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Space: The Russian Disease

By: Zimbler0 in POPE 5 | Recommend this post (0)
Mon, 17 Dec 18 1:47 AM | 62 view(s)
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http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htspace/20181209.aspx

December 9, 2018:
The Russian space program has suffered another fatal setback when the FSB (successor to the KGB) threatened to cancel a lucrative contract Roscosmos (new state-owned corporation running commercial space operations) had negotiated to use 21 Soyuz satellite launchers to put hundreds of small Internet communications satellites into orbit. A British firm, OneWeb, will use the worldwide satellite network to provide Internet access to anywhere on the planet. The FSB concern is about their ability to monitor and censor or block any Internet traffic coming into or out of Russia. The OneWeb system will have a few ground stations to connect the satellites to the rest of the Internet. The FSB is willing to compromise if one of those ground stations is in Russia and the FSB has access to all the Internet traffic passing through it. OneWeb is inclined to deny that demand even if it means Russia will outlaw the use of OneWeb by Russians. That ban would not be completely effective because some Russians would find a way to pay for their access. OneWeb makes money by acting as an ISP (internet service pr9vider) and for hundreds of millions of people in areas with poor, or no, Internet access the satellite service is all they would have access to. That includes millions of Russians in remote areas. The fact that the FSB would not have access to that Internet traffic would be a bonus for Russian users. OneWeb has not yet decided how to proceed and Roscosmos believes they can get the FSB overruled but that will not happen until early 2019. Implementation of the OneWeb launches was first pushed to late 2018 and now to early 2019.

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