Satellite internet … will it reach the Arab world?

Ever since famed billionaire Elon Musk announced on May 23, 2019 that SpaceX had launched the first Falcon missile carrying 60 satellites indoors, to deliver fast internet in space to all parts of the world; Questions have begun about the seriousness of the issue and what speeds will this service provide and reach our Arab region or not?
Internet in space
Elon Musk’s idea is based on the launch of about 12,000 satellites in the next few years in close orbit, with the mission of providing very fast Internet service with a latency delay rate of 3 milliseconds for all parts of the earth, including remote areas with very slow Internet services, as well as Providing the Internet for the first time to nearly 3.5 billion people who still do not even have access to an Internet service today.
How will satellites reach high speeds despite their great distance from Earth?
It is known that traditional satellites, such as satellites for television broadcasting, are located in orbits very far from the Earth at distances of about 36 thousand km and are considered a fixed station, where at that height the moon rotates on itself at the same speed. of Earth’s rotation. However, the large size causes a drop in signal quality as well as difficulty in communicating with it, especially in difficult climatic conditions.
The novelty of the “Star Link” project is that the satellites of this network will fly in very low orbits distributed in 3 groups. The first group has 1,440 moons at an altitude of only 550 kilometers, while the second group has 2,825 moons at a distance of 1,110 kilometers, and the last group consists of 7,500 moons at a distance of 340 kilometers.
These heights are considered very low if we compare them to conventional satellites, so each satellite will cover a specific geographic area during its movement, which means that the signals will reach a greater force towards the Earth and this will help to reduce response times. , and also to reduce the energy consumption of the receivers, as well as reduce their size and cost. .
Geography and prices
Is it possible to sign up and will the service reach the Arab region? The idea of ​​a satellite internet is similar to the idea of ​​traditional communication antennas and dishes, so to sign up for the service you will need to purchase a dish and a receiver. The difference here is that the dish will be the size of a pizza, as stated by Elon Musk, and it stands out in it that it shouldn’t be directed towards a specific moon, but rather simply aim it towards the sky to start receiving the signal from short-range satellites.
It is clear that, technically, anyone in the world can benefit from this technology, but the question remains whether or not it depends on the approval of local governments. For example, SpaceX has a permit from the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which authorizes it to establish a satellite Internet network in America, and has also obtained approvals. In other countries, such as Great Britain, as a first phase, it will be available on a larger scale in the coming years.
What about the prices? As for pricing, the company opened last summer accepting requests and submitted my request to test the service, but I haven’t received any updates so far. In America, the actual request has begun, as the company has emailed everyone who has requested the service informing them that subscription prices are $ 99 per month in addition to the one-time purchase of equipment at $ 499. The message says: Internet speeds will be between 50 and 150 megabytes per second, with a response time of 20 to 40 miles per second. And through a report released by the British media, early adopters of the service confirmed that it was 95% faster than current service providers and that they were able to watch 4K video without any buffering lag.
The project appears to be a dream for millions of people who have difficulty accessing the Internet or have no access to it at all. In 2017, Internet World Stats released a report on the number of internet users in the Arab world, where Egypt was at the top of the list, while Saudi Arabia was second and Morocco third, then Algeria and the ‘Iraq. Despite the large number of internet users and social networks in the Arab world, many of them suffer from poor services or lack of access to them in the first place.
The project is not the first of its kind, but it was preceded by large companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and OneWeb supported by the French company Airbus, and only time will tell the extent of the success of this promising project, which will cost Elon. Musk about $ 10 billion, and hopes to make up for it quickly, as reports say The company will be able to generate $ 30 billion annually, more than 10 times the annual revenue from SpaceX’s missile business.