canyon and is more than half a kilometer long local residents have already been allowed to try out the bridge in iraq up ahead of the opening ceremony on sunday. that's the latest on d.w. news this hour up next hour doc film high speed internet from outer space american evan steen and me in the team thanks for watching. live. i have to say matters to us. that's why you sing to their stories. reporter every weekend on d w. germany

is a leading industrial nation that still has many areas that desperately lack behind on the telecoms front and that applies to both landlines and internet access though broadband speed rankings constantly fluctuates germany ranks in the mid thirty's compared to other countries. and while other countries pick up the pace germany is struggling to keep up. might one solution be an extraterrestrial one providing high speed internet for everyone. the earth's orbit will soon be home to new constellations of satellites in the thousands could they make the vision of fast connectivity everywhere on earth

a reality. which regions in gemini have the worst internet connection and how is performance measured. the engineering consultancy group p 3 specializes in gauging the signal strength of networks for mobile phone and internet providers. its fleet of several dozen cars ferries it specialists all across europe to detect any gaps in coverage. that technicians measured the surfing speed of various websites including the up and down load of data and video streaming aborted transfers and sluggish intermittent connectivity. indicate deficits in network quality of the

telephones and i'm computer for the phones are being connected to a computer where a sound file is being played but i'm not just a tennis tele for the 1st 4 calls the 2nd one vendors are called and once that calls over there's a brief pause for that and then the 2nd phone calls the 1st one. and that's repeated all day long so as to objectively determine our voice quality and that it will cut. the team also use speed test websites to check d.s.l. and landline connections on millions of computers worldwide. that enables. 2 must play fi and their fellow engineers in $100.00 to give provide just an overview with global networks the information reveals how well or poorly competitive is up a full many dollars it's his aim and this is data gathered from losers around the world. about a piece of software that is integrated in around 900 apps is the software into gear

and these apps are installed on around 200000000 devices well why on and go and study up for not going to users agree to be involved in network quality assessment this out won't register the actual user experience of. most. wherever the user is using their device to download material all view videos we can see in the background how good a network coverage margins in very good for us we would whether it was 3 g. or 4 g. which country which provider and a lot of other information we get our information not via the users would provide the networks. that's. the biggest bottlenecks in coverage within gemini or in the east of the country but some of the worst internet connection is down in the southwest in the area around the town of bad 2nd and.

you're going. up with other local residents calling for free internet and the local authorities are also helping to set up wife i hope spots across the area the only alternative is to use mobile phone providers across the border in switzerland obeying it's a price so he doesn't take the strides in itself stocking coverage from switzerland is great here is that i have a weak signal for a german network and strong signals for 2 swiss want to be exposed kind of being unable to access data was on the road is a major problem for companies time and services lies this country. if i can't do after sales or carry out jobs or orders i can't give my clients any information. and the emergency services can't get the data and information they need to help people who had an accident. some areas so remote that network providers are reluctant to invest in installing broadband cables and that includes places along some of germany's highways and non-urban roads some kind

of side project. so you can't use the time on the road for a couple of phone conversations because the call will cut out every 2 or 3 minutes so you have to reconnect it's not worth it for the best kind to live for not. having kind of people who have an accident out here might get lucky and pick up a couple of radio waves otherwise they have to walk to the next inhabited building and ask for systems basically like a mere 991 but those beautiful landscapes can also cause major headaches when it comes to expanding network coverage is probably most of the us with the problem is that demography high in the not 2nd in the finale surrounded by the black forest hills features that are unfavorable for network planners. and it's practically impossible to provide that density of coverage with conventional technology fast i can get comments on imitation and here too there are companies that are completely dependent on fast broadband. connections to the rest of the world. software

