If this was a really a 100m buildout then i think that would qualify this as the bargain of the century! But we will probably need to multiple by 10. Or 100.
In any case, let's see how it all plays out.
The in building thing isn't an issue because the handsets don't communicate with the drone. They communicate with a base station which communicates through the uplink to the drone... so there is no Iridium type problem here.
Re: Skynet Business Case"Iridium died because the phones wouldn't work inside,"
LOL!
I'd forgotten that! Yes, a bit of a fatal flaw.
I remember Iridium and their huge booth at Telecom '99. I was filming a video news story there and there were about 40 iridium people outside talking on their big yellow satellite phones so we started filiming using them as a nice background and a PR person from Iridium came out and saw what we were doing and shooed them all inside.
Where... all their calls dropped.
I just rememeber thinking, what a dick. we're giving you free publicity. Then they all lost their jobs, which seems fitting really.
Misses what an internet isEven if a drone (or even a Queen Bee) network in the sky became practical, it would not replace the Intenret. Rather, an internet (of which The Internet is a prototype) is a network of networks, a layer above the underlying transport. Thus we can access the Internet via fiber, DSL, fixed or mobile wireless, or whatever else can carry its packets. Add another underlying network and you've grown, not replaced, the Internet.
But realisitcally, the flying-AP model is really best for rural areas, not a substitute for decent terrestrial stuff. And Jaime Fink is one of the smartest guys in the business, but even the beam-forming APs that Mimosa announced this week won't handle much of the load in a city from a stratospheric vantage point.
Re: Are we at light reading or not ?Hi Dan, in my initial comment i just meant to say that this will certainly be incredible in terms of wide scale deployments. It will bring ubiquity.
But it will certainly not replace fibers because of the bandwidth requirements in many applications.
ooh... this is interestingJonesy just pointed out this company:
http://airware.com/
Makes an airtraffic control system for the drone future... which is something that might come in handy when you have tens of thousands of them all of the palce.
BACKED BY KLEINER. I've heard of them.
If KP is funding startups in this space it may not be as far out as i first thought.
Re: Skynet Business CaseConsidering that 70% of the planet's surface is covered with water -- likely to be closer to 75% in 20 years' time accounting for global warming -- your cost estimates may be on the, um, high side. Also by that time, five-nines reliability will be almost forgotten about. So keep the faith!
If this was a really a 100m buildout then i think that would qualify this as the bargain of the century! But we will probably need to multiple by 10. Or 100.
In any case, let's see how it all plays out.
The in building thing isn't an issue because the handsets don't communicate with the drone. They communicate with a base station which communicates through the uplink to the drone... so there is no Iridium type problem here.
Cheers,
SS