really isn't that different from what we had 50 years ago.

It's gotten bigger.

We have better wireless,

and we've switched from copper wires to fiber optic cable.

But it's still one big, physically connected system.

A kind of arterial network strung between telephone poles

and lace through underground conduits,

connecting basically every computer in the world.

But that might be about to change.

A handful of companies are trying to build

a new type of internet,

one that doesn't run on physical cables.

And instead of going underground,

they're building it in space.

(light music)

This is what a satellite-based internet would look like.

Hundreds or even thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth.

It's expensive to launch and maintain a network like this,

but there are already a few up and running.

SpaceX is Starlink project is probably the most famous.

Thanks Elon.

But OneWeb is also fleshing out its satellite constellation

and Amazon's Project Kuiper secured a massive contract

to launch a plan 3,236 satellites.

There have been satellite

internet services available before,

but those have been geosynchronous satellites.

Maintaining a stable orbit over a specific spot on Earth.

That orbit only works if the satellites

are at a specific altitude, just over 22,000 miles up,

which is so far away

that the services tend to have awful latency.

The new generation of satellite internet systems

are doing it differently.

They're putting their satellites

in low to medium Earth orbit between 200-1200 miles up,

which means you can finally get

a low enough latency to make internet service really work.

The lower orbit also means the satellites

have to go a lot faster to keep from falling.

So they're always moving around relative

to a particular spot on Earth.

To make it work, you need a whole network of satellites.

So when one drops out of line of sight,

there's already another one coming into view.

- One thing that I think gets lost

when we talk about space space internet

is just how reliant these systems

are on ground-based infrastructure.

So in order to tap into a constellation like Starlink,

you need to use a terminal that relays signals

to a satellite that's orbiting overhead.

That satellite then needs to relay those signals down

to a ground station

that's connected to existing fiber optic infrastructure.

That ground station then relays those signals

back to the satellite, which then relays them back to you

and your user terminal.

But without those ground stations,

the entire system wouldn't work.

And so you need them populated

in certain locations all over the globe.

And you need to be within several 100 miles

of those ground stations

in order for you to get the communications that you need.

- Think back to that big network

we showed you at the beginning.

We take for granted that major services

like YouTube and Netflix

will operate out of regional data centers.

And that those data centers

will be in central parts of the internet backbone.

Places like Northern Virginia and southeast London.

But if a large portion of the internet users

are connecting through orbiting satellites,

that starts to look different.

For terrestrial networks,

the hardest part is the last mile.

That last bit of fiber connecting

the backbone to your house.

It's the most expensive part of the network

to build and also the most delicate to maintain.

So if you lose service,

there's a good chance your neighbors did too.

And restoring it, it's just a question

of how quickly the local service crew can get out to you.

But that's not necessarily true for satellite internet.

And it could really change the economics

of how remote areas connect.

Now, we're still a really long way from that happening.

Right now the best case scenario

for these companies is having a small sliver

of total users connecting through satellite networks.

But keeping that many satellites in the sky

is still a huge engineering challenge,

and it can cause real problems.

- The astronomy community is very concerned about

large mega constellations like this

because of what kind of impacts

that can have on their research

and their study of the cosmos.

So in order to study distant places in the universe,

astronomers take long exposure images of the night sky.

But the problem with these satellites

is they're very reflective,

and they can catch light from the sun.

And when they pass over a telescope

or an astronomer trying to take an image

of the distant universe,

that satellite reflecting sunlight

can leave a very long white streak through the image,

effectively ruining their observation.

Another major issue is the fact

that low Earth orbit is getting even more crowded

than ever before.

And with these companies

proposing to put thousands of satellites

into roughly the same area of space.

Satellite trackers are concerned

that the probability of collisions will increase.

And when things collide in space, it can be pretty nasty.

These things are moving at roughly 17,500 miles per hour.

So if one satellite runs into another,

they can create thousands of pieces of debris

that sticks around in space

that then threaten other satellites.

- There are also practical issues

that are still getting ironed out.

When our editor in chief Nilay Patel

tested Starlink in 2021,

he said that at best the service could offer

inconsistent connectivity and huge latency swings.

The biggest problem is obstructions

and the dishes line of sight to satellites.

Trees or even poles can cause service to cut out.

And since the satellites are always moving,

you really need a big strip of unobstructed sky.

The usual fix for that is to mount the dish

as high as you possibly can.

But Starlink also warns that roof mounted dishes

can be blown loose in a storm.

The company actually says you may wanna take the dish

inside during high wind events.

To be fair, Starlink has launched a lot more satellites

since we reviewed it in 2021.

But a quick spin through Starlink's Reddit community

shows latency swings, flagging download speeds

and dropped service are still very much an issue.

Still, there are places

where this kind of satellite internet

could really make sense.

Lots of places in America

are still hugely underserved for broadband.

And there are even more places like that

in the rest of the world.

The existing satellite projects

aren't ready to fix that just yet.

But the network keeps growing

and more areas keep coming online.

Even if Starlink can't make it work,

there's always OneWeb,

which is planning to launch full service at the end of 2022,

or Project Kuiper after that.

And if he finally does happen,

the internet could start to look a whole lot different.

Thanks for watching.

We've written a bunch of other stuff.

So if you wanna know more,

there are links in the description

including a link to that Starlink review we talked about.

And yeah, let us know in the comments what you thought.