Blue Origin also building satellite network: Terawave

Blue Origin has concrete plans for its satellite constellation called Terawave. Unlike market leader Starlink, Terawave is intended to have a two-tier structure; in addition to around 5,280 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), there will be 128 in a medium Earth orbit (MEO). The promise: symmetrical bandwidth of up to six terabits per second.

The US rocket operator announced this on Wednesday. It aims to place the first Terawave satellites in orbit in the fourth quarter of 2027. The service cannot become a global mass product; more than about 100,000 users are not planned in the concept.

Terawave is designed for corporations, data centers, and public authorities. Blue Origin wants to offer these both point-to-point data connections and broadband internet access, primarily outside urban centers. Finally, customers should be able to link the service to their existing terrestrial networks for redundancy purposes.

The bandwidth issue

The stated symmetrical six terabits per second is an eye-catcher. For comparison, Starlink Business speaks of up to 500 Mbit/s download and only a maximum of 40 Mbit/s uplink.

However, the comparison is not that simple. On the one hand, Blue Origin speaks of “globally distributed customers” when stating the maximum transmission rates. This suggests that these figures are meant as bandwidth summed across multiple locations. At a single location, it is likely to be significantly less.

On the other hand, the six Tbit/s only apply to optical connections with the MEO satellites. These are further from Earth than LEO satellites, meaning signal transit times are longer and thus latency increases. This is not a problem for such large data volumes. However, optical connections are much more easily disturbed, for example by clouds, smoke, sandstorms, etc. Optical refractions at transitions between different atmospheric layers and air turbulence also have an influence.

144 Gbit/s symmetrical via radio

That's why Terawave needs the 5,280 low-Earth orbit satellites. These not only offer lower latency but, like Starlink, operate via radio. They are still expected to deliver up to 144 gigabits per second symmetrical – also a multiple of the market leader Starlink. For connections between Earth and satellites, Starlink uses the Ku band (12 to 18 GHz) but has also secured frequency usage rights for V (40 to 75 GHz) and E (60 to 90 GHz). In September, Starlink operator SpaceX also bought the rights from Echostar for a small portion in the 1915-1920 MHz range; this is intended for 5G connections to mobile phones.

Blue Origin relies on the V and Q frequency bands (33 to 50 GHz). The higher the frequency, the greater the data capacity, but also the susceptibility to interference. The company doesn't have much choice: the Ku band, as well as the Ka band (17-31 GHz) used by Starlink for connections between its satellites, is simply too full for another huge satellite fleet like Terawave. So it makes a virtue out of necessity and focuses on customers who are willing to pay for high bandwidth.

(ds)