Data Governance in Broadband Satellite Services | IGF 2023 WS #307

Uta Meier-Hahn

The analysis explores the topic of internet connectivity and considers various arguments and supporting facts related to its significance for development. It suggests that regions with better internet connectivity tend to progress more rapidly compared to those with limited or no connectivity. This supports the claim that internet connectivity acts as a catalyst for development.

Another important point raised in the analysis is the growing digital divide. As time passes, the gap between regions with adequate connectivity and those without expands further. This emphasizes the urgency to address the issue and find effective solutions to bridge the digital divide.

One potential solution that is highlighted in the analysis is the use of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. It is argued that LEO satellites require minimal terrestrial infrastructure and can complement the development of fibre and mobile infrastructure. This suggests that LEO satellites have the potential to bridge the digital divide faster than other connectivity solutions.

Furthermore, LEO satellite internet is seen as a valuable resource during times of conflict or natural disasters, when traditional communication networks may become unavailable. This underscores the importance of having alternative means of communication that can remain functional in such challenging circumstances.

The analysis also discusses the benefits of connectivity alternatives. It suggests that offering a range of connectivity solutions can lead to an enlargement of the market and stimulate competition. This variety allows end-users to have more choices, potentially leading to improved services and affordability.

An interesting point made in the analysis is the global nature of the governance of LEO satellite internet. It asserts that all global citizens are stakeholders due to the shared risks associated with the technology, such as potential space debris and environmental costs. This highlights the need for collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders to address these issues effectively.

The analysis concludes by suggesting several recommendations for further action. Countries are encouraged to document and share best practices and explore opportunities to align their interests with providers. This can help in authorizing and licensing LEO systems in a timely manner. Additionally, engaging with financing and investment opportunities is seen as crucial to support the advancement of satellite internet.

Other noteworthy observations from the analysis include the importance of transparency and multi-stakeholder input, as well as the need for research and twinning programmes to further understand and advance satellite internet. The analysis also stresses the significance of quick onboarding and activation of services, and the need for coalition building to foster consumer interest.

Overall, the analysis highlights the positive impact of internet connectivity on development and the potential of LEO satellites in bridging the digital divide. It provides valuable insights and recommendations for countries, stakeholders, and providers to collaborate and work towards achieving better connectivity outcomes.

Akcali Gur Berna

Satellite connectivity and data governance have geopolitical dimensions, especially in Ukraine and Iran. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Starlink satellite internet service proved crucial in providing communication support to the war-torn country. However, in Iran, requests for internet restoration were limited due to US restrictions and authorization issues with the Iranian government.

Concerns surrounding data privacy and monopolization have sparked discussions on the need for international treaties to address these issues in the context of satellite broadband. A survey conducted for the ISAAC Foundation-funded research revealed that respondents had concerns about data privacy and suggested an international treaty approach to combat data monopolization. This indicates that global recognition is growing regarding the concerns associated with the data value chain in satellite broadband, and international treaties on data flows and standardization may provide potential solutions.

Certain European Union countries and the UK have licensed Starlink to provide services, but under the condition of compliance with domestic data governance regimes. This shows that countries can employ regulatory measures to address data governance concerns in the use of satellite broadband services. Additionally, major space-faring nations like China and the EU are embarking on their own satellite constellations, citing data governance issues as one of the justifications for these projects.

It is crucial for satellite broadband technology to operate within existing rules and regulations, respecting the importance of the rule of law. This ensures that the deployment and use of satellite broadband services adhere to legal boundaries and prevent potential conflicts. International legal boundaries may restrict broadcasting capabilities in certain countries, and approval is necessary for landing rights and spectrum usage. Turning on satellite services without approval in particular countries would attract international pressure and potentially cause political conflicts.

In terms of domestic regulations, developing countries are advised to reevaluate and update their regulations related to licensing and authorizing satellite broadband services. By reassessing their regulations, these countries can create an environment that promotes the growth and accessibility of satellite broadband while also addressing governance concerns.

In addition, countries are recommended to form regional alliances to enhance the achievement of local policy goals. This collaboration can foster cooperation in addressing common challenges and advancing the benefits of satellite broadband in the region.

Active participation in ITU (International Telecommunication Union) consultations is also encouraged. By engaging in these consultations, countries can contribute to the development of international standards and policies that govern satellite connectivity and data governance.

Countries should also reassess their commitments under trade treaties, ensuring that their satellite broadband initiatives align with international trade agreements and obligations.

Moreover, it is essential for countries to familiarize themselves with space law. Having a comprehensive understanding of space law will ensure that satellite activities are conducted legally and in accordance with international norms.

Finally, a holistic approach is necessary to ensure that satellite broadband initiatives align with sustainable development goals. By considering the environmental, social, and economic impacts of satellite connectivity, countries can maximize the benefits of satellite broadband while minimizing potential negative effects.

In conclusion, the geopolitical dimensions of satellite connectivity and data governance are prominent, particularly in Ukraine and Iran. Addressing data governance concerns through international treaties, regulatory measures, and domestic regulations is crucial for the responsible and effective use of satellite broadband services. Collaboration, active engagement, and adherence to legal frameworks are essential in optimizing the benefits of satellite connectivity and data governance while working towards sustainable development goals.

Dan York

The analysis explores the different aspects of satellite connectivity, specifically focusing on Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites and their potential impact on internet accessibility. LEO satellites are seen as a promising solution for providing high-speed and low-latency connectivity, which is crucial for efficient internet access. In comparison, geostationary satellites, which have been providing internet access for many years, have high latency, making them unsuitable for fast connectivity.

The potential of LEO satellites for revolutionizing internet connectivity is highlighted, particularly in terms of their ability to deliver faster and more efficient connections due to their closer proximity to Earth compared to geostationary satellites. Additionally, LEO satellites can be mass-produced and launched in bulk using cost-effective methods, such as reusable rockets, resulting in significantly reduced expenses. However, it is important to note that LEO satellites have a shorter lifespan of around 5 years, requiring continuous deployment to maintain uninterrupted connectivity.