specializes in the digitalisation of the global working world providing solutions. and interactive management. birds that he and his home to both the companies are indeed department and its global sales division the company would have had to close its premises in the town had it not been for some smart solutions devised by its own developers. only have india conferences here every day online presentations from remote system configurations and online training sessions and that requires a fast internet connection our founder and director and dr. of austin are in the us so we also need a good connection to that office we have this hunger for data and it's growing every day. down in the basement the software engineers managed to solve their internet problem by combining a range of different elements. of linked up

a number of internet connections a d.s.l. line a cable connection and are planning to throw a 3rd anchor across this responder. basically there's an excellent l.t.e. network just a few 100 meters away here and we're linking up all these lines to create a very fast internet connection and what have the. technical obstacles alone mean that makeshift solutions like this and not an option for private individuals and that's a gap that you're going to add beats wants to fill he and his fellow free internet activists have installed free wife i in most public buildings in bad 2nd and. last or that's a crystal clear reception. because more beautiful than people but it's a big network providers or most of them offer customers a voice over ip option was the fatah the advantage there is that people can then make phone calls via y. 5 and for the hospital with the right contract you can now phone people for free b.

and there are talks going it's on. the odd 2nd in already has dozens of free internet terminals enabling local people to surf and make phone calls we're going to set his sights even higher however on fiber in the sky a fast internet connection via satellite. fiber in the skies of america fiber in the sky is definitely an option it avoids the need to dig up roots everywhere which is what prevents network expansion. of art providing the right hand with your view of iraq to cables and laying 3 or 4 or 5 kilometers of cables that's extremely expensive in a hilly area with hard ground fiber in the star comes from above the sky come from everyone has their own direct receiver and high speed internet that is in part a. coup in french guiana is the launchpad to air bass in arianespace satellites they orbit the earth at an altitude of 36000 kilometers and

always above the same point they serve primarily to transfer t.v. and radio broadcasts. the geostationary communications satellites are assembled into lose from. they way up to 6 times and have an operating life of 25 years each satellite is highly complex and custom built and can cost up to $250000000.00 euros. and that's why current satellite based internet connections are so expensive demand for this option however is continually on the rides. the link up on the model has been part of a revolution in satellite design in recent years from individual components to mass production. in fact today from the design to the dead you very to the

customer we can provide such advice and there's that 2 years 1st it's quite short. an innovation in power technology systems heralded a new era in satellite construction. for satellites or elbows developed any trick but mission so for us. a big gain or in term of mass at lunch any to a long host. to have more equipments on board and to have and it is an interesting no cost at launch aswell. geostationary satellites orbit the earth at a distance of 36000 kilometers. even at light speed a signal down below needs 500 milliseconds to reach a satellite that's half a 2nd and. that delay or latency

jaring phone calls means that the people talking constantly interrupted each other . in order to ensure a smooth online gaming experience that time has to be under $100.00 milliseconds while a delay of just 20 milliseconds will cause orchestral musicians to fall out of sync with each other. with effective internet reception not possible with current geostationary orbit the satellites need to be broke closer to what is called low earth orbit companies planning to install satellite constellations include one web google space x. and amazon's blue or gen. the closer a satellite is to earth the smaller the terrestrial surface it can reach which is why it would take hundreds if not thousands of smaller satellites to cover the entire planet and that's a problem alone in terms of sheer production capacity. the

consortium led by one web also includes virgin galactic air bus defense and space and tech giant softbank together they've pulled close to 3 and a half $1000000000.00 to make the dream of global internet access a reality. this provided specific expertise to enable the mass production of satellites. that was a big challenge in fact as you know we are really. experimental. let's say a. big satellite projection but for mass production it was a challenge to provide a satellite. a few days compared to here where we have an i tunes integration takes around 9 months and. 3 days which was a really crazy fall for the market and so today we give up to let. you know what

the way of. the city's capacity is currently at one satellite per day one web plans to launch its global service in 2021 with $650.00 satellites orbiting at an altitude of 1200 kilometers the next step involves the constellation being expanded to more than 2000 units which has in turn required the development of completely new production methods. up to hold so as a test engineer he oversees a production setup that manages with a minimum of human impacts the newly designed propulsion systems are also built here in scaled down versions of the fuel tanks filled with sand on gas provided by an unexpected source. here is the spacecraft is going to move from one point of space to 0.0 workouts is going to put

