Latest / AST SpaceMobile Podcast / The Low Earth Orbit Communication Race is on - Simon Allard, Head of Network Architecture and Delivery at 2degrees (NZ)

Transcript

The Low Earth Orbit Communication Race is on - Simon Allard, Head of Network Architecture and Delivery at 2degrees (NZ) · AST SpaceMobile Podcast

• 0:06
  This is the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 0:11
  Just basically from your phone and.
• 0:13
  Be. Symbols we got listen where you
• 0:15
  are, we don't want to know. So even to know that it's
• 0:17
  connected by Sabah. Listen.
• 0:21
  The opportunity that we have is very, very, very large.
• 0:29
  Please welcome Simon Allard who will cheer progress on the
• 0:34
  project between 2° and AST Space Mobile.
• 0:44
  Cool. So I don't think I actually need
• 0:45
  to introduce myself. I think Warren did a pretty good
• 0:47
  job of introducing me before. But for those who don't know me,
• 0:51
  my name is Simon Allard. I work for 2°.
• 0:54
  But before I start, I've got a message for Sean just to say
• 0:57
  happy birthday from Brent from Chorus.
• 0:59
  Something about revenge of Suite, something like that.
• 1:02
  But yeah, so for those who don't know, there's a bit of a space
• 1:07
  race going on. And I'm not talking about the
• 1:09
  billionaires club, you know, building, you know, massive
• 1:11
  rockets, you know, trying to trying to build a bigger and
• 1:14
  better rockets between the two. I'm talking about a space race
• 1:16
  between the mobile, the three mobile companies in New Zealand.
• 1:21
  We all know that one in Zetas had been using SpaceX for a very
• 1:24
  long time, becoming on two years.
• 1:26
  We've got Spark who've just recently announced they're
• 1:28
  coming soon. Mobile operating on space.
• 1:31
  I don't think you have to read too much into that to figure out
• 1:33
  who they're going to use. And then we've got our sales 2°.
• 1:37
  So we've partnered with AST, but AST isn't the first space
• 1:42
  venture we've had. We used to have a partnership
• 1:46
  with a company called Link and Link was a a very similar model
• 1:51
  to to what SpaceX is. And we managed to do our first
• 1:53
  phone call across that Link constellation in 2003 from the
• 1:58
  middle of the North Island. But unfortunately, Link wasn't
• 2:00
  to be. They didn't seem to get their
• 2:03
  funding and hadn't managed to get any more satellites up in
• 2:05
  the sky. So we've now pivoted and we've
• 2:07
  now gone with AST. So the race is on.
• 2:15
  So Leo has been very, very proven in the broadband space.
• 2:19
  We've had SpaceX up there in a long time in the Leo and the Leo
• 2:22
  distance which is about 300 to 700 kilometres above Earth.
• 2:27
  They've been there for a very long time.
• 2:29
  They've been doing some excellent stuff in the broadband
• 2:30
  space and they've started to dabble.
• 2:32
  I say dabble. They've they've started to do
• 2:35
  the mobile space to mobile offering in with quite a few
• 2:40
  partners. T-Mobile has obviously been one
• 2:42
  of the first and one NZ was, was the was the was the other one we
• 2:47
  are very proud to be parting with.
• 2:48
  ASTAST is a very different model from SpaceX.
• 2:52
  And once we take you through the slides, you'll start to see why
• 2:54
  that we've partnered with AST versus just, you know, doing
• 2:57
  something else. And we're spending a lot of
• 3:00
  money on this. This is not something that's,
• 3:02
  you know, a triple the investment for us.
• 3:03
  It's something that we see as a bit of a game changer to to
• 3:06
  mobile and New Zealand. And yeah, we'll cover a bit more
• 3:10
  detail on this, but yeah, we're hopefully going to launch our
• 3:12
  product middle of this year. So we're not far away.
• 3:18
  So let's start with AST who are AST right?
• 3:21
  So there are US listed stock company.
• 3:24
  They're extremely well funded, which is great because the, you
• 3:27
  know, the the what they're trying to achieve is, is pretty
• 3:30
  impressive. Most of their invest investment
• 3:32
  backing is coming from AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Google and
• 3:37
  and quite a few others. And they're fit to be building
• 3:39
  what is the first only space based cellulable by network.
• 3:44
  And I say that, you know, because SpaceX, the original 1
• 3:48
  was, was broadband only. They've been dabbled in mobile
• 3:53
  as well, but it's the same same, same satellite doing both
• 3:57
  things. Well, AST is predominantly
• 3:58
  focused on doing mobile only, which is pretty cool.
• 4:02
  So they've done done some demonstrations.
• 4:04
  They've got a bunch of satellites up in the sky at the
• 4:06
  moment. So they've managed to do some
• 4:09
  proof of concepts with AT&T with 4G and 5G video calling, Yeah,
• 4:15
  all that sort of cool stuff. But they've still got a lot of
• 4:17
  work to do and they've got over 50 mobile operators now signed
• 4:21
  up with them. And every time I go onto the
• 4:23
  LinkedIn page, they seem to be signing up more.
• 4:25
  So they've been become a very popular space constellation.
• 4:30
  Their largest comps they like, and we'll go in a bit more
• 4:31
  detail of that and you can see a photo of it behind me.