Despite the advantages, there are concerns regarding the implementation of LEO satellite networks. One significant concern is the economic, societal, and environmental implications associated with these systems. Affordability and capacity remain major challenges, and the lack of established standards and privacy concerns pose potential issues for future LEO systems. Additionally, there are concerns about data handling through the required infrastructure and the generation of space debris, which can have potential environmental impacts.

The analysis also addresses the issue of regulatory and legal restrictions, which act as significant barriers to the global implementation of satellite internet. Providers must secure landing rights and obtain spectrum approval in each country they seek to operate in. Operating without proper authorization can lead to international pressure and attention, underscoring the need for adherence to legal and regulatory frameworks.

Moreover, the control of satellite internet by a limited number of billionaires, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, raises concerns about unequal access and power dynamics. The high cost of launching satellites prevents smaller players or community networks from entering the field, potentially exacerbating inequalities in internet access.

The analysis also raises concerns about the potential risks associated with satellite internet, particularly in terms of two-way communication. This vulnerability could make users, especially those in conflict zones, susceptible to targeting or surveillance.

The importance of healthy competition within a regulatory framework is advocated to address potential issues and failures in the LEO sector, as witnessed in the 1990s. Furthermore, the need for regulation is emphasized to ensure equitable access and prevent regulatory capture, which may impede progress or lead to unfavorable outcomes.

While advancements in satellite technology, including mass production capabilities and improved launch capacities, have greatly improved over the past few decades, uncertainties remain regarding the viability and success of proposed systems. Careful evaluation and addressing of these uncertainties are essential to ensure the effectiveness and sustainability of satellite communication networks.

Alternative solutions, such as optical connectivity, are also discussed. Optical connectivity provides a direct and unshared connection, but its infrastructure is still in the early stages of development.

Finally, the analysis highlights the critical role of satellite communication in disaster management, as evidenced by the deployment of communication resources in disaster-stricken areas to provide Wi-Fi connectivity for first responders. Additionally, the potential use cases of LEO satellites are emphasized, and the need for increased conversations and attention towards the International Telecommunication Union-Radio (ITU-R) is suggested to address the challenges and opportunities presented by LEO satellites.

In conclusion, the analysis provides a comprehensive exploration of the various dimensions of satellite connectivity, with particular emphasis on LEO satellites. While LEO satellites offer promising high-speed and low-latency connectivity, there are concerns regarding environmental impact, data handling, affordability, regulatory restrictions, and broadband inequality. The importance of healthy competition, regulation, and planning ahead to address potential challenges is stressed. Caution and further evaluation are needed before implementing proposed systems, given the uncertainties that exist. Overall, satellite communication, including LEO satellites, holds great potential for improving internet accessibility, and leveraging it effectively requires careful consideration of various factors.

Peter Micek

The analysis examines several significant concerns surrounding the low-Earth-orbit satellite sector. A major apprehension is the potential regulatory risks posed by Starlink, the sector’s first mover. The consolidated control that Starlink holds over the industry raises concerns, particularly due to its dominance and associated risks.

Another worrisome aspect is the heavy reliance of Ukraine on Starlink and its controller. This dependence on a single company creates vulnerability, as any disruption or manipulation of Starlink’s services could have severe consequences for the country.

The analysis also highlights potential security vulnerabilities in low-Earth-orbit satellites. It presents evidence from a live hacking competition at the DEF CON conference, where teams were able to hack into a satellite’s camera and capture pictures of specific locations on Earth. This finding underscores the need for robust security measures to protect these satellites from malicious activities.

Furthermore, the analysis points out the significant dependence of civil society on government in the space sector. The report underscores the substantial funding and procurement efforts made by governments, particularly in defense industries and spending. This heavy reliance on government support poses challenges for civil society to have equal say or influence in shaping sector policies.

Additionally, the analysis identifies an asymmetrical disadvantage in influencing public policy in the space sector. Despite efforts to engage with public policy directors, calls often go unanswered. This lack of responsiveness hampers the ability of concerned parties to have a meaningful impact on policy and regulation development.

On a positive note, the analysis suggests promoting higher standards in government procurement and support for new and emerging technologies. Initiatives like the donor principles on human rights in the digital age launched by the Freedom Online Coalition aim to harmonise and raise standards, addressing challenges in the sector.

Overall, the analysis highlights the need for careful consideration of regulatory risks, security vulnerabilities, and power dynamics in the low-Earth-orbit satellite sector. It emphasizes the importance of inclusivity, human rights, and data protection in policy and regulation development. Promoting higher standards and fostering partnerships in government procurement and emerging technologies are seen as promising approaches going forward.

Larry Press

The analysis explores the topic of optical laser communication between space and the ground, highlighting its potential impact on sustainable development. It is noted that this type of communication is related to SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. The technology has gained attention and investment from various smart individuals and organizations.

Optical communication offers several advantages, including faster speed, significant data capacity, wide directional angle, and license-free operation. However, it also faces challenges related to atmospheric conditions, such as clouds and rain, which can distort or weaken the optical signals. Despite these challenges, the overall sentiment towards optical communication is neutral, acknowledging its potential but also recognizing the obstacles it faces.

The involvement of noteworthy organizations, such as NASA and universities, in experimenting with optical communication is highlighted in the analysis. NASA has been working on this technology since 2013 and has achieved transmission rates of up to 200 gigabits per second. The Federal Technical University in Switzerland achieved even higher transmission rates, reaching 0.94 terabits per second using optical communication. This evidence shows that there is active research and development ongoing in this field.

However, there is some skepticism regarding the success of optical to low Earth orbit communication. The president and CEO of KSAT, an established optical ground station company, doubts the viability of this type of communication. The analysis suggests that additional investments and research are needed to overcome the challenges associated with this technology.

