handful of customers in a large area, with huge
per-customer costs. With satellite, costs can
be shared out over a bigger pool of potential
customers all over the world. A SpaceX executive
in 2018 predicted that it would cost $10 billion
to deploy a constellation of mini-satellites. Bezos
predicted that Amazon’s satellite-internet arm
will cost “multiple billions of dollars” to build.
Making sure that people have access to internet
is just one step to getting them online, however.
People also need to be able to afford internet,
and those in rural areas are more likely to
be poor.
It’s not clear what the pricing will be but high
costs swamped satellite phone service two
decades ago. It could do so again with internet.
“If you would have to pay 20% or more of your
income to go on the internet, in a situation
where you make a few dollars per day, you don’t,
because it’s too expensive,” said Martin Schaaper,
an analyst at the United Nations’ information
and communications technology agency.
Then there are concerns about the growth of
space junk, or “orbital debris,” which could crash
into each other and even potentially set off a
chain reaction of collisions that make orbit “no
longer usable,” according to NASA.
SpaceX, for one, says it’s trying to avoid adding
to the junk layer by moving satellites to avoid
crashes and designing them to burn up in
atmosphere when they’re used up. The space
companies have laid out their plans to avoid
debris with U.S. regulators, but critics say more
needs to be done, like setting up an air traffic
control system for space.