Text/Yang Bo
Finishing /Zhao Jiahe
Hello everyone, first of all, to introduce myself, my name is Yang Bo, is the solution director of Galaxy Aerospace. It is a great honor to talk to you about how the satellite Internet is integrated with the aerospace industry. In fact, China and the United States have some direct competition in space and various emerging industries.
We at Galaxy Aerospace are committed to the overall solution of the low-orbit satellite Internet, that is, to create a long-term application including satellite and ground systems, as well as the entire positioning system. At the same time, we are also accelerating technological innovation and contributing to the country's overall satellite Internet economic strategy.
So today my topic is the exploration and practice of the internet progress of low-orbit satellites and the integration of 5G applications.
Everyone may be familiar with public networks, Internet 4G, and 5G, and more understanding of satellite communications is still limited. But in fact, with the development of satellite technology and the further extension of emerging industries, the satellite Internet has gradually entered the mass market.
The representative of the international satellite Internet is Starlink, which has now made the satellite Internet sufficient to compare with the terrestrial optical fiber network. Therefore, at present, the concept of satellite Internet has gradually grown from the previous single communication scenario to can be landed, which can provide real communication services for related industries and users. At the same time, we will gradually deepen our integration with the industry, moving from cities to areas such as oceans and space that cannot be reached by the current earth network. Therefore, from the perspective of the development of satellite Internet, there is actually a large user soil.
According to the latest data report, the global Internet users in 2021 are about 4.646 billion, but the overall penetration rate has not reached 60%. So now nearly 40% of the population still has no Internet connection, which is equivalent to nearly 3 billion people expecting the Internet to provide more convenient application scenarios.
From the perspective of Internet penetration, in fact, the current growth of new users has also encountered bottlenecks, the overall growth rate from 2005 to 2019 in the past 14 years is about 10%; although the overall P/E ratio in 10 years has doubled, but from the current years, the overall P/E ratio of the Internet has been low.
There are several reasons for this, the first is that the ground network itself is subject to geographic functions. In cities and suburbs, it can also be covered by optical fiber, but in other regions such as Africa and South America, there is actually a lack of a relatively good terrestrial optical fiber network environment. In the future, the satellite Internet can greatly expand some areas that the ground network cannot currently reach. At the same time, from the perspective of development history, the original cable was always used from local to comprehensive coverage. However, wired will encounter bottlenecks in the development cycle of each generation of communications, so the last paragraph needs to be covered by wireless.
For example, after the development of the Internet, in the later stage, it is relying on mobile networks and mobile phones to complete this last paragraph. Therefore, wireless and wired connections are actually the two ultimate means to meet the needs of human connectivity. The combination of the two can fully meet the user's global real-time coverage.
At present, the huge amount of communication demand market and the Internet financial market will be difficult for some users to reach due to geographical restrictions or other factors. Then the satellite Internet is to solve some contradictions between the two ends, so that the huge market can overcome geographical factors or other factors at the same time. At the same time, the satellite Internet can greatly improve the effectiveness of network coverage, become an effective supplement to the ground network, and bridge the gap in the development of the Internet.
This is also an important reason why international giants such as SpaceX and Amazon are committed to the construction of satellite Internet: the future development of satellite Internet is a large blue ocean market.
Then the low-orbit satellite Internet has its own basic advantages compared with the traditional satellite Internet.
In fact, traditional satellite communications have gradually landed related technologies 10 years ago, especially at present, high-orbit communications have related applications in all walks of life. However, due to the problems of orbit, monomer total volume and coverage, the high rail is actually defective in terms of bandwidth and cost, which also makes it difficult to expand or meet user needs.
The low orbit compresses the orbit from 36,000 kilometers to hundreds of kilometers, and the transmission delay is greatly reduced, from 600 to 700 milliseconds to about 30 milliseconds, which can fully meet some communication scenarios. The terminal communication rate has also reached more than 100 megabit sets, and the current traditional high-rail is basically about 10 megabits, and the cost is also higher. Due to the orbital characteristics and scale advantages of low orbital constellations, the communication cost can be reduced relatively low.
In the future, we will gradually move closer to 4G and 5G, for users, satellite Internet is actually the same as the ground network, forming a situation of urban and suburban integration and switching, giving full play to the advantages of satellite Internet in low latency, high throughput and low cost, to provide users with high-quality solutions.
Just mentioned satellite Internet, in fact, is also related to the information security construction of various countries, in the case of Musk's SpaceX, the Starlink system has been related to the landing in the Americas and Europe, and systems like OneWeb and Amazon have begun to compete for layout.
