It’s equivalent to putting up an advertising sign directly in the competition’s lobby. The only difference? The competition cannot remove it.
Companies use geofencing to monitor employees’ locations, a practice that has become more popular with the advent of remote work. For example, the Hubstaff mobile app uses screenshots paired with GPS data to determine where remote employees are working for the day.
Employers can also use geofencing to automatically clock workers in and out based on their location. When a staff member enters an office with a geofence, a time-tracking app opens and allows them to start logging their hours for the day. When the employee leaves, the app clocks them out.
A proposed use for geofencing is to pair the technology with firearms. Location-based guns would be unable to fire beyond a geofence. This would be useful for shooting ranges, hunting lodges, or in designated home spaces. Once the weapon goes beyond the virtual fence, it can no longer fire. This could help to prevent gun theft and armed robberies while still letting people own a gun for recreational use or hunting.
How do you know your location-based advertising is working? One way to measure its effectiveness is to count the number of phones receiving ads. Then track how many remain in the location after receipt. In this way, you can see if your geofencing campaign is driving foot traffic.
Because geofencing could be considered an invasion of privacy, many governments have enacted laws to regulate it. For example, the states of Washington and Nevada have passed regulations prohibiting geofencing around medical facilities. Connecticut bans geofences within 1,735 feet of mental or reproductive health clinics. The goal here is to protect patient privacy.
Ensuring marketers don’t use geofencing to promote products and services without understanding the potential harm it can do is leading more governments to enact regulations on how and where it can be used. In other words, geofencing’s use needs guardrails or a fence to remain effective as a targeted geographic marketing tool.
Geofencing isn’t just for marketers. As we have already described, it can monitor vehicles, automate time tracking and even protect sensitive locations from unwelcome visitors. But here are some future applications to consider:
Can you think of other ways geofencing can be used? Write back with your ideas and comments to let Techso Mogro know.
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When she first proposed the deployment of mobile cell towers to create connectivity in emergencies, I was reminded of the post-Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, where telecommunication and power blackouts covered a wide swath of territory and how the deployment of mobile cellular hotspots and portable solar arrays provided light amid darkness as well as telephone and Internet access services.
In Western urban environments, we take the power and connectivity our infrastructure provides for granted. But go back 30 years and Internet and mobile telecommunications were in their infancy.
As I read Ellie’s submission, it made me dig out the mobile hotspot device I used to use when travelling into areas where access to the Internet or cellular connectivity wasn’t always widely available. How far we have come in the Global North. How far do we still need to go in the Global South?
In an era of rapid global technological advancements, access to reliable connectivity has become a necessity for individuals and communities. While urban areas have long enjoyed the benefits of high-speed Internet and universal cell phone coverage, rural and remote regions have often been left in the digital shadows.
Fortunately, the telecommunications industry came up with hotspot devices and mobile cell towers that are changing access to connectivity and offering even the most remote communities a reprieve from digital isolation.
A hotspot is a physical location that provides wireless internet access to devices like smartphones, laptops and tablets. To fully understand their impact, it’s important to know how hotspots work.
Hotspots include the following:
Hotspots have come a long way since first conceived. Initially, hotspots could only be found in places like Internet cafes and airports. They provided a convenient way for travellers to access the Internet. But today they are a powerful tool for bridging the digital divide, particularly in remote, rural and underserved areas.
One key advancement in this technology is the deployment of Mobile Cell Towers, often called Cells on Wheels (COWs). COWS (one can be seen in the image that accompanies this posting) can be rapidly transported to areas that lack cell infrastructure such as regions struck by extreme weather events, earthquakes, and other disasters.
They provide temporary cellular coverage to ensure people can stay connected during times of crisis. Setting up mobile towers designed for speed can be a game changer when communication is needed.
In well-developed urban centres, 97% enjoy high-speed internet access. That is not the experience of rural areas even in the Global North where access to high-speed Internet services is at 65%. Mobile cell towers, however, can help bridge the digital gap, particularly for the millions of elderly living in underserved rural areas.
The benefit of hotspots in rural communities is substantial. It’s not just about being able to stream videos or check social media. It’s also about empowering these communities through the provision of essential services, information and opportunities.
Here are some key hotspot advantages:
While hotspots address connectivity gaps, they are not a permanent fix. Why is that?
In today’s world Internet connectivity has become essential. Hotspot technology, therefore, serves as a bridge to help underserved rural and remote areas with access to the digital world. It has been a lifesaving tool in emergencies, a way for students living in remote areas to learn, and a means by which businesses can find markets and grow. and a path to better healthcare provisioning.