a special ops to certain altitude but then the satellites need to reach much higher odds that you and the way we're going to do that is by use a stressed or so it's. just normal use just for firefighters it was designed by a company that didn't really know how to do space so it's much cheaper than more traditional. ones superstars don't move over simply again and we really want to avoid human errors so the way we're going to do that we're going to take a picture with the circumference here and the pictures of it being there will be compared to reference picture and bury them to do differences will be able to save ourselves on a good job. with human error essentially ruled out high volume production is possible with short turnaround times. when you're doing life of a kind it's easier to get cheaper and you're working on price. terms of testing we

are doing less testing so we need fewer people cheaper and saw from our order of magnitude is maybe a bit more than $100.00 but if you want to buy the satellite if you will be a roughly a 1000000 and if you want to void your sobriety it will be way more than. one web and also google space x. and amazon plan to offer their internet services everywhere on earth in the process of getting 4000000000 people on line. london based one where present official license from the country's airspace also rest and sees itself on a mission to bridge the digital divide. the company's current and potential future play on tile includes banks and lines shipping companies industry disaster relief agencies and the military.

and consumers will initially be able to book the service fire local telecom providers and as already seen in the mobile phone sector the price will be lower in africa than in germany for example. my kids a previously worked in systems engineering for nasa and as part of the design team for the one web satellite constellation the company was the 1st among the competing consorts here to receive approval from the international telecommunications union a united nations agency. and that license is absolutely mandatory for providing the service the one with system uses radio frequency spectrum in order to send information. to customers to provide this broadband internet connectivity you need spectrum and so a span of radio wave flags in order to transmit

information at high data reads the. spectrum that you have the more daily that you can provide and because you are used to these these broadband speeds of being able to stream video and send information very quickly back and forth we need a lot of spectrum in order to provide that type of service to so many people. designing a constellation of satellites in constant contact with each other and the earth is a complex undertaking. it involves a number of technical process is to function at the same time processes that have no precedent. the brain of the constellation the ground network operations center is in london it's headed by alan here at. home where my responsible for looking after a the ground network so we're going to call functions 1st of all we provide

situational awareness so we look for anomalies in the ground network where they occur we work to resolve them scripts. and secondly we do what we call a resource part and resource plan is really the crane's of how the system works which brings together the ground network can turn has spacecraft and the paid out of natural user you chase the ground stations run automatically and the fitted with 30 antennae each maintaining contact with 30 satellites. there are currently just 2 fully functional stations one in spitsbergen norway and the other on sicily the complete global coverage distributed across the planet you would need just $45.00 ground stations interconnected. very quickly as you say we're going to be scaling up country q 2 next year we're going to be out in 3 ground stations every month since

a huge ramp october. doing today today is all about testing and integration next year is all going to be about drinking knows cross stations and. the ground stations always seek the best possible connection to the satellite that is closest to the user and can provide the best possible bandwidth. the relevant signal shifts from one satellite to another with the use the remaining place fully unaware. the one web consortium is currently ahead of rivals google space x. and amazon and by the end of 2021 it hopes to have a constellation numbering $650.00 satellites going to either way the earth's orbit is set to get a lot of traffic in the near future how will the engineers ensure that there are no collisions so something we're doing one where is is actually enhancing our safety by separating each plane in the cost solution so there are multiple planes of

multiple satellites each and if they're all at the same altitude you have the sort of crossing point more salaries are zipping past each other at very high velocities so what we do is we separate those crossing points so the salaries are actually not zipping past one another when that means as we're actually in some regards we only have to manage a single plane at a time and you can apply that same principle to other consolations so we are maintaining. many kilometers of separation between space x. space x. is separate from. the amazon constellation and that's a very important safety detail to make sure that operators are not trying to wash and operate hundreds of thousands of satellites within the same amount of space. satellite constellations not the only inhabitants of. those serious traffic