In addition to the topic of optical communication, the analysis also examines the criticism directed towards Elon Musk for his political posts on Twitter. Larry Press expresses disappointment and fear towards Elon Musk’s political content. This negative sentiment is further supported by Larry Press’s mention of following Elon Musk on Twitter and disliking the political content.

Another area of discussion revolves around the failures in the past attempts at providing internet connectivity through satellites. The analysis cites the example of Teledesic, a project funded by Bill Gates and a Saudi prince, which failed in the 90s due to technological limitations. It is noted that at that time, the technology and economics did not support internet connectivity via satellites. The limitations in technology made it economically unviable as the internet was primarily text-oriented and had limited technological capacity.

The analysis also includes Larry Press’s viewpoint that connectivity should be affordable based on what people can afford. He argues that if people in an area or nation cannot afford connectivity to services like SpaceX, it implies they have excess capacity. Therefore, he suggests that adjusting prices according to an area’s available capacity would be more feasible.

Furthermore, Larry Press criticizes Elon Musk’s initial pricing structure for SpaceX, stating that it was unrealistic. He points out that Musk initially stated he would charge the same price everywhere, but different rates are now used in different countries. This observation highlights a disparity between the initial intentions and the current pricing policies.

In conclusion, the analysis provides an in-depth exploration of optical laser communication, its advantages and challenges, ongoing research and development, as well as potential skepticism towards its success. It also examines the criticism directed towards Elon Musk for his political posts on Twitter and highlights the failures in past attempts at internet connectivity through satellites. Additionally, it presents Larry Press’s viewpoint on affordability and pricing, emphasizing the importance of adjusting prices according to capacity and income levels. These insights contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

Kulesza Joanna

The panel discussion will delve into the intricacies of data governance in broadband satellite services, with a specific focus on satellite infrastructures and internet connectivity. Comprising seasoned experts in the field, the panel boasts a wealth of experience in both low Earth orbit satellites and internet connectivity. They will shed light on the technological aspects of these systems while also examining the regulatory constraints that come into play, including those imposed by SpaceX.

In addition to exploring the technical and regulatory dimensions, the panel will address the impact of regulations within different jurisdictions. Recognising that various countries may have differing approaches to governing satellite connectivity and internet access, this discussion aims to shed light on the potential consequences of these divergent regulatory frameworks. Civil society feedback, often instrumental in shaping policies and regulations, will also be taken into consideration.

One of the speakers, Kulesza, brings a unique perspective to the table. Working on an ISAC foundation project, she is deeply involved in comprehending the legal framework underpinning low Earth orbit satellites and internet connectivity. To emphasise the significance of this understanding, Kulesza stresses the need to discuss the regulatory impacts that governments attempt to enforce across different jurisdictions. By examining these impacts with a critical lens, the panel hopes to foster a more comprehensive understanding of the legal dimensions surrounding satellite infrastructures and internet connectivity.

Furthermore, the panel recognises the importance of community engagement in these discussions. To facilitate a fruitful exchange of ideas, the audience will be encouraged to participate by posing questions or sharing comments through the chat function. Alternatively, they can wait until the dedicated Q&A session to provide their feedback. This commitment to fostering dialogue and incorporating diverse perspectives aligns with the broader goal of partnership for the goals, as outlined in SDG 17.

In conclusion, the panel discussion on data governance in broadband satellite services promises to offer valuable insights into the technological, regulatory, and legal aspects of satellite infrastructures and internet connectivity. Through the expertise of the panelists and active audience participation, this discussion seeks to advance our understanding of the challenges and opportunities in this rapidly evolving field.

Kulesza Joanna:
ready and I do not hear an objection, I would be glad to start this off. Welcome to session 307. This time we encourage you to join us to discuss data governance in broadband satellite services. That’s the theme we have chosen for this panel. The group of presenters we have managed to to complete for this panel has been working on satellite connectivity and internet access for a while. We will go through the introductions in due course and for this specific session we have decided to focus on data. These new technologies that support internet connectivity all rely on what has been referenced as the new oil so we are very much looking forward to discussing that specific aspect of internet connectivity and satellite infrastructures. My name is Joanna Kulesza. I work as an assistant professor of international law at the University of London in Poland and for the past year and a half together with my co-lead on an ISAC foundation project we have been working to better understand the legal framework behind low earth orbit satellites and internet connectivity and Berna Akcalikor is one of the panellists on this project as well. We have managed to connect to put together a panel of excellent speakers whom I’m going to kindly ask to introduce themselves in due course for the purpose of time and our scoping questions for this session do include both the technological aspect of low earth orbit satellites and internet connectivity and that is a kind request to our first two speakers to shed some light on that specific theme. We will then move forward to better understand and what are their regulatory constraints behind using technologies like SpaceX, but I’m certain our speakers will emphasize that that is by far not the only company that is offering satellite infrastructures for internet connectivity. And then we will look at regulatory impacts that the governments are trying to cause within different jurisdictions, as well as the civil society feedback to the possibility of deploying these new infrastructures and regulating, managing, processing the data that flows through them. I have kindly asked our panelists to present for seven to 10 minutes. As already said, we have quite a rich agenda. So without further ado, I am going to ask them to take the floor and then we will move directly into the Q&A. So if our audience members do have questions or comments, they are more than welcome to either post them in the chat. I will be monitoring the chat or simply wait until the Q&A session. It will be moderated in the room by Bernhard Salibor and we will give you ample time to share your feedback. With this, I hand the floor over to Dan New York, who has been leading a dedicated project within the Internet Society on Low Earth Orbit Satellites, completed with an insightful report. I am certain that we will be provided with a link to that report in due course. Dan has been working for ISOC as the Director for Internet Technology. So we could ask for no better speaker than Dan to give us an introduction into satellite infrastructures and internet connectivity. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. The floor is yours.