• 4:35
  That's one of the largest satellites that's actually up in
• 4:38
  space at the moment with the 223 square meters in size, which is
• 4:42
  huge. When you compare that to a
• 4:44
  SpaceX one, well, you know, you'll, you'll see why what the
• 4:46
  difference is there. And they're not a launch,
• 4:49
  they're not a satellite provider, sorry, not a rocket
• 4:51
  provider. So they're having to then use
• 4:53
  multiple launch partners. And we've got a bit of a bit of
• 4:55
  stuff to show on that as well. So let's look at what the
• 5:01
  satellites are, right. So you've got a human 6 foot
• 5:06
  mage, you've got a a Micron, which we'll we'll cover off in a
• 5:09
  bit of detail. You've got a car, which is a,
• 5:11
  you know, 100 square feet. And then you've got what they
• 5:13
  call the block 1 satellites, which is 700 square feet.
• 5:17
  And they've got five of those up in the up in the sky at the
• 5:20
  moment. They're effectively what they
• 5:21
  call considered their proof of concept satellites where they've
• 5:24
  actually been able to go and actually prove this theory
• 5:26
  behind it all, adapt it come up with better ways of doing
• 5:29
  things. But but just basically proving
• 5:31
  that theory that this is, you know, going to work.
• 5:33
  And then there's a picture of the Block 2 satellite, which
• 5:37
  they've got one of those up in the air, which we'll talk about
• 5:38
  soon. But you can see there's quite a
• 5:40
  large difference between the Block 1 and the Block 2
• 5:42
  satellite. Sorry about the freedom numbers.
• 5:45
  I took those out of the investment pack.
• 5:47
  But yeah, as you can see, they're pretty large.
• 5:51
  And each one of those microns is effectively an an antenna on top
• 5:55
  of it. So you can see quite a few
• 5:56
  microns sitting on one of those Block 2 satellites.
• 6:00
  And I think, you know, what does it say?
• 6:02
  Yeah, 650 microns, which you're you're you get a picture of why
• 6:06
  that's important coming up. So a bit more about AST based
• 6:12
  mobile. So they actually build their own
• 6:14
  satellites. They've got a 500,000 square
• 6:17
  feet of manufacturing facilities and they've got 1800 thousand.
• 6:21
  Sorry, yeah, 1800 employees, which is they're not a small
• 6:25
  space company anymore. They're not, you know, a fly by
• 6:27
  night there. They've invested a lot of money
• 6:29
  on this. Their Blueboard Bluebird 7 one
• 6:32
  is in the process of being launched.
• 6:35
  It is identical to their Bluebird 6, which they've just
• 6:37
  launched and it's actually in the process now and being
• 6:40
  encapsulated and sitting on a a Blue Origin rocket waiting to go
• 6:45
  up. And hopefully that's going to go
• 6:46
  up something. They're a little bit delayed on
• 6:47
  that one, but we'll come through.
• 6:48
  And then they've got Bluebird 8 and Bluebird 29 already in the
• 6:53
  various process of production through their assembly line.
• 6:59
  So their their expectation is that we're going to get to sort
• 7:02
  of 4045 to 60 satellites by the end of the year.
• 7:05
  It is very much going to depend on their launch partners.
• 7:09
  And we'll go into a bit of detail what how that all looks.
• 7:11
  But yeah, with with 45 to 60 satellites, you're going to get
• 7:15
  some pretty good coverage, not 100%, but you'll get some good
• 7:18
  coverage across New Zealand. So this was their first Bluebird
• 7:27
  6 launch. So they used a Indian Indian
• 7:33
  space agency rocket, which is really fascinating to watch from
• 7:36
  from behind the scenes. Since their satellite was
• 7:40
  manufactured in the US, they then had to work out how to get
• 7:43
  this thing from the US all the way to to India.
• 7:48
  I don't think they're going to do this again because it was a
• 7:49
  massive nightmare for them on a nightmare.
• 7:51
  But it was you know, it was pretty hard going to get a big
• 7:55
  satellite unit into a Antonov and then over to over to India
• 7:59
  to get onto the launchpad. So as you can see, this is
• 8:03
  probably the only machine in the whole entire world left thanks
• 8:06
  Russia that can actually get to this type of cargo all the way
• 8:10
  over to India. Their new, the next rockets, I
• 8:14
  think they're going to start using, well, they are definitely
• 8:16
  going to start using Basics and Blue Origin to get all the rest
• 8:18
  up into space. This one I think was a bit of a
• 8:21
  nightmare for them because it just the other, the logistics of
• 8:24
  getting it over there and the cost to get it over to India
• 8:27
  was, was, was quite large. But these guys did manage to get
• 8:31
  the block, their first block to satellite into space, which is
• 8:33
  really exciting and yeah, pretty complicated thing as well.
• 8:40
  So unfortunately I don't have a laser pointer with me, but
• 8:42
  you'll see on the left hand side up where it says stowed.
• 8:48
  Alright, cool. There you go.
• 8:50
  Green too. So you see the that's the
• 8:52
  picture of it stowed. So that's the block, one of the
• 8:54
  first block 2 satellites being nice and stowed.
• 8:57
  You can see the scale based on the little man standing next to
• 9:00
  how big the actual satellite is itself.
• 9:03
  So that sat on top of the the Indian rocket and was pretty
• 9:06
  much the only thing inside the Indian rocket to get up into
• 9:08
  space is a picture of it going up in from orbit.
