Huawei and Apple satellite communications are popular, but I find that people's attention is a bit biased. Most people are comparing Huawei and Apple to prove which satellite communication has stronger functions.
is actually meaningless than that, because before them, companies had long been developing satellite communication technology. For example, in 2021, Musk used Starlink as the data transmission satellite of Tesla . In June 2022, Geely also sent 9 satellites to space to serve his own cars.
However, these are just a corner of the satellite field. At home and abroad, many technology giants have already deployed satellite manufacturing and satellite technology.
Take foreign countries as an example. The early Iridium (Iridium ) has been built for two phases. The Globalstar constellation, which was the same as Iridium , has also grown up. Apple is their partner.
In addition to this, commercial aerospace companies such as Musk's Starlink Project, Google 's OneWeb Constellation, Amazon 's Kuiper Project, and other commercial aerospace companies are already building their own satellite networks. I won’t talk about the star links
. The amount is large and the amount is full. But what many people don’t know is that the number of satellites launched by OneWeb constellations and Kuiper plans to launch has reached thousands of satellites, and the scale is no less than the star links, and it is commercialized very quickly.
And we in China also have similar constellations, but are mainly central enterprises and private enterprises as the supplement.
For example, China's "GW" giant constellation has a satellite scale of tens of thousands, and there are also constellations such as Hongyan constellation, Hongyun project, Xingyun project, , etc., which are all hosted by state-owned enterprises.
At the same time, my country's commercial aerospace companies are also increasing. In 2018, there were only more than 100 registered aerospace companies, but in 2020, it has grown to more than 300. Technology companies such as Huawei, Ali , Tencent , Xiaomi and other technology companies are also deploying commercial satellites, so 2020 is also called the "first year" of China's satellite Internet.
In other words, the dispute between new technology between China and the United States has spread to outer space. According to the principle that whoever occupies outer space first is who, then a dispute over resources and standards is underway: whoever develops faster in the future will be the dominant advantage
So the question is, what is the dispute over satellite resources and standards, and can China gain an advantage? Today we will talk about the competition for the satellite communication standard of
actually existed very early. When
is in 1G, since the mobile phone uses analog signals, that is, the big brothers, its transmission distance is short, the bandwidth is limited to , and the call quality and confidentiality are poor, so countries around the world have begun to explore the second generation of cellular network technology.
had two technical routes at that time. One was to continue the first generation of cellular network technology and continue to look for better communication technologies in the field of mobile communications. This route was mainly based on European and some American companies. Another technology was to skip the Internet on the ground and directly engage in communication on satellites. Its camps include companies such as Motorola and Global Star .
satellite communication seems unrealistic to us now, but at that time, there was actually a lot of room for development, because 2G requires a very, very many base stations, and each base station can support very few users, such as a 900HZ frequency, which can only support about 1,000 people.
wants to meet this type of communication, and it is calculated based on the global population of 4 billion at that time. If you want to achieve the goal of global communication, you need at least tens of millions of base stations. If you consider the large area and sparse population, at least hundreds of millions of base stations are needed.
This is a huge workload and cannot be done with money.
So Motorola, the big brother of mobile communications at that time, gave up studying 2G and instead bet on satellite communications completely.
Compared with 2G technology, satellite communication has a relatively large advantage. It has a wide coverage area. As long as dozens of communication satellites are needed, global coverage can be achieved, and the difficulty is even lower.
So Motorola, , Microsoft and other technology companies are crazy about satellite communication, hoping to use it to replace the first generation of communication technology.
Motorola's Iridium project, everyone must know. Some people use "20 years ahead" to describe the madness of this satellite constellation, but few people know that Microsoft founder Bill Gats is even more crazy than Motorola.
After the Iridium project was released, Bill Gates found McVay. The two talked about Motorola's Iridium project and felt that there was great potential, so they decided to follow the trend and build a satellite network, and to make a big one at a time.
McVie
So they formed a satellite company called Teledesic in 1987 and proposed an ambitious plan to form a constellation of 840 satellites in the earth orbit. With this constellation, global satellite phone communication can be realized. The establishment of
Teledesic shocked the world. You should know that McVeigh is the "father of cellular telephones", and Motorola is the first generation of inventor of cellular network technology. Now both of them have given up cellular technology at the same time and turned to support satellite communications. In addition, Bill Gates, who is in full swing, personally stands on the platform, which is enough to illustrate the prospects of satellite communications.
is the second to be the scale. The Iridium project only has 77, while the Teledesic system is ten times its size. According to the practice of greater strength and awesome development (miss tongue), Teledesic's potential is at least several times that of Motorola.