In the future when the last two billion on the planet are connected by COWS and hotspots the last telecommunication bridge will be in place for all of humanity to access the digital world easily.
]]>Now, wireless technology is linked to COVID-19’s emergence in articles appearing on the Internet. One marked double fact-checked that appears on the website News Punch, claims a peer-reviewed scientific study has been published linking the deployment of 5G networks with COVID-19. It states that the study conclusively proves the link between wireless technology and the spread of viruses and illness. The article it points to is a study appearing on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website. In reading the paper, however, nowhere in the content is there a definitive link, just supposition, descriptions of symptoms, and stating they are common to wireless network exposure and the coronavirus. The claim that this paper has been peer reviewed bares inspection.
You can list technologies we have accepted for use in our world that have potential downsides. Too many X-rays can cause radiation damage. Taking too many over-the-counter or prescription medicines can induce harmful medical conditions. Driving cars contributes to air pollution that can exacerbate conditions like asthma. But affirming a direct 5G connection to COVID-19 is neither conclusively proven nor even close to reality.
What sites like News Punch will not do is follow up and publish a retraction when it turns out they are wrong. For example, the article describing conclusive evidence also quotes another study as corroborative. But although it tells you that the second study was published on the NIH website, linking 5G deployment to the appearance of coronavirus in skin cells, it doesn’t note that the latter was recently retracted. No doubt, the study with “definitive proof” will soon go the retraction route based on its weak science and supposition rather than correlation or causation.
News Punch in the same article names Dr. Anthony Fauci as one of the villains suppressing “the truth” about 5G and COVID-19. Then it adds to the “facts” of its argument linking bee honey production to 5G deployment. And finally, it accuses Dr. Fauci of knowing for the past 15 years that hydroxychloroquine cures coronaviruses (which it does not ) of which COVID-19 is one. How prescient of the good doctor to have this knowledge and how evil of him not to share it.
COVID-19 isn’t brought on by 5G wireless deployment despite what serial producers of fake news and misinformation spew on the Internet. Just because studies appear on websites with good credentials doesn’t necessarily mean that the information they are providing is correct. That’s because peer-reviewed may not reflect what is actually taking place prior to an article being accepted for publication.
Today, peer-reviewed doesn’t have the same cachet as it has had in the past. This is happening because of the explosion in the number of scientific papers being published. Back in 2016, Nature published an article that stated scientific paper publishing was increasing at a rate of 8 to 9% per year and that this had been ongoing for several decades. In 2018, another Nature article noted that thousands of scientists were becoming hyper-prolific in publishing research at rates of one paper every five days. They were doing this because authorship was linked to scholarship which was linked to tenure in academia.
Another ongoing change to scientific publishing is the emergence of preprints. These are articles that get put on a server for general viewing by the scientific community. They have yet to be peer-reviewed. A study done in 2020, noted that more than 200,000 articles had appeared in the scientific literature on the subject of COVID-19. Many never made it beyond pre-print. And even those that went through a peer-review process, and got published ended up upon further review being retracted. This trend in COVID-19 articles continued through 2021 and 2022 and no doubt will in 2023. Many of these papers will appear briefly on legitimate peer-reviewed journal sites and then be retracted. Why this is happening relates to the volume increase and the lack of enough qualified reviewers capable of reading through this deluge of information. Many studies can get past a reviewer with no more than a look at the abstract. Considering the quality of writing in so many scientific papers these days, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Volume plus indecipherable prose is making peer review problematic.
But for those who are serial distributors of misinformation, the publishing explosion of weak science is an opportunity to cherry-pick content to conform to a fake news agenda and ideology. And because sites like News Punch continue to publish articles like these gathering an audience that is steeped in the world of conspiracy theories, its content is grist for their mill.
When the Internet began, and in the early days of social media sites, I naively thought that with barriers to universal communication and knowledge sharing disappearing, we would witness a levelling of the playing field where all nations and people would no longer be disadvantaged. But what I forgot was human nature’s dark side always rises to the occasion when presented with a new means to disseminate lies. It is our penchant to find the dark side combined with the Internet that makes a site like Breitbart be seen by some as legitimate when compared to legacy news organizations that publish verifiable facts and not fakery with a political agenda.
If you find this subject of interest, you may find an article published in the February 7th edition of USA Today written by Nate Trela worth reading.
]]>But wait. If you think the 5 billion number is considerable, by 2032 the number will grow to 8 billion equivalent to the current world population total today. More than 90% of us will be connected through the Internet. Not only will we have access, but we will be able to upload and download information at speeds that just twenty years ago would have been considered only available to a few Fortune 500 companies.