immediate now to space in addition to count. disused satellites there is spent rockets elements fragments of exploded spacecraft and other space debris circling the planet the result is a growing orbital scrapyard now comprising 20000 objects with a diameter of 10 centimeters a more joined 570-0000 smaller objects over at least one centimeter in some things and the speed at which they move makes them extremely dangerous. so if there is a question space it can be catastrophic objects and earth orbit are typically traveling around 25000 kilometers per hour. and even a small object say 10 centimeters can carry enough energy to fragment a large satellite into thousands of pieces and so if such an event occurs now you go from one cell in one piece of debris to thousands of pieces of debris

and each of those pieces of debris might carry enough energy to again fragment a different satellite and so you know there's a sphere of a sort of chain reaction where one collision creates degree that debris strikes another satellite creating even more debris. and there is still no rules on the behavior of satellite constellations whether traffic related or on safety or ethics the only stipulation is a ban on stationing weapons in earth's orbit and that the satellites have to be safely after 25 years. one webb has decided to let its satellites expire in the atmosphere after an operational life of just 5 years. the major spacefaring nations are working on sophisticated nearest radar systems to prevent like collisions gemini's air space center the d.l.r.

is using a missile defense system from the german military in conjunction with the famous found wolf shaft research group. radar facility outside bone in western germany is the only one in europe that can track and depict of jets in 4 bit up to 2 centimeters in diameter minor well met since his colleagues have been conducting precise measurements on space debris in order to prevent the need for a vase of action by active satellites. then when i'm out if you have an object that you are especially interested in because it is threatening to collide with your own satellite system then you can use their system to real measure its orbit and obtain more precise data as you can this

physical better track gives you a better risk assessment of whether a collision is actually imminent on whether such a collision can be ruled out again. there are several collisions every day if they sit maneuvers there are only needed 2 or 3 times a year. but the scientists models project a collision in orbit triggered by space debris every 5 to 10 years just how crucial this is a valence is became clear in early september 29000 when a satellite in the space x. starling constellation was approaching a weather satellite belonging to the europeans base agency. yes a tried and failed to persuade space x. to take evasive action but with no response from the american company the agency had to force its 400000000 euro weather satellite into a collision avoidance maneuver where the space x.

was unwilling to take action or incapable due to a lack of control over the satellites remains unclear so long the value of the systems work really well and have a very high level of reliability operating the satellite constellations there's no problem and if we get into an area right in the range of 10 to 20 percent that things start to get really critical then these constellations can become a problem within themselves and between each other and that can lead to a cascade effect where more and more space debris is created. the front back radar facility near bowen is among the leading lights in space surveillance. radar has a limited range of sight. it has to be told approximately where an object is in the sky in order to conduct precise measurements. the teaser facility is immense compared to the german experimental space available and tracking radar. a new elektra nicky controlled radar system serves the near

zone of space within milliseconds they stand semiconductor technology the radar will be the 1st in germany to track active satellites and space debris 247 also creating an orbit data catalog that helps to prevent collisions. blount is in charge of gemini space situational awareness and which will work together with data collection he's seriously concerned about the satellite constellations currently being assembled. there could be the problem of the electric drive systems and the one website alerts do not allow hard delta vees or speed increases. the plan is to deploy the fleets in an orbit of around 500 kilometers and then

slowly push them to 1200 kilometers through the most contaminated belt and then bring them back down at the end of their lifetime. when. it's a problem similar to sending a family of snails across a major road during rush hour. there's a major risk of collision not least because the electric propulsion systems do not give the satellites much scope for evasive action. freeze. the data from the t.v. system and from. gemini space situational awareness and. the german armed forces and the german air a space center worked together at the nato communications and information agency unit their radar systems can only track the near earth zone and not geostationary