• 9:14
  And then there's a yeah, picture of what it was when it was
• 9:17
  before it went into the satellite.
• 9:18
  And then there's one actually taken from space.
• 9:21
  So they've actually now managed to launch into space, which is
• 9:25
  a, which is a cheap one on on its own.
• 9:27
  And then they've actually managed to, they have to unfold
• 9:29
  it. So that's all sort of shrouded
• 9:31
  up as you kind of see where it stowed.
• 9:32
  Once they've actually got it into space, they actually
• 9:34
  actually have to unfold the whole infrastructure to turn it
• 9:37
  into a basically a giant antenna.
• 9:40
  Talking to the guys, they were very nervous about that because
• 9:42
  it was the first one they've ever done.
• 9:44
  They've really rehearsed it inside, you know, multiple
• 9:47
  rehearsals inside the ground. But this was the first time
• 9:49
  they've actually managed to unfoil it in space, which is an
• 9:51
  achievement in itself. I asked that question.
• 9:54
  And what happens if you got it snagged?
• 9:56
  He went, we pretty much have to write it off because there's no
• 9:58
  way going out there and fixing it.
• 9:59
  So, yeah, but they managed to do it and they're starting to do
• 10:04
  some testing on it now once it sort of goes over over place
• 10:07
  over, you know, where they we can actually do the testing
• 10:09
  from. So let's do a little bit of
• 10:12
  comparison between SpaceX and AST right.
• 10:14
  So we kind of talked about it before.
• 10:15
  So the SpaceX V2 mini, which is the one they use for the space
• 10:20
  to mobile offering for one NZ and, and for the others, it's
• 10:24
  only it's about 700 kilos and it's only got a 3030 meter
• 10:27
  wingspan on it. Once it's fully, fully
• 10:29
  established there, their their SpaceX model is to roll out more
• 10:33
  satellites than than less, right.
• 10:35
  So I think at the moment, based on what AI told me, which do you
• 10:38
  know, we know how accurate that is, is about 600 of those
• 10:41
  satellites up in the sky at the moment AST have a completely
• 10:44
  different model. Their model is bigger satellites
• 10:47
  and less satellites. So you know, effectively it's 10
• 10:51
  times the size of a SpaceX mini. Once they're fully deployed,
• 10:55
  they're looking at only having about 9090 ish, probably more
• 10:59
  probably because of the hundred satellites up in the sky to full
• 11:01
  my full constellation, whereas the space constellation is
• 11:05
  sitting AT600700 satellites. So there's a different model
• 11:07
  there. The SpaceX satellites are
• 11:09
  obviously a bit a tiny bit lower.
• 11:10
  I think they're sitting around the 300 kilometres above the sky
• 11:15
  AST sitting around the 600 ish around the sky.
• 11:18
  So the a completely different model.
• 11:23
  So why did we partner with AST rather than just going with and
• 11:26
  following everyone else and just partnering with SpaceX?
• 11:29
  So the first probably the point is any 3 GPP capable handset
• 11:34
  which can do 4G, we'll be able to talk to the satellite that
• 11:37
  gives a much wider range options for us.
• 11:39
  You know, any, any phone that can talk 4G should be good to
• 11:43
  go. We've got a full network overlay
• 11:48
  and I'll cover that in a bit more detail on why that's
• 11:49
  important, but it's a different, completely different model.
• 11:53
  The way way SpaceX works, we're better to do voice and data from
• 11:56
  day one and SMS, obviously. But you know, you better make a
• 11:59
  phone call using your normal phone sitting on top of Mount
• 12:01
  Cook, you know, on the satellite, whereas you can't do
• 12:05
  that on SpaceX at the moment. My understanding is it's, you
• 12:08
  know, WhatsApp, call me only. But yeah, we better do a, a
• 12:11
  voice, a voice call from day one.
• 12:14
  And we're investing in our own ground stations.
• 12:18
  Again, different model from SpaceX.
• 12:20
  SpaceX own and operate their own ground stations.
• 12:22
  They've got a few scattered around New Zealand and all
• 12:24
  around the world. We're going to own and own our
• 12:27
  ground station is owned by two degrees, you know, and managed
• 12:30
  in conjunction with AST. So we've actually got a lot more
• 12:33
  powerful control over the whole end to end of the whole, the
• 12:38
  whole journey, the whole customer journey, which is which
• 12:40
  is pretty exciting. So into the fun stuff.
• 12:44
  So how does it work? So at the moment you've got a
• 12:48
  more terrestrial network. So you've got a whole bunch of
• 12:49
  cell towers. They broadcast out the, you
• 12:51
  know, the 4G5G signals and then we got the space mobile side of
• 12:55
  things. So on the terrestrial side, you
• 12:59
  know, we all know how that works.
• 13:00
  You walk between towers, it transfers you, you know, the
• 13:03
  core network knows where you are, transfers you around.
• 13:06
  AST network works pretty similar actually.
• 13:08
  You've actually got multiple cell towers on the one
• 13:11
  satellite. So instead of just, you know,
• 13:13
  thinking satellite cell tower, satellite cell tower, you've
• 13:16
  actually got we've actually effectively got 300 scale cell
• 13:21
  towers in space at the one time. But but on your back, we've also
• 13:25
  been got to work out the satellite how all, you know, the
• 13:27
  satellite handovers and we'll cover that for a bit in a
• 13:29
  second. But the way that effectively
• 13:31
  works is this particular system is actually plugged into our
• 13:36
  core network. So we have our own core network,
• 13:39
  we've got our own HSESINIMES, et cetera.