This revolution in connectivity is happening because of the arrival of ground-based 5G connectivity, one-hundred times faster than 4G, and ten times faster than the average broadband connection, and the emergence of space-based low-Earth constellations of satellites providing connectivity from anywhere on Earth. Leading the pack is SpaceX’s Starlink. Soon to follow are Kuiper from Amazon, E-Space, Iridium, Telesat, OneWeb, LeoSat, and China’s Hongyun.
The expansion of 5G connectivity and its successor, 6G (one hundred times faster than 5G) will mean that anyone with an inexpensive mobile phone will be able to connect at warp speed. And the same will be true for the trillions of Internet-ready devices that will help us sense and understand more of the world around us.
What will this mean for humanity?
But I believe I was the only one on the street cognizant of all of this going on around me because everybody I encountered had heads down looking at screens, or were clearly caught up with listening to the piped-in sounds of smartphone-delivered music or podcasts.
It’s not the first time I have observed this. Pre-pandemic which was the last time I took public transit, as I looked around on the bus and later on a subway car, most around me were cocooned within their own smartphone universe and almost oblivious to the real world around them. Occasionally someone would look up to check on where they were so they didn’t miss their stop.
It isn’t hard to conclude that humanity’s love affair with technology is trapping us in an alternate universe. Maybe that’s why the virtual world of games and the metaverse have such appeal.
It wasn’t that long ago, 1999 in fact when I was the keynote speaker at a telecommunications conference in Toronto where I spoke about the convergence of a number of technologies that would soon alter our perception and how we interacted. That day I came on stage ensconced with a pager, a Palm Pilot, a flip phone, a digital camera and a large rubber band. I described to those in attendance a near future in which all of these devices would be integrated into one. I didn’t have an MP3 player like an iPod because it hadn’t yet been invented. The first model came out two years later.
So as I spoke I took the rubber band (we call them elastic bands in Canada) and wound it around all of my paraphernalia. When done I held up the bundle and said, “See all these devices. Within the next decade, one compact device will replace all of them and will begin the next stage of the 21st-century telecommunications revolution.”
At the time I was just starting my work with clients to develop the architecture to support future generations of wireless and broadband telecommunications. We were still a bit away from smartphones but I could see them coming soon. What I didn’t predict was the app ecosystems that Apple and Google launched with tens of thousands of programs that could be downloaded from the Internet and installed on ever more powerful devices. And I also didn’t anticipate touchscreens replacing physical keyboards like my Blackberry. It took me a while to move away from those tiny keys to tactile displays.
Today, I am onto my third-generation of Android smartphone. This one is over three years old so in another year or two, I will probably get a new one with more than twice the memory, twice the processor, twice the camera, and built-in augmented reality and AI. Once more the technology will move me to further separate myself from my reality to an alternate one. Once more I will be tempted to make the smartphone the centrepiece of both my digital and real-world existence.
But what I refuse to do is let the phone become “a weapon of mass distraction.” I borrowed this phrase from a recent article I read in The Economist which described how the smartphone app TikTok was taking over our universe. The Economist may have unknowingly borrowed the phrase it used from an old TV football movie that came out in 1997.
Obviously, the magazine was making a play on words based on the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” which refers to thermonuclear bombs. The question it made me ask was is distraction worse than destruction? Obviously not, but when you are watching a bunch of nearly brain-dead zombies shuffling along while they stare at tiny screens while wearing earbuds that block their auditory senses, or sitting entranced on a subway car oblivious to the world around them, it can be a bit of a fright.
By now most of you know of TikTok. Developed in China, it is a short-form, video-sharing app where users can create and post 15-second video clips on anything. Cats, birds, dogs, people dancing, making funny faces, throwing pies….you name it, and TikTok has it. It is also filled with hate images and messaging that is downright frightening. If you are familiar with the expression “15 minutes of fame,” well, TikTok has distilled that number to 15 seconds.
How pervasive is the app on smartphones and other digital platforms? Today it is the fastest-growing social media app in the world. It is the sixth most popular based on digital surveys but I am convinced it has supplanted Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and many more. So maybe, sixth is not an accurate read. Active TikTok users will reach 1.8 billion by the end of 2022. It has been downloaded more than three billion times. More than 20% of Internet users are on it every day watching 15-second video clips. Traffic amounts to more than one billion views daily. The energy consumed to interact with it makes it a key contributor to environmental pollution and climate change.
So this is our new reality, a world of people walking along or sitting with heads down watching 15-second video clips. As pedestrians, they seldom look up as I walk towards them. I’ve learned to say “Heads up. Incoming” and still step to the side to avoid head-down, head-on collisions.