So in the early days of Teledesic's establishment, he received countless investments, and even the prince of Saudi Arabia came here. Behind it are Iridium and Global Star, all of which are deploying satellite communications, with a very strong lineup.
At that time, the prospect of satellite communication even exceeded the cellular networks used now. However, such a powerful lineup still failed. Many people say that the cost of satellites is too high, which leads to its failure. In fact, this is just the surface.
Take the Iridium plan as an example. Before Motorola built the Iridium system, it made an estimate that as long as the number of users in the first year reaches 550,000, the capital can be guaranteed. Next, as long as the users accumulate more, the satellite's expenses can be distributed.
At that time, Motorola was a giant in the field of communications and mastered the standard patents of the first generation of communications technology. It had sufficient technology and funds. If it was developed according to their script, satellite communications would replace ground networks, which was not an out of reach. What we now might be using satellite phones.
But they miscalculated other countries' determination to compete for 2G communication standards.
Europe's communication technology is actually quite powerful, especially in the 1G era, Germany, the United Kingdom, , Sweden, and other countries established their own communication networks, but no one obeyed each other. As a result, when they were fighting each other, Motorola in the United States rose rapidly.
In the 2G era, they decided not to fight in the internal strife, but joined forces to form a "mobile expert group" to specialize in cellular technology. In 1990, they officially launched the GSM network and standards, and opened it up, so that any country or enterprise can participate.
Sweden Ericsson
In contrast, if you want to use satellite networks, you must buy Iridium phone from Motorola. A company of Motorola has almost contracted all roles such as communications and mobile phone manufacturing
On the one hand, it has an open and win-win thinking technology, and one is a closed and exclusive technology. Even a fool knows who to choose, so GSM quickly became popular in most countries.
China was not strong at that time, so it was naturally engaged in GSM. As a result, the market was almost occupied by GSM before the Iridium project was officially launched. In contrast, satellite communications were miserable. The smaller the market, the higher the cost each consumer would have to bear, and the more difficult it would be to promote satellite communications.
plus the Internet bubble in 2002, the size of satellite phones has not been resolved for a long time, so satellite companies such as Teledesic, Iridium Project, and Global Star slowly faded out of their horizons.
Iridium Project
The first battle for standard communication technology ended with a 2G cellular network victory, but the era of satellite communication did not end there.
Although it failed in the civilian market, it can communicate globally without relying on base stations. It is very popular in the military market, especially the US Department of Defense. When they perform their missions, they almost have one.
So when they learned that Iridium was going bankrupt, they firmly disagreed. Instead, they gave Iridium a very large contract and ordered thousands of satellite phones at a very high premium. In this way, Iridium magically switched to the military market, and amazed the world in the 9/11 terrorist attack, Iraq's battlefield and even the Wenchuan earthquake in China.
Take 911 as an example. Under the influence of the explosion, the networks in many areas of Manhattan were damaged, and cellular phones could not communicate at all, while satellite phones took on many urgent contact roles. The sales of Iridium phones began to soar.
Countries around the world also recognize the role of satellite phones in special circumstances, so they all regard it as a backup communication method, including China.
When the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the Wenchuan ground network was paralyzed for tens of miles. China Satellite Communications received an order to send the first batch of 10 satellite phones into the epicenter of the earthquake: Yingxiu Town , which restored internal and external contacts with the help of satellite communication.
During this earthquake rescue, China Satellite Communications invested a total of thousands of satellite phones to support the communication function in the early post-disaster period. Among them, the calls of Iridium phones are the most stable and have the best function, and are the "vanguard" in carrying out the mission.
Since then, China has also begun to pay attention to the construction of satellite communications. Like China, almost all countries have begun to explore the advantages of satellite phones and use them as backup communication tools or in special fields.
Therefore, satellite phones also appear in various disaster sites and special places, such as deserts, seas, deep mountains, and even some enterprises and governments will also equip employees with a large number of satellite phones in order to prevent emergencies.
Satellite Communications Company has also begun to slowly gain a foothold.
