Rivada Space Networks has a licence for 4,000MHz of spectrum, which will be used to connect low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to data centres, telecoms operators and enterprises, said Declan Ganley, the founder.
Customers will have their own dishes, Ganley (pictured) told Capacity in an interview. “Signals won’t be relayed via terrestrial networks. That vastly improves security.”
Ganley would not say who was backing his venture, except to describe them as “high net-worth shareholders”, adding that they included existing shareholders from previous Rivada ventures.
These include Rivada Networks, which six years ago was bidding for a wholesale wireless network in Mexico, in a battle last was lost to Red Compartida, and Rivada Mercury, which was bidding to build a US-wide public safety network for FirstNet. AT&T won that race.
At the time Fujitsu, the Harris Corporation, Nokia and Black & Veatch were named as potential vendors to the original Rivada companies. “No telecoms equipment supplier is a shareholder,” Ganley told Capacity yesterday.
“We’re adding some debt,” he said, but would not disclose the full budget of the project. “We’ve got a strong shareholder base.”
Rivada Space Networks is aiming to start launches in 2024 and complete the constellation in 2028. It plans to put the satellites 1,000km above the Earth, in polar orbits with 25 satellites in each orbital plane.
The company has not yet assigned a construction contract to a satellite builder; nor has it awarded a launch contract. “We expect to make awards by the end of the year,” said Brian Carney, head of corporate communications at Rivada.
“What we will be doing is new things,” said Ganley. “We will be serving existing enterprises and offering new uses that are not available now, services that don’t have a viable alternative, competing with more traditional carriers and removing barriers to entry.”
It’s clear that one of the potential markets will be backhauling remote mobile networks – something that is currently done by geostationary satellites but is likely to be taken over by low-latency LEO services. OneWeb, backed by Indian mobile operator Bharti, is already targeting that market for its Airtel operations in Africa.
Rivada Space Networks says it will use Ka-band spectrum awarded to Liechtenstein by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Ka band is in the 27-40GHz range.
That will mean the company is “capable of securely connecting any two points on the globe at gigabit speeds”. All 600 planned satellites will be in a single optical mesh network.
The company will be based in Germany.