• 13:41
  They talk to the gateway, which our own ENOB sedate and then
• 13:45
  that gets broadcasted up to the AST satellite station.
• 13:48
  So we actually got the whole in ring control.
• 13:50
  When you compare that to the SpaceX network, the SpaceX
• 13:53
  network is effectively a roaming network where the, you
• 13:56
  effectively plug into SpaceX, they talk to your, the SpaceX
• 13:59
  core, they talk to their own ENOBS, which happen to be in the
• 14:01
  satellites and, and away you go. So that they they have sort of
• 14:05
  limited to what basics are willing to offer in the AST
• 14:08
  world. We can pretty much offer what we
• 14:10
  want as long as it conforms to the three GPP standard, which is
• 14:13
  a a pretty powerful and major difference between between the
• 14:15
  model offerings wrong 1. So more details on how it works.
• 14:24
  So we talked about it before. We've got our own base station.
• 14:29
  We'll talk about where that is in the moment.
• 14:30
  That will have 3 E node BS located inside our data centre,
• 14:35
  that that data centre lives in the middle of the North Island
• 14:37
  and we'll talk about why that's important soon.
• 14:41
  There is a full data centre of stuff that controls all this,
• 14:46
  you know, all the technology. So we have to know when the
• 14:48
  satellite's going over here, do we have to then control the,
• 14:51
  the, the satellite tracking solutions as well?
• 14:54
  Because when the satellites are going up here, they're moving
• 14:57
  at, let's say it only lasts over the top of New Zealand for about
• 15:00
  10 minutes. So when that's going across, we
• 15:03
  effectively have to track the satellite as it goes across.
• 15:06
  So we're going to have four tracking satellite uplinks on
• 15:10
  the one uplink station that will track the four or up to three,
• 15:13
  up to 4 satellites when that are transversing across New Zealand.
• 15:17
  And that in itself is quite a complicated, you know and we'll
• 15:21
  cover that in a second. And then we're using our well
• 15:24
  we're using a QV band uplink, which is again in itself a funny
• 15:29
  story which we'll cover off soon.
• 15:30
  And then the downlink effectively the 900 megahertz
• 15:33
  band that we normally use for, for mobile, there are existing
• 15:37
  900 megahertz rights. These are the ones that we just
• 15:39
  retired from our 3D shutdown, which is why we were very keenly
• 15:42
  do get our 3D shutdown done. And we didn't do any delays on
• 15:45
  that one because we needed our bandwidth and our frequencies to
• 15:48
  be able to use on the AST network.
• 15:53
  So again, we talked about the cell sites, you know, how, how
• 15:57
  does it, how does it actually work, right.
• 15:58
  So if you have a look on the left hand side, you'll see what
• 16:02
  our existing 4G coverage is. And then on the right hand on
• 16:04
  the depending on what side you're looking at, if you're
• 16:07
  looking at the right side, you'll see effectively in
• 16:09
  satellite overlay of how this is going to function.
• 16:12
  So each one of those is each one of those hexagonals is a 48
• 16:17
  kilometre squared cell ish. And that then uses a bunch of
• 16:23
  frequencies. We we're basically going to
• 16:24
  allocate from day 15 megahertz because that's, you know, we're
• 16:26
  rather spectrum poor in the 9 megahertz space.
• 16:29
  Additional 5G uses 145 megahertz.
• 16:32
  So there's a better, yeah, we're not going to get the same
• 16:35
  capacity out of the satellite then we will out of a
• 16:38
  terrestrial satellite. But that's to be expected.
• 16:41
  And then the way that this works is really extremely clever
• 16:44
  because it uses beam forwarding, beam forming technology inside
• 16:48
  that satellite. So when that satellite's going
• 16:49
  across the sky, our cell sites don't actually move.
• 16:53
  So the, the cell site hexagonal stays the same even though the
• 16:57
  satellite's moving over it, you know, at at vast speeds.
• 17:00
  And, and that quite a powerful feature for us because we can
• 17:03
  then pick and choose where we want coverage, when we don't
• 17:05
  want coverage, what frequencies to use and watch sail, etcetera.
• 17:08
  So there's, there's a lot of, you know, ability for us to, to
• 17:10
  control some good stuff, but it does come with these
• 17:12
  complications because effectively you've got 300 cell
• 17:15
  sites on it. So if you roam in between a cell
• 17:18
  site on and the satellite cell site, you've actually even got a
• 17:22
  signal that change. And then, yeah, Core Network has
• 17:26
  to know that you're moving between satellite cells.
• 17:29
  The other challenge too is you have, yeah, especially you're
• 17:32
  handing over in on the same satellite and you're also
• 17:34
  getting kind of cover the fact that someone could be standing
• 17:36
  still and that satellite that you were talking to is now moved
• 17:39
  and you're talking to a new satellite.
• 17:41
  So then you've got to handle another handover between
• 17:43
  satellites, which is quite challenging.
• 17:48
  So what are we going to use it for?
• 17:50
  And this is where things get really interesting.
• 17:53
  So disaster recovery and emergency response is probably
• 17:57
  one of their biggest things that we're quite interested in.