Dan York:
Thank you very much, Joanna, and thank you for everybody who’s coming in. attending this session, whether you’re in the room there in Kyoto or online, wherever you may be. And this is a fascinating topic around data governance. And I could go off on any topics, but I’ve been asked to kind of focus on the technology side and set the stage to make sure we’re all using the same terms, working in the same kind of space, and working with that. So to begin with, I work for the Internet Society. I’ve been there for 12 years. I am currently the Director of Internet Technology. I have a focus around one of the aspects is connecting the unconnected, and how do we do that using low-Earth orbit satellites, among other technologies. Let me go and talk a little bit. It’s all focused on the internet for everyone, and how do we bring those people together. To begin any conversation on satellites, we need to talk about orbits. And this is the critical part to understand what’s going on right now and why there’s so much energy and excitement. We’ve had satellites that have been providing internet access for decades now. Almost all of those have been out at what is called geostationary or geosynchronous orbit out at around 36,000 kilometers away from the Earth. These are large satellites, typically the size of a large bus or something bigger. They cost millions of dollars, many millions of dollars sometimes. They take a long time to get out there. But they provide service for sometimes 15, 20 years or more. They can provide decent bandwidth. The challenge that they have is they are so far out that the amount of time it takes for a packet to go from the Earth out to the satellite and get back can be 600 milliseconds, 800, 900 a second, or even more. And the challenge that has is that in today’s world, when we want to have video conversations like this one, you need something with a much smaller amount of what we call latency or lag. And this is where we start to look at the other areas. There is a medium Earth orbit, which is between 2,000 and 36,000. And there’s a range of things that are in there. there is a provider, SES, which has the O3b satellites that do exist out in that kind of range. They are a little bit closer, have a little bit better latency, but the energy, the excitement is all down in this space below 2000 kilometers, which is the low earth orbit or LEO, as we say here, or LEO, however you want to call it. This is where the space stations are. This is where so many of our satellites are, imaging, sensing, everything else. All of this is happening in this space. Now, part of what goes on and why we’re getting into this is that the farther away you are, the more, the bigger the range of the earth that you can cover. So you can go and without it, the geosynchronous area, you can have three satellites and you can be able to cover basically the entire earth by positioning them in different areas. If you’re in the middle earth orbit, some of the systems there can do maybe 20 or so. They’re orbiting, they go faster, et cetera. When you get down into the LEO area, you need a lot of satellites because they’re moving constantly in motion around there. OneWeb, which is now Eutelsat OneWeb, is around 1200 kilometers away from the earth and they have about 600 satellites. SpaceX with their Starlink and Amazon Project Kuiper and others who are in this play are a little bit lower. They’re about 500, 500, 600 kilometers away from the earth and they need about 3000 satellites to go and cover it. So it’s a different scale that you see here going on. These are this world of LEOs or low earth orbit satellites that we see around here. What’s happened that’s driving this interest in LEOs is that this need for this high speed, low latency connectivity. We wanna have connections like this. We wanna be in gaming, we want virtual worlds, we want e-sports, we want fast connectivity to be able to communicate and connect with people. And the challenge is that just hasn’t worked in the past with GEO, but the thing that’s driving it is this massive reduction in cost. These LEO satellites might be the size of a car or even smaller in some cases, they can be mass produced and rolling off production lines, they can be sent up in rockets with 50 of them at a time. And those rockets can be reusable now, as we’ve seen with SpaceX. So there’s this massive change in the way that we’re able to go and deploy rockets and things that are out there. Three parts to any of these systems. One is this constellation of satellites. Okay, that’s the thing we all think about when it goes up there. Each of them are launched at different altitudes, there’s different what they call orbital shells that are around, that there are different ways. There’s also the user terminal is the language used in satellite speak, the ground terminal or something. Normal, I mean, people just out there often just call it an antenna, or a dish or, you know, that kind of thing. But that’s the piece of that’s the hardware that you use. The big difference that’s happened is that you need a fancier antenna. With a geostationary satellite, you can just put an antenna on the side of your house or top of the house, you point it at the satellite, and it’s done because that satellite is fixed over a certain part of the Earth as it rotates. And so you can just put the dish up there. And that’s what you see in all over the world. Well, that doesn’t work when your satellites are moving at a high pace, and they might only be over the Earth in view for five or 10 minutes. So you need these new antennas that are electronically steerable phased array, lots of different words for them and gets in there. But basically, they’re the things that you see if you’ve seen anything with Starlink there, they look like a pizza box or something. Amazon Kuiper has similar ones. OneWeb has some similar kinds of ideas. The companies that are selling direct to consumer often accompany that with a Wi Fi router or something else. And then there’s also ground stations. And these are the receiving end of where that signal goes up to a satellite comes down to a ground station connects out to the internet. Now, these are different for each of the providers. OneWeb’s ground station is different than SpaceX’s, which will be different than Amazon Kuiper’s, which is different from ones used by Intelsat or one of the other geo providers. They’re all their own separate space in there, but they need that ground station to connect to. Now this is something, and Larry’s gonna talk a little bit more about this in a bit, but this is something that’s changed a bit. Historically, you needed to have a ground station in each country for legal reasons and things, but also within a certain range. The satellite had to be able to look down and see the ground station. So you had to have them maybe every 900 kilometers, something, you had to have them spaced out around the earth. And this is why, because you would have this user terminal, the dish, connect up to a satellite, bounce down to a ground station, and go out to the internet. Of course, in the Leo space, it might look a little bit more like this. Some of your packets would go to one satellite, the other ones would come back there. One of the big changes or revolutions in this space is what if you’re not in range to a local ground station? This is what Larry’s gonna talk a little about is this idea around what are called inter-satellite lasers, which allow you to go and connect up to the satellite, bounce across the mesh, and then drop down to a ground station, and then connect out there. Now, SpaceX has demonstrated this already when you look at things such as, they did some experiments in Antarctica with Starlink dishes there that connected up to the Starlink mesh. The constellation went across the constellation and dropped down to a ground station somewhere else. There are no ground stations for this in Antarctica. It was connecting up and across. It was also demonstrated in the Iran protests when the US government and others asked Starlink to turn on Starlink access in the country of Iran, and they did. There aren’t any legal ground stations in Iran. They were taking that data up into the satellite constellation. and then dropping it down somewhere into some other ground stations there. There’s a range of different kinds of data flow tech issues we could talk about here, about where does the data get dropped down to? Who’s in control of that? A lot of different topics around that that I’m not going to get into, but we’ll talk more about that. Just quickly, some of the concerns or things that we have to think about are affordability. Can these systems really be affordable for the people who need them the most? There’s a bunch of different business models that are being brought in here. Will they have the capacity to support all that we need? Certainly, we’ve seen in some areas they provide tremendous capacity for everything you need. When you get in the more densely populated areas, actually, you wind up with having challenges in some of this. Will there be competition? What are the business models? Right now, one of the biggest challenges is simply deployment. There’s a limited number of providers, really only SpaceX right now, who is able to go and launch satellites up into space at the pace that you need to launch because you’ve got to get thousands of satellites up in the low Earth orbit. Because they only have a five-year lifespan, you need to keep replacing. We’re in a weird spot where a lot of the other launch providers, Arianespace, United Launch Alliance, Jeff Bezos’ new Blue Origin, they’re in between launch vehicles, like the Ariane 5, there’s no more rockets, and the Ariane 6 hasn’t been deployed yet. There’s other pieces like that. We’re in a weird spot. One of the big challenges is just getting the satellites up there in the first place. There are other concerns, security, privacy, standards, what standards are being used. Now, if you use a Starlink connection, it works with all the typical internet standards. Those are all open. It works across there. How they’re routing inside their infrastructure is right now primarily proprietary. There’s issues around space debris, lots of things that come into these kinds of spaces. We don’t fully understand the sustainable business models. There’s questions around the environmental impact of all of this. What will it be? The impact on astronomy. There’s a lot of open questions. And that’s really one of the reasons why we need to have sessions like this at the IGF and other places, is because this is an industry that is still in its infancy. Need to understand a bit of this. I will put a point on the urgency around this. The next several years are going to be very critical because there’s a lot of people launching these systems. Starlink has already launched much of its generation one, its first phase, which will ultimately be about 4,400 satellites. They’re in the process of launching the first part of their second generation, which will be 7,500 satellites, growing to around 30,000 satellites. OneWeb has completed their first phase of around 600, but they’re going to be launching more. They’re on the books to do that. Amazon, just last week, launched its first two demonstration satellites, but it’s on the track to go and launch another 3,200 over the next couple of years. China is proposing their own constellation, which will rival Starlink’s in about 13,000 satellites. The European Union is looking to develop its own Iris constellation. If you look at the numbers that are filed with the ITU in terms of satellites, it’s conceivable that over the next four to five years, we could have 40, 50, 60, maybe even 90,000 satellites orbiting the earth. And this is just the internet access ones, not even thinking about imaging or sensor networks or other stuff. So it’s a very crowded space up there. Data flows are going to be a big part of thinking about through how all this works. And with that, I will just say, Joanna’s right, we did have a report that we issued last year. We’re still working on that. You can get it at internetsite.org slash leo is where we talk and frame a lot of these kinds of issues. And with that, I’m going to turn it to. Larry to dive in the lasers a little bit more.

