Networking in Heaven as on Earth

The Internet will undergo a major transformation as satellite-based Internet service providers start to disrupt the market. Constellations of hundreds to thousands of satellites promise to offer low-latency Internet to even the most remote areas. We anticipate exciting business and research opportunities. Motivated by the potential of the new satellite networks, we describe business and interconnection models for space-operating ISPs and how they could be integrated into the backbone of today's Internet. At the same time, in view of the high risk of these ventures, we study constellations under partial deployment. We take the SpaceX constellation as an example and show that even at 10% deployment it offers a high level of connectivity to most areas. However, this connectivity is intermittent, which raises challenges for integrating satellite networks into the Internet backbone.

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