Boeing has announced that technology giants like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook have been showing an interest in buying its powerful satellites, International Business Times reported.
Boeing [NYSE: BA] is showcasing its recent achievements in satellite technology, including its all-electric propulsion 702SP (small platform) satellite, at this week’s Satellite 2015 Conference & Exhibition (March 16-19) at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
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The aviation and satellite company expects to reach a deal with one of these companies by the end of 2015, to build a “high-throughput communications satellite, ” to help provide expanded internet access around the world.
“The real key to being able to do this type of things is ultra high-throughput capabilities, where we’re looking at providing gigabytes, terrabytes, petabytes of capability, ” Boeing’s Jim Simpson told Reuters at the Satellite 2015 conference.
Google and Facebook are already involved in bringing internet access to the third world world. Apple and Amazon might not, initially, have as much to offer folks out on the Savannah.
Apple has enormous amounts of cash, but the costs associated with building such a satellite and shooting it into geosynchronous earth orbit may be too staggering even for them.
Usually, it’s the mobile phone networks that deal with Boeing and competing satellite builders, since for them the added service capacity is translated quickly into attracting new customers.
According to Simpson, Boeing is working on new ways to make satellite communications cost less.
Google recently announced its involvement in a $1 billion investment round in SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company, to launch 4, 000 satellites in low earth orbit, to form a global Internet network.
The SpaceX satellite project will take five years at an estimated cost of to $10 billion.
Google is also running using a network of balloons and solar-powered drones, known as Project Loon, to deliver internet access to remote areas.
Facebook’s internet.org is another plan to connect the world via mobile phone networks around the globe, offering free access to search, weather and, naturally, Facebook.