• 18:00
  We talked about cycle and Gabriel.
• 18:02
  What what happened with Cycle and Gabriel?
• 18:03
  You know how it took out most of the Mmos networks.
• 18:06
  This is potentially a, a, a get out of free jail card for us
• 18:09
  because it allows us to, to have service in there, allows
• 18:12
  customers to still dial 111 and you know, text call their their
• 18:17
  loved ones. But we do have to be a bit
• 18:18
  careful with that because we've only got 500 mega 5 megahertz of
• 18:21
  spectrum per 48 kilometres. So in the case of Hawke's Bay,
• 18:25
  if you lost the whole, whole of, you know, the, the Napier
• 18:28
  region, for example, you've got quite a lot of handsets sitting
• 18:30
  in that small region on a, on a small amount of, of, of
• 18:33
  spectrum. You've then got to worry about
• 18:36
  how quickly is it going to talk to Eno bees.
• 18:38
  All the latching type of criteria, all that sort of stuff
• 18:41
  is going to come into play. So we're, we're very curious to
• 18:43
  see how this is going to unfold. Yeah.
• 18:47
  And how we actually respond and deal with that.
• 18:49
  And we don't really know until we're actually going to, you
• 18:51
  know, see the anger and see how it's actually going to work.
• 18:54
  But in saying that, there's some other real cool use cases.
• 18:56
  Watch, I, you know, and, and peacetime use cases, you know,
• 18:59
  search and rescue. There's there's we've talked
• 19:01
  about customers are talking to us about ditching their
• 19:02
  satellite phones in favour for a normal, normal phone.
• 19:05
  Because, you know, some of the, you know, the, the telco guys,
• 19:09
  they, they don't want to carry around a set phone in a, in a,
• 19:11
  in a, in a normal phone. They just want to, they just
• 19:13
  want to use a phone. So, yeah, there's a cool things
• 19:16
  in there. And the other part too that
• 19:18
  we're really keen to look at is the IT connectivity as well,
• 19:21
  because now we've got a big coverage of the whole in New
• 19:24
  Zealand, IoT becomes quite a reality.
• 19:27
  And you know, since we control the whole end to end, we can
• 19:30
  start looking at things like NBIOT and other type of
• 19:33
  technologies, you know that the three GPP standards allow.
• 19:39
  So let's talk a bit about the ground station.
• 19:41
  So we were quite lucky. We obviously own our own own
• 19:46
  fibre. So we actually went out and
• 19:48
  went, this is the criteria that we need to meet.
• 19:51
  And so we needed access to our fibre.
• 19:52
  We're going to build in the middle of the middle of the
• 19:55
  North Island. We knew that.
• 19:57
  We knew that was going to be a challenge.
• 19:59
  So we looked at areas where our fibres already ran.
• 20:00
  So that was nice and easy. The biggest, next biggest
• 20:03
  challenge is we need a lot of power.
• 20:04
  So we're looking at 500 kilowatts.
• 20:06
  It doesn't sound like a much but much, especially when you're
• 20:08
  talking about data centers that using gigawatts now.
• 20:11
  But when you're building a rural New Zealand, that is quite the
• 20:13
  challenge. So we had to go through, look at
• 20:15
  all, all the plans with, with, with Palco, figure out where we
• 20:18
  could actually build and not have to spend the gazillion
• 20:20
  dollars building more infrastructure to support that.
• 20:23
  So that was a, it was a challenge #2 then we had to
• 20:26
  build on stable land challenge #3 and then the biggest
• 20:29
  challenge, we needed a 10° line of sight to the satellites as
• 20:32
  well, which basically meant you had to build very rural because
• 20:35
  you couldn't be next to large buildings or be in the area
• 20:38
  where someone was going to build a next year.
• 20:41
  And it had to be in the middle of the North Island.
• 20:44
  And the reason for that is because of that 10° line of
• 20:47
  sight of the sky. If we're in the North Island, we
• 20:49
  wouldn't be able to reach a satellite that could then talk
• 20:51
  to the South Island. If we're in the South Island, we
• 20:53
  couldn't reach a satellite that can talk to the North Island
• 20:55
  just because of the way the beams form.
• 20:56
  So we had to be in the middle of the North Island.
• 20:59
  And then, you know, typical stuff as a carrier, you need to
• 21:01
  think about site security. These things, they, they get a
• 21:04
  bit, you know, people don't like unknown things, especially when
• 21:08
  there's big satellite dishes in play.
• 21:10
  Yeah. So we found one.
• 21:16
  So after a lot of a lot of digging around, we ended up
• 21:20
  finding a spot in Martin of all places.
• 21:23
  And the reason why we ended up in Martin is because we went to
• 21:26
  NB and said, you know, we want to use that QV band to upload
• 21:30
  our satellite. And they went, oh, that that's
• 21:32
  that range isn't actually something we actually give out
• 21:34
  at the moment. And we'd be marked it for 6G and
• 21:36
  I went 6G ready. And so they went well.
• 21:40
  So since it's earmarked for 6G, you can go and Martin, because
• 21:43
  we don't think Martin's ever going to get 6G.
• 21:45
  So, so, so that's how they end up.
• 21:49
  And we don't really understand because it's a QV band, I don't
• 21:51
  think we're actually going to use a QV band of 6G, but that's
• 21:54
  what it's earmarked for in the NB land at the moment.