]]>Over the past few centuries, we’ve seen revolutions in two key technologies: Transportation, and Information Sharing and Telecommunications. A revolution in both has shaped our modern world and gives us a glimpse of what to expect in the future. From here I will let, for the most part, Peter’s words tell the rest of the story.
Our story starts by looking at the elections of two US Presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama.
In 1861, William Russell, one of the biggest investors in the Pony Express mail service, decided to use the previous year’s presidential election for promotional purposes. His goal was to deliver Abraham Lincoln’s inaugural address from the eastern end of the telegraph line in Nebraska to the telegraph’s western end in Nevada as fast as possible. To pull this off, he spent a small fortune, hired hundreds of men, and positioned fresh relay horses every 10 miles. As a result, California read Lincoln’s words 17 days and 7 hours after he spoke them.
By comparison, in 2008 the entire country learned that Barack Obama had become the 44th President of the United States the instant he was declared the winner. When Obama gave his inaugural address, his words travelled from Washington, DC, to California 14,939,040 seconds faster than Lincoln’s speech. But his words also hit Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and Karachi, Pakistan, less than a second later. Barring some combination of precognition and global telepathy, this is about the fastest such information could possibly travel.
Such rapid progress becomes even more impressive when you consider that our species has been sending messages to one another for 150,000 years. And while smoke signals were innovative, and airmail even more so, in the last century, we’ve gotten so good at this game that no matter the distances involved, and with little more than a smartphone and a Twitter account, anyone’s words can reach everyone’s screen in an instant.
Obama’s speech went global instantly because, during the 20th century, this same positive feedback loop reached an apex of sorts: producing the two most powerful cooperative tools the world has ever seen.
The first of these revolutionary tools was in transportation that brought us from relying on beasts of burden to travelling in airplanes, trains, and automobiles in less than 200 years. Withn that time, we built highways and skyways and, to borrow Thomas Friedman’s phrase, “flattened the world.”
Before we applied machines to transportation, when famine struck in the Sudan, people elsewhere didn’t hear about it until years later. Providing relief meant gathering supplies of food and sending them by ship taking several weeks. Meanwhile people died.
But today, a famine outbreak is reported in real-time. C-130 Hercules transport airplanes rather than guys on horses means a whole lot of people could be a lot less hungry in a hurry. Measuring the change in cooperative capabilities yields an 18,800-fold increase in substituting a Herucles for horsepower.
Total carrying capacity over time is perhaps even a better metric, and here the gains are even larger. Whereas a horse can lug 90 kilograms (200 pounds) more than 50 kilometres (30 miles) a day, a C-130 can handle nearly 20,000 kilograms (more than 42,000 pounds) over 12,800 kilometres (8,000 miles) in the same 24 hours. This metric represents a 56,000-fold improvement.
The second cooperative tool has been the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution. This has produced even greater gains in the last two centuries.
In his book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, Columbia University economist Jeffery Sachs counts 8 distinct contributions that ICT has made to sustainable development, all of them cooperative.
The world has changed tremendously over the past two centuries. But the rate at which the world is changing is itself increasing. I believe entrepreneurs will create more wealth in the next decade than we did in the last century. A key force behind the change will be how converging exponential technologies lead to further advancements in tools of cooperation.
Here are just a few examples:
Continued improvements in battery storage, machine learning, materials science, and sensors will lead to autonomous vehicles and flying cars (eVTOL) that will redefine human travel.
Fully autonomous vehicles, car-as-a-service fleets, and aerial ridesharing (flying cars) will be fully operational in most major metropolitan cities in the coming decade. The cost of transportation will plummet by a factor greater than three. Where you live and work, and how you spend your time, will all be fundamentally reshaped by faster and cheaper.
At the same time, the convergence of 5G networks, AI, surging computing power, hardware advancements, low-cost space launches, and advances in materials science will create global gigabit connectivity that connects everyone and everything at ultra-low costs.
The deployment of both licensed and unlicensed 5G, plus the launch of a multitude of global satellite networks (Starlink, OneWeb, etc.), is allowing for ubiquitous, low-cost communications for everyone, everywhere, not to mention connecting trillions of devices.
This skyrocketing connectivity will bring online an additional 3 billion people and drive tens of trillions of dollars into the global economy.
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Why is this happening? Because the airlines are claiming that 5G cellphone frequencies will jam in-flight operations as the spectra of frequencies being used by telecommunications companies will interfere with those being used by onboard aircraft systems. The telecommunication operators call the FAA and airline companies’ concerns “fearmongering” based on disinformation, noting that 5G today operates in nearly 40 countries around the world without causing disruptions to passengers, airports and airplanes.