Larry Press:
All right. OK, can you guys see me and hear me? We can hear you and see you. Can see me, OK. Let me, let’s see, I’ve got to figure out how to share my screen and get some slides going too. All right, can you guys see my slides? We do. OK, all right. Yeah, what I’m going to talk about, as Dan said, he gave a great overview. I’m going to be very focused in kind of a narrow niche, which is optical laser communication between space and the ground, not even just that one slide on the inter-satellite links. And the reason I’m doing it is because I think it may have a significant impact on this sustainable development goal, number nine in particular. So you can see the picture on the right. It depicts a few satellites in the sky in the space. And the kind of narrow lines between them are inter-satellite links that Dan talked about. And then those thicker lines depict laser links communicating with ground stations or gateways on the ground. And I’m going to focus my talk on the links to the ground stations. And I’m going to have one slide. Let’s see. Here you go. One slide. One slide on the inter-satellite links. Dan said SpaceX was the first. They now have about 8,000 optical terminals in orbit. And they’ve recently begun launching their second generation, which go faster. They go up to 100 gigabits per second. As you can see, each satellite has three terminals. Two of them point forward and backward in the same orbital plane as the satellite is going. The third one can go left or right. And I’m not sure, who knows, but I think it can perhaps go down, point to the ground. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about now. Satellite communication between the satellite and the ground. Why are we concerned with, or excited about optical, what optical communication? Right now, it’s radio frequency communication to those ground stations. And optical has many, many advantages. I’ve listed them there on the left. I’m not gonna read them to you. Maybe the most interesting is license-free. There’s no problem with getting, with interference with spectrum that there is with the radio frequency. It’s like a laser pointer. And RF is more like a flashlight that kind of spreads out the signal that gets diffused. And there are even some little side signals that completely don’t go to the right place. What’s not to like? It’s the atmosphere. Things like clouds and rain and stuff get in the way of optical signals. They can distort them and cut back their power. So the payoff would be really great, as was just illustrated. And for that reason, many really smart… people and business people are working on. I’m going to run through really quickly five groups. I’m not going to say much about any of them, but I will have links, a lot of links, that you can follow up on all of these. OK, NASA has been doing it since 2013. They’ve got many projects, many experiments with space-to-ground communication optical. I’ll just say this one is 200 gigabits per second from a little CubeSat from space to the ground. That is way fast. That’s 1,000 times faster than we’re used to. And that’s the kind of payoff that will come from this stuff if it works. All right, universities are doing a lot of experiments and research. This one’s interesting. It’s from the Federal Technical University in Switzerland. They have got a deal where they’ve got a terminal up here on top of a mountain, and they’ve got a terminal down here at their institute. The whole distance depicted there is about 53 kilometers. And you can see that it’s going through some of this stuff, like turbulent air, and it’s over a lake with water vapor, the kind of stuff that screws up laser transmission in the atmosphere. And with adaptive optics, they have a little tiny chip with 97 tiny adjustable mirrors that can make adjustments 15,000 times a second. Things like that are inconceivable, but they exist. And they’re also working on modulation schemes, a way to encode the 1’s and 0’s into the signal. And so they’ve been able to achieve 94 terabits per second, 0.94, almost a terabit per second transmission rates. They say they’re working on new modulation schemes. new software, to encode things and make it go faster. And it can be scaled up to 40 channels. So that would be an incredible amount of data coming in from space. And the second university one has to do not with the data transmission rate, but with being able to track the satellites, like Dan says, as they move across the sky. And so what these guys have done is put up a drone. And it goes back and forth at 65 kilometers per hour. But that simulates the sort of one degree per second that a satellite in low Earth orbit would transcend. And in fact, they have no trouble tracking it and transferring data from it. The military, no surprise, is really interested in this stuff. One really interesting thing is the Space Development Agency. It’s part of the Space Force. They have what they call the Transport Layer Constellation. It’s going to have between 300 and more than 500. They haven’t really decided yet satellites. And these will have laser links between the satellites and also space to ground laser links. And a key thing is this. They have a real philosophy of working with commercial suppliers. So that’s really an interesting one to watch. Speaking of commercial suppliers, I think the most interesting one is a company called Elyria. It’s a startup. They acquired their intellectual property for two products from Google. It’s really a bunch of guys that used to work at Google. The products are called Space Time and Tight Beam. And Tight Beam is an optical communication technology. And space time is sort of a network management system. Let me tell you about TightBeam because that’s what we’re talking about. Like the guys in Switzerland, they are working on a hybrid approach and it sounds real similar. They have adjustable mirrors and clever software. And they say they are getting now, they also do tests from a mountain near their headquarters and they’re getting tests that are going at 400 megabits per second. And so if you have four of those, that’s one point. Oh yeah, you can put channels together which gives you 1.6 terabits per second. And the reason I wanna kind of