• 21:56
  Sorry, Martin, no 6G for you. But it did make our lives easier
• 22:00
  because it narrowed us down from, you know, 30 sites down to
• 22:02
  1 pretty quickly. Thankfully, the site we found in
• 22:05
  Martin had power. We, we worked a lot closely with
• 22:08
  Palco and 5500 kilowatts, you know, they, they kind of looked
• 22:11
  at us like really, you know, you want 500 kilowatts there.
• 22:15
  But yeah, thankfully the, the site we found was next to some
• 22:17
  11K feeders. And so we'll be able to get
• 22:19
  things onto this, you know, get things stable and onto that, you
• 22:24
  know, pretty quickly. It had teams 1010° line of
• 22:28
  sight. I've got a bit of a story about
• 22:29
  drones in a second around how we managed to to to achieve that.
• 22:33
  But in my grand wisdom, I went, you know, let's let's put the
• 22:35
  satellite station. Where's my pointer next to the
• 22:38
  road, right, Nice and easy. Get your cars in, get your cars
• 22:41
  out story that will come up soon.
• 22:45
  Why that was kind of important. And then site security, right.
• 22:48
  So, and when we've currently stuck it, you can't see it from
• 22:51
  state highway 1. So it becomes a bit of out of
• 22:53
  sight, out of mind for for a lot of the locals.
• 22:55
  And more importantly, it had two degrees fibre because, you know,
• 22:58
  in the middle of nowhere getting access to fibre, it's, it's,
• 23:01
  it's pretty hard, especially the type of fibre that we needed.
• 23:05
  So for us, we managed to, where's my fibre pointer?
• 23:09
  We managed to actually get a, a fibre line down here and then
• 23:11
  into a site and then actually pull one off state or Hwy. 1.
• 23:14
  So we could actually get diverse fibre into our, into our landing
• 23:16
  station. This particular one will go down
• 23:19
  to Palmerston North and this particular one will actually go
• 23:21
  all the way up to Hamilton. So yeah thank you Nokia for lots
• 23:25
  of money spent on optical clip to get us some that site up to
• 23:28
  Hamilton and thanks licked optics for the optics that are
• 23:31
  going South to Palmerston North. So, yeah, really cool top a top
• 23:36
  a seat up there. Yeah, wrong bottom.
• 23:43
  So the 10° side of things, this has became quite problematic.
• 23:49
  And it when I said we let's go sit next to the to the road,
• 23:54
  everyone went, Yep, that's a great idea.
• 23:55
  Let's do that. And then we actually got a drone
• 23:57
  down there to do a bit of a survey for us.
• 23:59
  And then they plotted 10° out from where the satellite dishes
• 24:02
  were going to go. And we actually found that we're
• 24:04
  actually going to hit most of the trees that are surrounding
• 24:06
  that whole area. So couldn't put the station
• 24:08
  there. And you start going, oh shit,
• 24:12
  you know, do I just go talk to the neighbors?
• 24:14
  You know, we get them to shut their tree down.
• 24:15
  And the farm was just like, Nah, that guy's very anti anything,
• 24:19
  so you're not going to get anything out of him.
• 24:20
  So just, yeah, let's do something else.
• 24:23
  So we ended up finding, I'll just go back a second.
• 24:25
  We end up finding a nice spot that actually worked off the
• 24:30
  road, but still had farmers access, access roads to the to
• 24:34
  the site itself, which is cool. So on the site you'll see we've
• 24:40
  actually got 6 satellite pads. We've actually expanded because
• 24:42
  we know, you know, yeah, we're potentially going to need 6, but
• 24:46
  we're only going to build 4 to start with.
• 24:48
  And then we've got a small data centre that sits there.
• 24:52
  And the reason why we have a small data centre is we have to
• 24:54
  effectively hold quite a lot of CAT, right?
• 24:56
  We're not just putting a couple of Eno BS in the cabinet.
• 24:58
  There is a whole heap of stuff that goes in there.
• 25:01
  Obviously a lot of our transport equipment in there, but there's
• 25:03
  a lot of servers, etcetera that control all the satellite dishes
• 25:07
  and all the moving dishes, etcetera, and all the other
• 25:10
  stuff that AST comes with management platforms and all
• 25:13
  that sort of stuff. The gateway is designed to be
• 25:15
  standalone. So if you lose the Internet, you
• 25:17
  know, the, the, the platform still runs.
• 25:19
  So there's a lot of kit that actually sits in the gateway to,
• 25:23
  to pull that off. And here's a picture of the
• 25:29
  gateway in action. So this we've actually got a
• 25:31
  pretty cool camera that's sitting there taking photos of
• 25:33
  us. So we're going to have a, a nice
• 25:34
  time lapse camera, but you'll see my nice artist impression of
• 25:39
  our little bunker that we're building.
• 25:41
  So that's going to take probably 12 to 14 racks with a kit.
• 25:46
  We're not going to put two generators on site because we
• 25:48
  kind of deem this a very important site.
• 25:51
  It's going to have 48 hours of fuel.
• 25:52
  If we can afford the fuel by the time we actually build it.
• 25:55
  And, and two and yeah, two generators.