In April last year, China Satellite Network Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as China Star Network) was officially established, which had a profound impact on the satellite Internet industry and even the development of China's aerospace science and technology. With China Star Network as the pillar, closely condensing private enterprises, universities and other multi-party industry, education and research entities, it is expected to form a new national system for the development of China's satellite Internet industry and enhance the international core competitiveness of China's satellite Internet industry development.
Galaxy Aerospace mainly takes the overall system of the domestic low-orbit satellite Internet as the main entry point, provides corresponding solutions and corresponding products for the construction of the continental satellite Internet, and assists the construction of the continental satellite Internet.
Below I would like to make a brief introduction to some of the more well-known low-orbit constellations in the world. Starlink, for example, has launched more than 2,000 satellites and has nearly 200,000 user groups in traditional European and American countries and regions such as the United States, Europe and Australia. Overall, Starlink is already at the forefront of global satellite Internet applications.
We learned through public information that its single terminal download rate is basically about 200 megabytes, and the high energy can reach more than 400 trillion, which has been compared with the fixed network in Europe, the United States, Australia and other regions; the upload rate is about 4 trillion, and the overall performance is very good.
From the perspective of its overall terminal and user productization path, a set of terminals used to be $490, and recently the price has increased to $589 due to inflation. The tariff was then increased from $99 to $110, which is actually enough to meet the network needs of people in North America and Europe. Therefore, in fact, Starlink's user positioning is home network access in rural areas and some remote areas in Europe and the United States.
Then for OneWeb, it is actually more inclined to the traditional centralized procurement networking. OneWeb has launched 228 satellites so far, basically covering 3 countries, and the entire rate starlink is similar, but because the ground station is limited and the routing path is longer, the delay will be longer.
With the improvement of network functions, the latency of low-orbit satellite Internet in the future will gradually drop to the order of 30 milliseconds or less, far better than traditional high-orbit communication.
China has basically begun to gradually make some efforts since 2018, including the launch of Hongyun and Hongyan; and then to the launch of the first star of Galaxy Aerospace in January 2020. Including the incorporation of satellite Internet into the new infrastructure in April 2020, it is also an important direction for the country's future infrastructure. In April last year, China Satellite Network Group Co., Ltd. was established, which opened a new prelude to the accelerated landing of the national satellite Internet industry.
In March this year, Galaxy Aerospace successfully launched six low-orbit broadband communication satellites developed in batches for the first time in the mainland, which together with the first satellite of Galaxy Aerospace in orbit formed the continent's first low-orbit broadband communication test constellation, and built a satellite-ground fusion 5G test network "Little Spider Web", taking a positive step.
As mentioned just now, Europe and the United States have basically entered the stage of mass deployment and global landing of commercial services, and have gradually begun to do some commercial closed-loop attempts. At present, China is still in the field of constellation system certification and technology research and development, as well as experimental system construction, so there is still a part of the gap, of course, we give full play to the flexible advantages of private aerospace will help the construction of the continental satellite Internet to catch up with the boom of low-orbit satellite Internet.
We are primarily committed to the development of internationally advanced low-orbit constellations, providing a complete set of scaling solutions from satellites to the ground, emphasizing low cost and high-tech capabilities. Because as long as the advantages of the combination of aerospace and satellite Internet are brought into play, the current high-cost satellite communication means can indeed be gradually transformed into a cost-effective world integrated broadband communication service that can be deeply integrated with the terrestrial Internet in the future.
At present, Galaxy Aerospace has more than 300 people, more than 70% of whom are R&D personnel, and is a team dedicated to combining aerospace and the Internet. It is the first unicorn enterprise in the field of continental aerospace and satellite Internet. Then, after the establishment of Galaxy Aerospace in 18 years, it took only one and a half years to manufacture the first low-orbit broadband satellite in the mainland with a communication capacity of 48Gbps, and the single-satellite communication capacity can be benchmarked against Starlink's low-orbit broadband satellite; and it is the world's first set of low-orbit broadband communication payloads in the Q/V/Ka band.
Under the actual measurement, on the mobile phone side, we have reached a download speed of 380Mbps and a upload capacity of more than 90Mbps, which has exceeded the ability of Starlink on the terminal side, which is also a phased achievement of our benchmarking international advanced technology level. At the same time, it is also the world's first low-orbit broadband experimental star in the Q/V/Ka band, which has received widespread attention at home and abroad.