bring them up in this context is on the right-hand side, you see a couple of slides from a demonstration that they’ve done to put together this. I’ll tell you a little bit more about it in the next slide. But one of the things that demonstration or the software takes cognizance of is the surface temperatures on the earth and atmospheric conditions. And that enables space time, which is their other product, which does the routing and whatnot to route around the kind of bad atmospheric conditions that I spoke of before. Let’s look at space time. These are again from the same demo. You can see the scope of this thing. This is a demo of a hypothetical network that reaches from the moon to earth. And if you zoom in, you can see it’s also working on ships at sea and airplanes in the air and of course, satellites in orbit. So it’s a very comprehensive kind of a network operating system for controlling both fixed and mobile assets and the links between them on the earth and wherever they are, outer space, deep space. They definitely have deep space in their planning. The guy sent me a… I had a little exchange on Twitter yesterday about, yeah, they’re heading for Mars, not just the moon. This project is super comprehensive, but it’s reminiscent to me of the ARPANET back in the old days. And I list some of the reasons here. The software is open source. They’re trying to do standards. Networks can federate and access each other’s assets. It really sounds both ambitious and like the ARPANET, but 1,000 times more ambitious. But I would strongly advise you to watch the demo and these slides came out of. OK, another commercial thing. Oh, it says university. It should say commercial. I’m sorry. Another commercial company that’s worth paying a little attention to is IntelSat. They’re one of the traditional geostationary satellite operators that Dan talked about. But they are doing interesting partnership products. They are working with SpaceX to test space to ground optical communication with one web on airline connectivity. And they are going to use the ALERIA operating system. So keep an eye on them. OK, I mentioned that China. You have to talk about China these days. Dan mentioned Guolong. That’s really something. But they’re going to have a hard time launching all those satellites before Elon Musk is sitting on Mars. But at any rate, China is behind. It seems to be behind in this optical communication between space and the Earth. I can only find these two projects just kind of looking around for this talk. I talked to a friend of mine who’s a colleague who’s in China and knows everything about the Chinese internet and space business. And he couldn’t add to this, so they don’t seem to have much going at the present. Okay, and there’s bad news though. That was a lot of good news and a lot of people, smart people, putting a lot of energy into this. The bad news is there are no optical ground stations anywhere, and so that’s gonna take a bunch of investment. One approach is, or some of it can be done by augmenting the existing RF, some of the RF gateways that are already existing. If they’re in good geographic locations, that might make sense because they already have the real estate around the ground station, they have power coming in, most important, they all have high-speed internet connectivity at their locations. If you look at this map, these are the green pinpoints of the SpaceX gateways, excuse me, and in North America, there’s 75 of them. And you can see though, that some of these gateways are in Southwest United States, some are in Northern Mexico, some are in Arizona, in Arizona, in Australia, places that might make suitable locations for a optical gateway. The other thing though, that won’t be enough, you’ll have to construct new gateways. One would try to put them in arid regions, at locations near centers of demand, at locations that have already high-speed internet, terrestrial connectivity. Observatories come to mind as likely places to have them, they have a lot of those characteristics, but it’s gonna take a lot of money, careful analysis to build that infrastructure out if this stuff takes off. Yeah, to come back to the development goal, sustainable development goal number nine, I just wanna talk for a second. to about Africa. Right now in Africa there are only two gateways to the SpaceX. SpaceX has only two publicly known gateways and so they could use some connectivity. They have an advantage in that they’re the brown, the sort of arid spots on this map tend to be in the north and the south and I know there are others and that is an advantage because the satellites have inclined orbits. They don’t just go around the equator but they kind of go north and south. Some of them are almost go over the poles and what that means is these inter-satellite links are going to be more efficient for them for north-south links than they are for going east and west. So that’s looking good for Africa. You can imagine some gateways in the north and some gateways in the south. The other thing is seasonal variation. Obviously in the northern hemisphere it’s different than in the southern hemisphere and by having this kind of north and south having these two areas that are in the same longitude gives them another advantage. They will have good weather at least somewhere or maybe in both places at all times. Now I’m giving you kind of a really fast positive view of the whole thing. Here’s a reality check. This quote personally I don’t think optical to low earth orbit is really going to go. The guy that said it is the president and CEO of KSAT which is a Norwegian company. It’s an established optical ground station company. And they tried optical ground station in Greece in 2020 and it failed commercially. So this is not a slam dunk. There are tons of investments needed and there’s tons of research and development that needs to be done. Okay, that’s about what I was gonna say. I’ve got, you can see here my email address and a place where I talk about this stuff a lot. And if you’d like to see a copy of those slides which have tons of links, just send me a link or send me a request. Oh yeah, here’s a frequency terminology cheat sheet for those who would like it. And that is the end.