In 2004, Iridium company even turned losses into profits. On this basis, Iridium proposed to build the second generation of "Iridium system" in 2007, with plans to spend US$3 billion to launch 75 communication satellites into the sky.
At this time, the global communications market also formed a situation of "cellular communication as the main and satellite communication as the auxiliary", which has lasted for more than ten years.
In the past decade, the development of commercial aerospace in the United States has been very rapid.
, especially Musk's SpaceX, is innovatively based on rocket recycling technology, and uses stacking to make the satellites small and flat, directly reducing the launch cost of a single satellite to hundreds of thousands of dollars, a 100-fold reduction.
Commercial Aerospace has ushered in a super explosion, especially in 2020. China included satellite Internet in the list of new infrastructure , announcing that we will also usher in a rapid period of commercial aerospace development. Therefore, 2020 is also called the "first year of satellite Internet" in the industry.
plus 5G still cannot solve the base station problem, so scientists positioned G on the integration of space and earth, which means that the satellite Internet will shoulder the heavy responsibility of 6G.
Therefore, satellite communications and ground networks are no longer a simple competitive relationship. They can develop independently, or cooperate with G technology to jointly build 6G technology.
In this way, the satellite market is no longer a telephone, but becomes two major ecology, one is the Internet of Things on the ground, and the other is the sea of stars facing outer space, and the market value of these two areas is very great.
Take the Internet of Everything as an example. It can also be divided into: Industrial Internet , Internet of Vehicles and Internet of Things, etc. According to the scenario, these are market value of more than one trillion yuan. In the future, in the 6G era, they will all be integrated with satellites, that is, satellites are equivalent to base stations, high-speed rails, power grids, etc. on the ground, becoming a space infrastructure.
Nowadays, the high-speed rail and power grid can move GDP, and satellites can leverage greater value in the future.
In addition, satellite communication has a greater role in outer space. It can provide positioning and navigation for spacecraft, and can also serve as a relay bridge for spacecraft to communicate with humans. Whoever has more satellites will have greater initiative in outer space.
, especially the United States and China, the United States itself is a country developed in the Age of Navigation. The dividends are full of money. Of course, we know more clearly the benefits of this expansion. We have been locked in the country for hundreds of years and have suffered a lot of the backwardness of the Age of Navigation. Naturally, we do not want to repeat the same mistakes in the next era.
So a dispute over satellite orbit resources and technical standards, and even the Sino-US model broke out. The dispute over
standard technology refers to communication standards. At present, the NTN standard for satellite and mobile phone communication is being formulated. It is managed by 3GPP organizations. 3GPP is composed of 7 standard organizations including China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, India and Europe, involving more than 300 organizations in 40 countries around the world.
is also the maker of the 5G standard organization, so the importance of satellite communication standards can be compared with the 5G standard battle mentioned above. When Huawei first stood firm in the leader of 5G standard, it was targeted by the United States. It can be imagined that the competition for satellite communication standards is also very fierce. As for satellite orbit resources and wireless spectrum, the competition is even more fierce. Taking orbit resources as an example, ITU is responsible for it, and is basically managed on a first come first served basis.
In fact, this is seriously unfair. Taking satellite resources as an example, at present, China and the United States are in the first place in aerospace technology, and the United States has the first-mover advantage and has seized a lot of resources. China is following closely behind. As for other backward countries, there are basically not many opportunities.
As for wireless spectrum resources, the same is true.
This year, China also proposed to issue relevant international regulations as soon as possible, and it should give latecomers some chance. Of course, the United States will definitely not agree, so the effect is not good. In the foreseeable future, the battle between the two will be quite fierce.
Especially in recent years, humans' exploration of outer space has been accelerating, just like in the early days of the Age of Discovery. Although everyone is not sure how much benefit space exploration can bring to humans, no one wants to miss the next Age of Discovery, so both China and the United States are vigorously developing aerospace technology .
The models between China and the United States are also different. The United States uses commercial aerospace as the basis, while China focuses on central enterprises and commercial aerospace as the supplement. It is hard to say which of these two models is better.
The United States commercial aerospace is more developed. They issued the Space Commercial Launch Act in 1984. The bill allows commercial companies to undertake NASA's rocket launch business and automatically start the development of commercial aerospace. After several bills and cooperation, they gradually over-teched to commercial aerospace companies.