In addition to satellites, the ground also needs a set of systems to cooperate, so we have also developed some related low-orbit Ka-band terminals on the terminal side to support the demonstration of related applications. At the same time, we will gradually make some related attempts to the needs of low-cost, high-performance and lightweight users in future low-orbit satellite applications.
In 2020, we also realized low-orbit broadband Internet communication for the first time, verifying that in the WeChat voice and video scene, low-orbit satellite +5G has achieved the same experience effect as the ground network 5G. At the same time, because the future low-orbit satellite Internet will be used as a supplement to the ground, we have also verified the reliability and broadband utilization of low-orbit satellite Internet technology in mountainous areas and seasides and some remote areas.
In addition to some technical validation and key performance exploration, we also introduced the satellite to the public for the first time as a trial product in February 2021. At that time, we launched an event on Valentine's Day, using low-orbit satellites to forward blessing text messages, coupled with the interaction of Weibo, and also gained 8,000w+ reading and over 10,000 discussions.
In fact, the satellite Internet has reached this stage and has begun to integrate with the needs of the industry and the public. For a long time in the future, we will gradually polish the satellite Internet and B and C users, and drive the upgrade and optimization of the entire system.
Just mentioned that we will combine with 5G business in the future, in fact, there are many technical thresholds to cross, including the first time that we have combined 5G and satellite Internet to do some application demonstrations in traditional application scenarios. Basically, after the adoption of this 5G system, the terminal can reach a rate of more than 900 megabytes, indicating that the future of the low-orbit satellite Internet and the in-depth integration of 5G have good prospects.
At the same time, we have successively done almost seven or eight hundred experiments, the early stage is mainly for the star-to-earth system capabilities and some exploration of industry technology, and then gradually use these capabilities as the integration application of some scenarios. Including our star-to-ground convergence communications, 5G private network and low-orbit convergence, we can fully play the advantages of the two together and provide users with a variety of professional solutions.
We made the first attempt last year to provide power guarantee services for the Winter Olympics through 5G+ satellites, and based on this, we and Beijing Electric Power Unicom jointly won the first prize of the 2020 "Bloom Cup" industry virtual private network track of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It can be seen that this is a very important application mode for 5G in the future, and it is also a form recognized by the industry.
This method can continue to deepen in the 6G era. In the future, the 6G low orbit will be a force that cannot be ignored, which is equivalent to providing a wide-area means of development. Just mentioned that we have used the first star to do industry verification and key technology research and development attempts. In March this year, we combined the research and development capabilities accumulated by the first star with the industrial chain to form a batch production capacity. It is also the first time that the mainland has the first low-orbit experimental network with practical industry verification.
Based on the above capabilities, Galaxy Aerospace has been providing a relevant development platform for the entire industry chain, and has also supported the technology research and development and technical certification of relevant domestic enterprises, including some system architecture verification and terminal development and functional performance verification. In the follow-up, we will integrate this platform and the industry, hoping to share our system capabilities and industry partners, promote the rapid development of the mainland satellite Internet, based on the national strategy, and provide some strength for the development of the national low-orbit satellite Internet.
Just mentioned the integration of satellite Internet and 5G, because 5G and satellites themselves belong to the category of new infrastructure, and the two can actually be integrated. In addition, in fact, the current ground network also has a certain bottleneck in the field of 5G, and for industrial interconnection, 5G is not so mature.
Mainly in some western regions and along the Belt and Road, as well as important industrial environments such as the sea, if the traditional land network model is used to cover and then provide industry services, the cost is very high. Without relying on the ground environment, the use of space-based coverage can greatly reduce construction costs and operation and maintenance costs.
The combined architecture of 5G and satellite Internet can maximize the formation of a fast private network environment that does not rely on terrestrial networks. The overall application mode of the overall 5G satellite Internet is also deeply related to its architecture, and the use of different network organizational structures can achieve broad coverage of the industrial field and provide a different efficient connection method. So the whole low-orbit satellite Internet in the future aims to bridge the global digital divide.
But this time we are different from foreign countries, we must incorporate 5G technology, reflect the advantages of the mainland 5G industry, and truly realize this kind of space-based ubiquitous infinite interconnection in the global context.
For example, the operation line field of special industries, secure encrypted communication, mobile aviation field and the Internet of Vehicles, as well as cruise ship communication at sea, can form a low-cost solution for special field scenarios and people. For example, the data collection of the first island chain on the mainland will have a special data protection network.
In fact, the satellite Internet will push the 5G capability to the place where the current ground network cannot reach in the future, which is some changes brought about by different industry application scenarios. These are some of my sharing, thank you.