

Ask HN: How fast should space-wifi be? - syedkarim

I&#x27;m in the early stages of developing, with others, a space-based wifi system. It&#x27;s a store-and-forward broadcast network that uses wifi multicast to provide content directly to mobile devices anywhere on Earth. One of way of thinking of it is GPS (50 bps) on steroids, or BitTorrent from space. The focus is more on unidirectional transmissions, rather than bi-directional connectivity, which would be way too costly at this point.<p>Although a constellation with as few as 25 cubesats is possible, the data rate would be incredibly low. Getting to dial up speeds will take a couple hundred satellites. So my question is: For people who would otherwise not have internet access, what kind of download speeds are useful? More about the project here http:&#x2F;&#x2F;outernet.is
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kapnobatairza
I frequently travel to developing countries (particularly in Africa/Middle
East. I think what is more important than speed is reliability. Most countries
have some sort of decent mobile internet service to some extent - it is just
spotty and unreliable and usually a generation or two behind.

You should think of this project as complementary to normal internet access -
a last resort backup that reliable works at a low speed. Dial up should be
fine - pages might take a while to load (especially those that are image
heavy) but people shouldn't expect to be able to stream YouTube on a service
like this.

