Samsung plans to provide internet to millions of users through thousands of low-cost micro-satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO)
Wherever there is Google, Samsung isnt far away. After Google and Facebook, Samsung has also joined the mass Internet bandwagon. However unlike Google and Facebook’s Earth based programs for providing Internet to millions of unconnected souls, Samsung is looking heavenwards.
According a paper on ArXiv by Farooq Khan, Samsung is looking to launch thousands of micro-satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with a specific mission to provide faster Internet connection to Earthlings.
Farooq Khan is president of research and development at Samsung’s Texas facility. In his paper, he proposes low-cost low-Earth orbit (LEO) micro-satellites as the solution, at orbits of around 2,000 km (1,243 miles) to keep latency to a minimum.
Almost two-thirds of the humankind currently does not have access to the Internet, wired or wireless. We present a Space Internet proposal capable of providing Zetabyte/ month capacity which is equivalent to 200GB/month for 5 Billion users Worldwide. Our proposal is based on deploying thousands of low-cost micro-satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO), each capable of providing Terabit/s data rates with signal latencies better than or equal to ground based systems.
Samsung which today launched its Mobile payments platform, Samsung Pay in the United States, could be looking to investment in billions of dollars as the idea would be to send at least a 1000 such LEO satellites in the space.
The expenditure would include building such satellite which support Internet traffic at a zettabyte per month which is equivalent to 200 GB per month for each of the five billion users. It would also include launch facilities for such micro-satellites.
Samsung Pay which was today launched in the US seeks to take on the might of Google and Apple’s mobile payments services, Android Pay and Apple Pay.
At a press event in New York Thursday, the company announced Samsung Pay, a new contactless payment system that lets people buy products in physical stores with their phones.
While Apple’s Apple Pay and Google’s Android Pay rely on Near Field Communication (NFC) sensors to interact with point-of-sale systems at retailers, Samsung is using a technology called Magnetic Secure Transmission that will allow Samsung Pay phones to communicate with the typical magnetic strip reader found in credit card terminals around the country. Samsung Pay will also support NFC like its competitors. Like other mobile payment systems, customers use their fingerprint to confirm a purchase after they’ve placed their phone near a point-of-sale system at the register.
“It is easy, safe, and most importantly, available virtually anywhere you can swipe a card, in most cases without new costs for merchants, from day one,” JK Shin, CEO of Samsung’s mobile division, said in a release.