Kulesza Joanna:
Thank you, thank you so much, Larry. That was a lot of information and we particularly appreciate the developing countries focus. That is one of the themes we have been exploring throughout both of the projects, the one that Dan mentioned and the one that our next speaker and myself have been working on. So it’s most appreciated that you have provided us with this very broad technological overview and my sincerest thanks to Dan for his lasting support and yet another great intervention. With that, without further ado, I’m glad to hand the floor over to Professor Berna Akhtarigoura from Queen Mary University in London who’s a convener in outer space law, which brings us to the regulatory component of this panel. Again, with a kind request to our speakers to try and limit their intervention to seven to 10 minutes, I hand the floor over to Berna with a kind request for a brief review of whether all of these wonderful novel technologies are actually regulated. And if so, if there is a data regulation component that we might wish to focus on. Verna, the floor is yours.

Akcali Gur Berna:
Thank you, Johanna. I have PowerPoint. Well, I’m delighted to be here today to discuss data governance in broadband satellite services. I am joined by an esteemed panel of experts who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience on this topic. And, as you said, my task is to delve into the regulatory aspects of satellite connectivity and hopefully provide you all with some insight. So, the mega-satellite constellations attracted wide-scale global attention on 26 February 2022, two days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started. Elon Musk, SpaceX founder and CEO, responded to a request from the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister confirming on Twitter that Starlink satellite internet service has become active in Ukraine. This news came after the cyber-attack by Russia on another satellite system owned by Viasat. The primary target of the cyber-attack is believed to have been the communication lines of the Ukrainian military, as it was just one hour before Russia launched this major invasion of Ukraine. But the impact was more extensive. It affected thousands of internet users and internet-connected devices, including the wind farms in Central Europe. It is unclear whether the spillover was unintentional. Well, the solution for the disruption was another satellite system, Starlink, a new mega-constellation then. Well, until this time, the provision of broadband internet had been considered an experimental alternative to undersea and on the ground telecommunication services, but suddenly it became the communication lifeline for a war-torn country. As expected, this received a lot of press coverage. The celebrity status of the company owner also contributed to this. Around this time, we saw it being used in disaster zones such as the flooding in northern New South Wales and remote villages in Tonga after volcanic eruption and tsunami. Well, soon after they launched services in Ukraine, an uprising in Iran started. The government applied restrictions on Internet access, so the protesters called Mr. Musk to help restore their Internet connectivity. This time, he wasn’t able to help at first, and he was but achieved limited reach. And it wasn’t because Starlink services did not have coverage over Iran technically, but primarily for legal reasons. There were U.S. restrictions for providing services to Iran, and Iranian government had not authorized Starlink to provide services within their borders. So in both of these examples, the company acted in a manner that reflected the preferences of its home state. So in the first year that this company started providing services, it didn’t really shy away from making political choices. And as we all know, the concerns regarding cross-border data transfers and data governance have a geopolitical dimension as well. In that sense, relying on this infrastructure for transferring, storing, or processing data is very much perceived as relying on a U.S. infrastructure for connectivity and data transfers. As one would expect, in the current state of affairs, Russia and China have already declared that they will not allow the provision of satellite broadband by a U.S. service provider and cited cybersecurity as the main concern. OK, so it’s not… OK, sorry. OK. Confirming the prevalence of data governance concerns, in a survey Joanna and I conducted for our ISAAC Foundation-funded research on the global governance of satellite broadband, the respondents chose data privacy as one of their primary concerns. And in another question, they chose an international treaty on data flaws and standards development approach as the best way to tackle concerns regarding global data value chain being monopolized by a small number of real broadband companies. This survey was more than a year ago. We are still in the early stages of this technology, so we’ll see what the future brings and how the data governance regulations take shape. Now, so far I have established two things. There’s a geopolitical dimension to the use of satellite broadband, and data governance has started to be associated with its use. So what sort of measures can countries employ to address their concerns? I’ll go back to this, yes. Well, some EU countries and the UK have already licensed Starlink to provide services, although they have or plan to have their own satellite systems. The plan is to create a competitive market, but all licensed service providers are expected to comply with the domestic data governance regimes. On the PowerPoint, you see Starlink’s commitment on its website to comply with the GDPR for its customers in the EU. Major space-faring nations have also embarked on projects that will give them their own satellite constellations. A good example is China and the EU. The justification of these ventures… goes beyond data governance, but it is a significant factor. So what is the exact contours of domestic jurisdiction over satellite services? Let me go back. Yes. So while the provision of satellite services in a particular country is subject to that country’s laws and regulations, and the framework covers much more than data governance, the satellite companies need to comply with all to be able to provide services in a particular jurisdiction. The ground station. For that, the companies will need authorization from each relevant jurisdiction. Even if they do not need to establish one technically, they may be required to. They will also need to obtain a license to use the frequency spectrum. The frequency spectrum is coordinated at the international level by the ITU. However, at the domestic level, it is a national regulatory agency that assigns them. Of course, in compliance with what is agreed at the ITU. If the companies provide their services directly to consumers, they will also likely need an internet service provider license, which will include a license for the use of terminals by consumers. The importation of their user terminals will also be subject to the import requirements of the national authorities. The states will want to check the conformity of their new measures with their commitments in their trade treaties. While satellite connectivity is not new, and the fact that it is being provided via megaconstellations does not mean existing regulations do not apply. Regulators are updating the provisions to address the unique challenges of megaconstellations, but essentially, the existing regulatory framework is applicable. I hope this brief explanation gives you an overall idea. Okay. I couldn’t find that website. If you would like to read more on the topic, please check our website. I’ll provide the link in the chat where you can find a detailed report on the subject and shorter policy papers for governments and civil society organizations. Thank you.