orbit so the center also uses telescopes to surveil satellites that are high iran and there are already concerns on the ground over the 1st satellites launched by space x.'s starlink constellation. was a. song from the launch of the fast 60 strong link subtle mind. is relatively high. and back can lead to interference through observations in near. normal doses the problem feared by astronomers growing population up to 10 years of mountains with many satellites in the low and medium. will reflect the sun's rays on. oh i'm just odd and in those areas of observation telescope coverage will be compromised. not surprisingly some of the traffic i'm a low earth orbit is from military sources the relatively close range of 502800

kilometer is a convenient one 5th gathering meteorological and geological data and the studying nowhere else in gemini did the armed forces and the civilian german heiress they sent to work so closely together to represent a we can see the one when constellation with 6 satellites launched today all on one orbit. this is the stunning constellation with 10 times the number of satellites spread across different planes of this constellation is likewise set to grow significantly in the future. they are totally sure i'm sure anymore if you were told of the large number of electrically powered satellites being introduced into critical orbit hearts will definitely post questions. in the final phase of the satellites deployment this will also present a bigger challenges for global surveillance systems than is the case with the

current population and all of it. so we have to prepare accordingly and continue to expand our capabilities of a cloud white house for. the importance of protecting critical infrastructure such as weather g.p.s. and observation satellites this highlighted in march 29th teen in the indian military shut down one of the country's weather satellites in order to demonstrate its strategic space capabilities the satellite broke up into 6 and a half 1000 pieces of debris which then spread around the globe to speed of 35000 kilometers per hour. the interesting thing in this area is not so much the mass of deborah that stay on the rich. there's the parts move by kinetic energy. of course pose

a threat to our. own sense of. china has also demonstrated its ability to destroy critical infrastructure in low earth orbit. done ton in south korea is just a 2 hour car drive from the border to north korea everyone here is aware of the threat from the north's missile system and it's here that one web is working with intelli and south korean specialists in maritime satellite communications intel and is making the satellite antennae for the ground stations and use the terminals that can pick up and relay the signals from the satellite constellation at any point on a us. the koreans were chosen due to their experience in maritime communications where the transmitter and receiver of signals of both moving the idea is to adapt that technology for

internet access in self driving cars permanent connectivity will become increasingly important. steve charland kevin other visionary minds behind intelli and from every country or is still challenge but we have all the solution now so cio is fixed so far i think the best soul is moving so them is i should move and also maintain a tractor trailer. we are developing using now but leave your vision ali. is moving so that means all we have to. go by ship or by satellite. means. accuracy so even though the worst cases we have to bury. accurate track to be 0 and we can maintain the connection

so there could be our challenger for your future so we're trying to overhaul. rotating parabolic antennae at the cutting edge of current technology but a few years from now there might well be new antennae available based on semiconductor technology this is a company with a. business of your future intel but this one is no mechanic or body is right or we can put here where there is a some electronic circuit inside electronic circuit. we'll be. a satellite itself so it's kind of. the mechanical. motion and then a very accurate. small. whether by sea land or the idea is to ensure easy connectivity for people using all means of transportation in addition to those who were stationary.

this facility near seoul tests radio communications with objects in the. a group of engineers headed by physicists now feigns spent several months focusing on one specific task proving beyond doubt that an internet connection can be established on 90 days in a row via satellite constellation their test results would determine whether one website writes to transmit at the frequency spectrum approved by the international telecommunications union would be confirmed it's a milestone the team eventually reached in 2019 satellites were launched in february of this year and we want to show the proof of concept that it works so we want to be able to send signals up to the satellite but down again and prove that we can send traffic at very high speed. and therefore realize some of these

services you know high speed broadband services that we want to offer the world so this is a perfect testing ground we've got the regulatory clearance here to do transmissions and receptions. could a system initially comprising just 6 satellites in orbit stream internet video content from germany now thanes and his team were also eager to see how the experiment pans out. what we'll be doing is where we're going to present the earth channel rise up and getting content from there over to our modems on to the terminals themselves to the satellites but down again i know all the acknowledgments coming back to across the internet so we can keep on streaming here we just got 3 more minutes and then the satellites will be coming out over its satellite flies it takes about 3 minutes and then the next next.

