Day 0: internet falling from the sky

ANTENNAS IN SPACE. The MWC has not yet started and one of the trends we pointed out yesterday is already confirmed: the widespread use of satellites in low orbit to offer mobile coverage in places where terrestrial antennas cannot be placed (high seas) or do not go out on account of doing so (rural or very remote areas). The British group Vodafone has presented this Sunday the alliance with the firm AST SpaceMobile to have exclusively in Europe for five years its satellites, starting with the enormous BlueWalker 3, of 64 square meters, which has been doing since November around our planet as the first node of a network that will reach a hundred if the investors – including Rakuten, American Tower and Vodafone itself – hold on. Those involved have not set a date or price for the commercial service, but they assure that it will eventually cover 95% of the State’s territory. From the technical point of view, it will be very distracting to see how they do it to avoid interference in the places where there is already coverage between the waves of this and those coming down from the sky.