• 25:58
  The idea behind this is we needed this site to be pretty
• 26:01
  robust. It is built, if you know the
• 26:03
  building standards, we built it to a, what's called an Ilene 3,
• 26:06
  which is a level of importance. We, we didn't want to build it
• 26:09
  to a four. That's like hospital grade,
• 26:10
  military grade. We built, we took one down.
• 26:12
  We kind of see this as a this must stand up to a big storm
• 26:16
  because this is potentially as New Zealand's get out of jail
• 26:18
  card if we have another cycling Gabriel and people need to dial
• 26:22
  111, you know, and just on the 11 one thing at the moment, and
• 26:26
  this is going to change. You can't dial 111 Honest Basics
• 26:30
  Mobile. You can text if you're
• 26:32
  registered, but you can't dial. So what we suspect is going to
• 26:35
  happen, and this is to be very device specific, is if you dial
• 26:39
  111 on your mobile and you're hooked up to this, to one of the
• 26:42
  SpaceX offerings, it will fail. The call will fail.
• 26:45
  And we believe that based on, you know, on the device, we'll
• 26:48
  actually then try other carriers and eventually hit the AST
• 26:51
  mobile and actually better reduce up to one call.
• 26:53
  So yeah, we're pretty excited about that.
• 26:55
  But because of that, we have to build to a higher standard
• 26:58
  because, you know, we don't want this thing to fail on us for for
• 27:01
  various reasons. Here's a picture of particularly
• 27:04
  what the satellite dish is gonna look like to start with.
• 27:07
  We're just sticking with the actual antennas themselves.
• 27:10
  But we will. I think we put a radom on the
• 27:12
  outside of it as well. The radom is quite important for
• 27:15
  a resiliency point of view. The the dish itself will will
• 27:19
  operate up to 120 kilometers an hour winds.
• 27:21
  So you're still at the that the range, but when you actually put
• 27:24
  a radon on top, you're talking 160 mph winds that it can
• 27:28
  suffice, which is in the, in the 300 kilometer range.
• 27:31
  So it's it's, you know, Mexico City, more resilient, like
• 27:35
  anything good comes with its own air conditioning unit that's
• 27:38
  more designed to keep the radon hot.
• 27:39
  So, you know, in the icy conditions, the ice melts away.
• 27:42
  Not that Martin gets very icy or in in the extreme heats.
• 27:46
  We can actually call the call the whole whole radon down,
• 27:49
  which is where 500 kilowatts come from because those things,
• 27:52
  you know, they're they're about 50 kilowatts each.
• 27:54
  So, yeah, lots of power. And that's pretty much me in a
• 28:00
  nutshell, right? I mean, that's a pretty
• 28:01
  whirlwind tour on space Mobile, but any questions?
• 28:16
  Hey, a couple of questions related how, how far off the
• 28:20
  coast will your footprint extend?
• 28:23
  And the second question, how far off the coast would it be
• 28:26
  allowed to extend legally, I guess?
• 28:29
  So the answer to that, we just go back quite a few slides as we
• 28:34
  get to pick and choose where those hexagons are around.
• 28:37
  All right, so that is effectively a commercial
• 28:40
  relationship with SpaceX. We can actually choose to extend
• 28:44
  them out quite a big distance. We could actually go quite far
• 28:46
  out with it. It just comes down to how many
• 28:48
  Eno BS you want to put into it and the commercial relationship
• 28:51
  with AST how how how far out you can go out.
• 28:54
  So we have thought about it, you know, do we go to people like
• 28:56
  Cordia, for example, and say, hey, let's extend this footprint
• 28:59
  and they so you can do IoT for marine traffic, for example.
• 29:02
  It's there's nothing stopping us doing that as just comes down to
• 29:05
  commercials. You said there'd be 5 megahertz
• 29:14
  of spectrum dedicated to it. What band is the spectrum going
• 29:18
  to be in? That's in the 900 megahertz, 900
• 29:21
  megahertz, Yeah. And it's, it's 55 megahertz per
• 29:27
  hexagon, right, Not 5 megahertz for the entire constellation.
• 29:30
  It's 5 megahertz per per hexagon, 400.
• 29:35
  No, because it's because, yeah, it's different because you've
• 29:38
  got to have 5 megahertz here, which is different from those
• 29:41
  ones around it. I think you only have 10
• 29:47
  megahertz worth of 900 spectrum. Yeah.
• 29:50
  So. So you're just alternate.
• 29:51
  You're a being. It's.
• 29:52
  Correct. Yeah, OK.
• 29:53
  Having to map it very carefully, OK.
• 29:55
  Yeah, very poor in the 900 megahertz space.
• 30:03
  So I can see that the difference between AST and Starlink is the
• 30:09
  range of where the satellite is. Yeah, correct.
• 30:13
  So we're going back a few slides again wrong button.
• 30:17
  We're we're sitting at the 600 ish amplitudes.
• 30:21
  SpaceX is around 3:50. Is there any impact on latency?
• 30:27
  For there, there will be, yeah, right.
• 30:30
  So right, because it's it's higher, so there will be an
• 30:32
  impact on latency. But we're not being a broadband
• 30:34
  operator, we're not selling Starlink type type solutions.
• 30:37
  We're just selling mobile solutions.
• 30:38
  So we don't think it's going to have much of a customer impact
• 30:41
  on that, right? Yeah.