. Commercial aerospace companies are known as manufacturing equipment for NASA and absorb a large amount of funds in the capital market. Part of these funds are used to support NASA's projects and part of them are used to support the company's technological development.
This driving effect is actually somewhat similar to the Age of Navigation. The early days of the Age of Navigation were led by states and religions. In the middle and late period, private capital also participated in it after seeing the interests and jointly completed the geographical discovery .
So the advantage of commercial aerospace is that it can leverage more funds and carry out more projects.
For example: A large part of SpaceX's recycling technology comes from NASA, and NASA also provides them with financial support and orders commercial contracts from them. SpaceX can develop technology while financing from , and in turn use technology and funds to provide services to NASA.
In addition, the more commercial space, the more satellite resources they will seize.
Let’s take a look at the following table. This is a table for American commercial space companies to apply for satellite constellations to FCCh. Among them, SpaceX/OneWeb/Boeing /Amazon and other companies have planned large-scale constellations plans. In fact, this picture is already an old version, and the quantity statistics are seriously lacking.
For example, Amazon's Kuiper Project, they did apply for 236 satellite orbits from the FCC in 2019, but in 2021, they applied for 4538 satellite resources, which is famous for its purpose in order to fight against Starlinks, because the scale of Starlinks is larger, reaching more than 40,000.
and OneWeb. Their initial plan was indeed 2468, but in 2020, they had applied for 47844 low-orbit satellite resources from the FCC.
There are also other companies, which means that the United States alone has applied for massive resources, so the advantage of commercial aerospace is to use more funds to promote stronger technology, and at the same time, more projects can be carried out.
The US commercial space companies are like NASA's younger brothers. They claim internally that they are competing with each other, so they need to continuously expand their scale, but externally, they are actually expanding their territory for the United States to expand its territory in the outer space field.
Amazon Koiber Plan
In comparison, we are much behind in the development of commercial aerospace. In 2014, the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Innovating Investment and Financing Mechanisms in Key Areas to Encourage Social Investment", which for the first time proposed to encourage private capital to participate in the construction of space infrastructure.
So in early 2015, my country began to officially enter the era of commercial aerospace. To this day, our aerospace model has formed a trend of being dominated by central enterprises and supplemented by private enterprises, and the development speed is also very fast.
For example, our Xingyun Project, Hongyan Constellation, etc. are mainly affiliated to China Aerospace Corporation, but in AI constellation, Jilin No. 1 Constellation, Space-based Internet of Things, etc. are mainly private enterprises.
Of course, overall, the scale of commercial aerospace in the United States is still relatively different, and it has leveraged less private capital.
So is our model behind? Of course not, commercial aerospace also has its drawbacks.
The United States NASA has delegated aerospace technology very early and has been very thorough. It does not have the ability to develop and manufacture it itself. Every major plan depends on many commercial aerospace companies, or other countries.
The first thing that commercial aerospace considers is its own interests, and the competition among various companies is fierce and technology is difficult to share, so the efficiency is not high. To put it bluntly, it is money spent, but the efficiency is not high.
A very typical example is the United States' return to the moon.
Artemis plan
Their Artemis plan is grand, but their investment is also terrifyingly high. The research and development of spacesuits requires billions of dollars, and the development of landing systems requires billions of dollars, and then the cabin project of space station also requires billions of dollars.
can be said to be a model made with money, but they delayed the simplest Artemis 1 rocket several times, and the development of spacesuits has been delayed again and again, with the cost being higher than each other, and some technologies also require support from other countries.
It can be said that NASA alone is unable to complete similar projects.
But China can do it. We mainly focus on state-owned enterprises and supplemented by private enterprises. In major tasks, our state-owned enterprises can assume responsibility, independently complete the R&D and manufacturing of projects, and also absorb funds from the society.
and you can also choose to decentralize technology and choose reliable aerospace companies as partners to jointly develop technology, which not only controls the industrial chain, but also uses capital flexibly, ensuring the efficiency of execution.
Compared with the wealth of the United States, we are obviously more suitable for the latter model.
Aerospace exploration not only looks at the beginning, but also focuses on the process and results. Just like in the early days of the Age of Discovery, our shipbuilding technology also reached the peak of the world, but unfortunately we later remained complacent and missed an entire era.
Now we can say loudly: Space Age, we are here ~