1010 seconds. they. say we're now live streaming video from those that you have to. travel. the work briefly of the quality of the signal wasn't good enough so it lost lost connection but. we try and we're still in testing we're testing the circuit so optimizing the system to get better and better performance better latency. improved quality of the stuff lives ok well thanks everybody here joe thank you. providing sufficient bandwidth for streaming videos in full h.d. will require the launch and deployment of far more satellites and more ground stations. over in the

united states one webb has a 2nd ground station not far from washington d.c. . the constellation satellites can be controlled from here and from headquarters in london. daria careen he is responsible for coordinating the constellations flight maneuvers she and colleague ny richey control individual satellites. here the 2 experts are conducting extensive tests connected to automatic control routines. it's a system that i want to trust but at the same time as a human i want to make sure i'm checking all of all of my checks and balances making sure that everything is ok with the tally before we proceed to the next step because again this isn't a simulation we have to take our time and we have to be as humanly perfect as

possible how many controllers will be required to pilot a mega constellation of several 100 satellites this is well artificial intelligence will come in to assist the human operators i believe we're going to be having one controller for about 20. 30 so it's maybe even more we're trying to automate our system so that one person can handle as many satellites that is needed within our crews because i mean like you said we're not going to have a one to one ratio and we need to learn to automate our system so that when we see issues on board if our pilots can't do it manually the bottom medically our system should be able to handle it it's kind of a walk before you run type of i guess philosophy so instead of having so many satellites up at 1st we deployed you know 6 and then we could spend a significant amount of time kind of getting to know them i can make a new friend basically just deciding you know this satellite is capable of this and

it's not capable of this and paul i kind of adapt to the constellation as it grows to because of our ability to understand the vehicles for months we've you know since launched for about 6 months now and we have gotten a good idea of the types of tools that will need in order to use you know sustain a mega consolation and in addition to the technical challenges there are also no end of regulation to reopen stickles to overcome it's all right. kelly into a team of trying to convince more than 200 different countries and territories to grant one web commission to provide services. every person in the world wants access to information and entertainment and they may define that differently and their country may be concerned about what access they have but even a country like north korea wants their people to have access to certain kinds of

information right and so every country in the world wants their people connected they may want to control the way they're connected they may have concerns about data protection or security but they want their people connected and so even north korea even cuba. even india china russia all interested in connectivity connectivity is the key to the future. internet access in north korea china and russia is regulated differently than in germany what surprised the company was how more democratic nations also tend to demand an emergency off switch before giving approval to internet access via satellite constellation you know what even the united states asked for an off switch. every country wants a little control over the traffic in its country and one of the things they say basically is if you cause interference usually you'll need to be turned off and you say of course the ideas i'm never going to cause interference when going back to

the coordination with the other satellite systems i don't want to have to turn off so i'm going to make darn sure that i'm not interfering into anything. one web and its rival google space x. a commonly neck and neck in this new space race with amazon lagging some distance behind with a high speed internet for a blow us all bit will actually be commercially available by the end of 2021 is still hard to say. south korea has the fastest mobile internet on the planet and practically everyone here has high speed connectivity via to rest real all mobile networks. and it's here that now things in his colleagues are working towards a few chill where every person on earth could have fast internet via satellite provided that governments allow it's.

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is d w news live from berlin and india is a global leader in vaccine production but millions there are now asking where are our jobs india's vaccine rollout is in disarray some states have no shots to offer a population gripped by the devastating 2nd wave also on the show friday's massive car bomb of the earth ghana stand claims more victims violence across the country is on the rise as u.s. and nato troops formally begin their withdrawal plus this.