• 30:43
  But the advantage is much bigger antennas at the same time,
• 30:46
  right. So the, the main difference
• 30:48
  between SpaceX is they've got small antennas, AST has got big
• 30:51
  antennas. When you're talking to a a cell
• 30:53
  phone that's only got a small antenna here, the big size is
• 30:55
  going to make that much more difference, right?
• 30:59
  How much of a difference yet to be seen?
• 31:01
  But like for example, you wouldn't be able to get an AST
• 31:03
  signal in here, but you may be able to get an AST signal in
• 31:05
  your car for example. Any guys have tested the quality
• 31:09
  and it's pretty good so far? We haven't tested it ourselves.
• 31:12
  It's been tested by AT&T and Verizon.
• 31:15
  We we're still waiting. Once we got a gateway build,
• 31:17
  which will be doing, we'll be starting our testing process
• 31:20
  team. Yep, just on the I guess the the
• 31:26
  10 minute cycle of the satellites and the handing over,
• 31:29
  does it is it a complete change each 10 minutes or do they kind
• 31:34
  of I guess wipe across the satellite?
• 31:36
  So if if they say going north to South the even coming satellite
• 31:41
  starts taking over from the north and and drains off the.
• 31:45
  Correct departing satellite, Yep.
• 31:46
  So it should be seamless to the user once the full constellation
• 31:49
  is up that we seamless to the user when that's the like start
• 31:51
  going out of range, there will be another one that's already in
• 31:53
  range using beamforming there will think to be hand over
• 31:56
  between the satellites. Oh sorry, but it's the entire
• 31:59
  satellite at once. Or it's a transition of each
• 32:02
  hexagon like like it goes. Yeah, I'm not too sure.
• 32:06
  I haven't gone into that much detail with them.
• 32:07
  I suspect it's a full satellite swap over, but I don't know for
• 32:09
  sure. I.
• 32:13
  Had two questions. One is for your scenario of
• 32:18
  Napier being offline and and everyone switching to this.
• 32:22
  Yeah. Have you got a way of, I guess,
• 32:27
  shutting down phones, hogging all that spectrum?
• 32:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:31
  Like, you know, if everyone's phones trying to watch YouTube,
• 32:35
  clearly it's gonna fill that. Correct?
• 32:36
  Fill that 55 megahertz up. Yeah.
• 32:38
  Is there a way to go? We're gonna prioritise 111 calls
• 32:41
  first, followed by normal calling, followed by basic data.
• 32:45
  Correct because it's all controlled by our core network,
• 32:47
  right so our our core team can start you know we don't want
• 32:49
  data, right turn data off yeah you know only prioritise 111
• 32:52
  calls, you know so we've got the full consensus on our core,
• 32:54
  we've got the full control and, and come up come up with those
• 32:56
  rules and. Does that apply?
• 32:58
  I mean obviously the the downlink to the phone you can
• 33:00
  control, but what about all the phones uplink?
• 33:04
  Like could you have lots of phones trying to you?
• 33:07
  Know attached to the uplink direction, correct yeah, we, we
• 33:10
  we've got that that's one of the risks we're going to have to try
• 33:12
  and overcome right is how many phones are going to try and
• 33:14
  latch at one time. It can you know, be support that
• 33:18
  all those things we just don't know yet.
• 33:20
  We're going to be a see and try basically, but we can, you know,
• 33:24
  use the HSS to to reject a lot of those and accept some.
• 33:28
  You know, there's, there's lots of options we got right.
• 33:30
  Yeah, cool. And then the second question is,
• 33:32
  will this be seamless to the user from like a commercial and
• 33:35
  cost perspective if you roam to this because you're in the
• 33:38
  wilderness, Yeah. Will it just be to the end user,
• 33:41
  they won't know any different and it won't cost them any
• 33:43
  different? Or might this be kind of a, you
• 33:47
  know, you get charged a different rate if you roam to
• 33:49
  this? Do you know how that's gonna?
• 33:51
  I do know, but I can't I can't talk about the commercials yet,
• 33:54
  but yes, but if you are enabled on the AST network, you know by
• 33:58
  us, then it will be seamless to the user, right?
• 34:00
  You wouldn't notice it. You're so if you're driving down
• 34:02
  the highway, for example, and you go from a terrestrial to an
• 34:04
  AST to a terrestrial, the theory is that you won't lose that
• 34:07
  phone call and it just carries on.
• 34:08
  Cool. Awesome.
• 34:09
  Thank you. That's us.
• 34:12
  Thank you very much. Simon, thank you.
• 34:21
  Thanks for listening to the AST Space Mobile podcast.
• 34:25
  If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the.
• 34:27
  Podcast. Please share it with others,
• 34:30
  post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review to
• 34:34
  catch. All the latest news about.
• 34:35
  AST Space Mobile make sure to subscribe.
• 34:38
  Thanks again and I'll see you next time.
• 34:44
  We're doing something very, very big and I think with this
• 34:47
  technology we can really affect billion lives.
• 34:50
  AFP Space globally is the only company that has full technology
• 34:54
  to deliver cellular broadband connectivity directly from the
• 34:58
  state to do everyday smartphone. People will just basically turn
• 35:02
  their phone and be seamless, regardless of where you are.
• 35:05
  We don't want the user even to know that it's connected by
• 35:08
  satellite. Our role is to bring.
• 35:11
  This into. Reality always in partnership
• 35:13
  with the enemy.