Aircraft use a piece of equipment called a radio altimeter. It operates using C-band radio frequencies and has been around for more than 40 years. The radio spectrum used is between 4.2 and 4.4 Gigahertz in the U.S. The spectrum for 5G C-band wireless ranges from 3.7 to 3.98 Gigahertz.
What does a radio altimeter do on an aircraft? It provides above-ground positioning data to the airplane during flight. The data is shared with onboard systems that provide terrain awareness, assistance to the pilot during takeoff and landing as well as to the autopilot when engaged. It provides wind shear data and alerts when flying close to the ground. For helicopters where the majority of flights are never that far above the ground, radio altimetry is critical to safe operations.
So how could a different spectrum range threaten the aviation industry? The fear is that airplanes will fall from the sky because the altimeters will be jammed or provide incorrect altitude readings.
Stories about wireless telephony doing weird things go back to the beginning of its introduction. Wireless signals from mobile phones were said to interfere with the operation of electric wheelchairs, hearing aids, and pacemakers. There were some reported incidents of radio interference from the phone network that caused a wheelchair to malfunction, hearing aids to buzz, and heart pacemakers to react to a cellphone when placed in a shirt pocket next to a person’s chest. But all of these issues were addressed quickly by manufacturers.
The current hysteria about 5G goes far beyond the airline industry. It includes conspiracy theories that 5G causes cancer, or is responsible for global warming. Unfounded and unfortunate, these ideas persist in an age where nonsense gets around the globe at Internet speed and over time is legitimized through retelling.
But the 5G hoo-hah from the aviation industry isn’t quite a conspiracy. It is more akin to the Y2K insanity that befell the planet as we approached the year 2000. A whole bunch of computer software companies warned us about a data field problem found largely in legacy mainframe computer software that operated for decades in large financial institutions, government, utilities, and manufacturing. The programs used two-digit data fields to indicate the year. So 1999 was entered as “99.” That meant all data records that followed when the year 2000 came around would register as “00.” Would that mean 1900 and if so would that compromise all the data records and databases recorded after 1900 on these systems? Would it cause software that used the date field for operational purposes to stop working?
Y2K software companies made a killing selling their remediation services to update legacy databases from a two to four-digit year. Not all did and when 2000 came, there were very few interruptions to services and operations around the world. Like the malfunctioning wheelchair there were a few incidents where a bank vault would not open, or an elevator not operate. But no elevator plunged to the ground. The banks’ vaults opened. And no airplanes fell from the skies.
Getting back to the story about radio altimeters. Their operation is determined by international convention. The 5G wireless spectrum bands are auctioned by nations or blocs like the European Union. Notification of spectrum band sales is posted for all to see well ahead of auctions. But like so many industries, the airlines are laggards when it comes to keeping up with technological changes that affect them. And in the U.S. it appears that the FAA has been paying little attention to telecommunications advances. So airlines haven’t considered upgrades to equipment that is mission-critical to airplane operations such as radio altimeters in the face of advances in wireless telephony.
Years after 5G auctions have sold spectrum ranges of concern, the airline industry has awakened to what may or may not be a potential problem. This is well after telecommunications companies have announced rollouts of their 5G wireless services, and after mobile phone manufacturers have introduced numerous 5G-compatible products.
The FAA has gotten involved since last summer, publishing presentations and studies that describe the problem that in some cases radio-based telemetry and equipment on airplanes might be compromised by C-band wireless signals operating at 3.98 Gigahertz. The FAA, as result, has requested of the federal U.S. government that deployment of 5G near U.S. airports be prohibited.
In Canada, where similar concerns have been raised the federal government proactively has placed restrictions on 5G-based telecommunications near airports even though the spectrum for wireless in the country is 3.5 Gigahertz, a far cry from the 4.2 to 4.4 Gigahertz frequencies used by airplane radio altimeters. Other countries have a much narrower safety net in place, as low as between 1.0 to 2.0 Gigahertz which these nations consider to be more than adequate to stop radio interference.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had in picking the spectra to auction for 5G put in place a safety net to protect radio altimeter bandwidths. The 2.2 Gigahertz difference was seen as more than adequate.
So is this a real threat? Will airplanes fall out of the skies? If they do it will not be because of 5G wireless deployment but more than likely because of manufacturers like Boeing cutting corners with design flaws and bad software such as occurred in the Boeing 737 Max 8. And it will happen because the regulator, the FAA, doesn’t pay attention or do its job.
A final note: There is no standard for radio altimeters in how they operate including the equipment’s ability to work within a specified radio spectrum. It is pretty clear, where oversight by U.S. federal regulators is needed, it is decidedly wanting.
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