Satellite Internet Will Let Us Put AI in Everything
Satellite internet is blasting off right now.
Nations and states are inking deals with satellite providers to fill in service gaps for their residents and keep their critical infrastructure connected. Phone makers are building satellite capabilities into their handsets. Airlines are partnering with satellite operators to keep your in-flight Netflix stream stutter-free. And the race to blast the satellites powering these networks into orbit is helping the rocket business thrive.
All of this adds up to boom times for satellite internet. But there's another factor that could cause the tech's proliferation to accelerate further: artificial intelligence.
The AI industry is keen to see a fully connected world because of the benefits a persistent connection can bring to its products, says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. The near future of the AI arms race hinges on agents, smart-ish virtual assistants that can automate various parts of your life. But those AI agents have to be on call 24/7 to be effective, which requires an always-on internet connection. And the fast pace of AI agent innovation requires the AI models to be tweaked and updated often, which makes a direct connection indispensable.
'We're still very much dependent on the cloud because things are changing so fast,' Sag says. 'You can't just deploy an AI model to an endpoint and expect that you're not going to have to update that model pretty regularly.'
Another beneficiary of the satellite internet expansion is likely to be the great, flawed landscape that is the internet of things. IoT tech like free-roaming robot vacuums, road-tripping luggage trackers, and security cameras at the edge of your property will no longer struggle to stay connected while they transfer videos, photos, commands, and location data.
'I think IoT will become more relevant,' Sag says, 'because satellite connectivity will enable more IoT devices to feed back into AI.'
If you have satellites blanketing the entire planet giving real-time data of where devices are and how they're moving, that offers up a massive feast of information for AI to gobble up and, hopefully, to digest into something usable.
'IoT struggled significantly because nobody knew what to do with the data,' Sag says of the past decade. 'But AI loves data. And the more data you give it, the more you can empower it to make better decisions.' A Link to the Stars
Of all the major players in satellite internet, Starlink looms the largest. It provides solid internet service to over 4.5 million subscribers around the world, many of whom would otherwise not have access to a reliable connection. It's also a subsidiary of SpaceX and controlled by CEO Elon Musk, the person leading the systematic dismemberment of federal agencies across the entire pantheon of government in the US. Thanks to Musk, Starlink's internet service is even installed at the White House. That political connection is unsavory to some, and it's sending some potential customers elsewhere. Starlink is controversial for other reasons too: The service was found to be used by a criminal organization in Myanmar to keep a slavery-powerd scam operation online.
But Starlink is beloved by millions of rural residents and rich yacht owners alike. The US military is excited about using it to keep troops connected in the field. Corporations are hitching their wagon to Starlink as well, with travel providers like United Airlines and cruise ship companies hoping to keep customers online as they scurry around the globe.
T-Mobile recently partnered with Starlink to provide connectivity to customers in reception dead zones. Starlink on T-Mobile, Sag says, is an example of this satellite technology being implemented in a simple and effective way. If you go out of the range of a terrestrial T-Mobile reception tower, your phone can connect to Starlink passively, without having to fiddle with changing networks yourself.
'They worked extremely closely with Google and Apple to make sure that this was a super, super easy experience,' Sag says. 'You don't need an app and you don't have to click any buttons. It just works.'
Terrestrial wireless connections already have that sort of interoperability built in. If you're traveling and lose connection with a cell tower, there's probably another one close by that your device will automatically connect to. Satellite internet provides that same unbroken experience even when there are no cell towers to connect to—for phones, trackers, and a litany of connected gadgets. Got You Covered
Of course, Starlink's satellites are not the only ones on the launchpad. The same day T-Mobile first announced its partnership with Starlink, the European Commission also announced it had signed a contract to put a constellation of 290 satellites into orbit as part of its own Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) program.
Amazon's Project Kuiper already has prototypes in the sky, and is aiming to get more than 3,000 satellites into orbit to provide broadband internet service. Google's parent company, Alphabet, has spun off its own satellite provider named Taara to better compete in the field. Three Chinese firms have joined the fray, which also includes players like Lynk Global and Eutelsat OneWeb.
AT&T and Verizon are both working with the Texas satellite company AST Space Mobile to expand their coverage areas. (Verizon has also been working with Project Kuiper since 2021.) Apple has invested $1.5 billion into the satellite company Globalstar with the goal of building out its own constellation that can enable Apple devices to use features like Emergency SOS and car crash detection in remote areas without a cell signal.
'The advantage of these global constellations and why we're building them is that they have global coverage,' says Ian Christensen, senior director of private sector programs at the Secure World Foundation, an organization that advocates for cooperative and sustainable space tech. 'You don't worry about being in a place where you connect with a Starlink satellite, but not a Globalstar satellite.'
The way that ease of interoperability could go awry, Christensen cautions, is if devices themselves are locked to proprietary satellite systems. So if Globalstar satellites only worked on Apple phones or vice versa, there could be some gaps in the constellation of coverage. That doesn't seem like the plan for the companies involved, however. A more likely evolution of this globe-spanning network, Christensen says, is that satellites become platform-agnostic, much the way land-based telecom operations are.
'Most of your devices actually can talk to the Russian system, the Chinese system, and the US system,' Christensen says. 'Devices are interoperable in that way, and that's a design choice.' Partly Cloudy Skies
Lots of experts, Christensen included, have concerns with the sustainability of satellite operations. In August 2024, the advocacy group PIRG called on the FCC to limit how many satellites are launched into orbit until a comprehensive environmental review can detail the widespread effects of blasting thousands of satellites into the sky.
There's also the matter that satellite internet is typically slower than the speeds we're used to with fiber-based broadband. While the data rate might be sufficient for our connectivity needs now, it might get bogged down as the number of connected devices grows—especially if those devices are as data-hungry as an always-connected AI agent.
Regardless, the race for low-Earth orbit is well underway. And your phone will be plugged into the space internet sooner than you think.
'Fundamentally, I think it will become standardized that all phones have satellite connectivity, because the value of saving a life is literally priceless,' Sag says. 'I wouldn't want to go out into a place where I don't have service without it.'
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