Kulesza Joanna:
Thank you, Berna. Wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. There seems to be a lot of regulation on both telecommunications and data. Yet when we look at these new advancements in infrastructure, the question is whether these are sufficient, whether they are relevant, whether we are back to national laws and national regulations, and whether the multi-stakeholder model still matters with regard to internet connectivity. And with that question in terms of how developmental help should be provided to countries who are still deciding on how to expand internet connectivity in their jurisdictions, I turn the floor to our next speaker, Dr. Uta Meier-Hahn, who is the advisor for digital technologies at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit. And I’m very much looking forward to Uta discussing the developmental context of new technologies supporting internet connectivity, and Leos in particular. I know you have been working on these topics, so I’m very curious to hear your perspective. Uta, thank you for being here. The floor is yours.

Uta Meier-Hahn:
Thank you so much. So my name is Uta Meier-Hahn and I’m with GIZ, which is a public benefit federal enterprise. So we support the German government and a host of public and private sector clients in achieving their objectives in international cooperation. GIZ, some may know this or not, but we work in around 120 countries around the globe on a wide variety of areas, and that also includes So, why do we, as an organization, in the field of international cooperation, work on the US satellite or satellite internet in general? Isn’t that this expensive niche technology with limited capacity that will never, ever be the internet for you and me? These arguments I keep hearing, and they may sound and be valid, so I feel like we need to do some clarification about what we can and what we cannot expect from new satellite internet. And here I would like to make four points. The first point is about time, which we don’t have, because internet connectivity is widely recognized as a catalyst for development. This means that regions with access to better internet connectivity are progressing at a relatively rapid pace compared to those without. And this means, again, in other words, that the digital divide or divides grow larger with time. Therefore, it’s important to not only increase meaningful connectivity overall, but to do so quickly. This is where Leo Satellite or broadband from space may come in. It requires minimal terrestrial infrastructure, as we still do today. Minimal terrestrial infrastructure, as we’ve just heard, which is heavily under development. And because of that very feature, it could bridge digital divides faster than other connectivity solutions. So this, to my mind, is not a discussion about either or. It’s not about either fiber and mobile infrastructure development. We must continue this, obviously. But we can complement those efforts with broadband from space to make speedy advancements in connecting the unconnected. So I find that there’s the sense of urgency in the discussion about connectivity that sometimes gets lost in this discussion. My second point is about robustness. Leo Satellite internet, broadband from space, can provide communications when traditional local networks are not available. may have gone down, as was just mentioned by Berna, due to conflict, due to natural disasters, due to man-made disasters. And having this type of connectivity from space in place can be like a safety net for critical infrastructures. I wish it was not the attack on the Ukraine that would serve as an example over and over for the criticality of satellite internet for governmental communication in conflict. My third point is about the market, the market for internet connectivity solutions. And that point is very simple. Alternatives for connectivity enlarge the market, and depending on the business models of the providers, which vary, as we have heard, choice may arise for end-users. That again can stimulate competition, and if some other factors about the local connectivity situation and the ecosystem on the ground are given as well, the affordability of internet access can increase, not only for the users of broadband from space. This is a thesis. I encourage us to monitor the pricing level development in regard to this empirically. My fourth point goes more directly to the global dimension of the governance of LEO satellite internet. It has been alluded to in the previous talks. All global citizens can be viewed as stakeholders in broadband from space, because they share the risks that are associated with this technology, like the serious damage that could occur from space debris, the environmental cost of launching rockets and others. And at the same time, there is, and probably will be, only a handful of space-faring nations who host industries that are actually operating, or are at the verge of operating, their own satellite constellations for broadband from space. And what does this mean? It means that for the foreseeable future, the shared fate of most countries will be that they will remain customers. of only a few providers of broadband from space in a very concentrated market. Also due to the limits of natural resources, such as space, such as frequencies, as long as the advancements with the, what Larry Press was talking about, are not reality yet. So these countries may ask themselves if the connectivity that the providers of broadband from space deliver together as well as individually, comes at acceptable conditions for them. Think of the digital policy quality of that type of connectivity. What do I mean by that? For one, every provider can be expected to comply with the rules of their own jurisdiction of origin when it comes to how they treat the traffic, the data that they transmit. Think of varying provisions for data protection, cybersecurity regulation, or frankly surveillance. And then of course, in addition, everything that Berna has just mentioned with regard to the national regulation. But also the jurisdiction of origin matters. And second, how can countries make sure that their connectivity is not terminated involuntarily? For instance, because a provider goes bankrupt as we have seen in that first wave of industry development. Or because of political leanings, as Berna has just pointed out. So I encourage us to think about the qualities of those policy underpinnings for Leo satellite connectivity, and that they matter. Another aspect of this is the ability to switch providers easily, because being dependent on one company or one man puts customers in a difficult position, especially when broadband from space shall safeguard critical infrastructures. That is an issue of global internet governance, because the limited resources in orbital space and frequencies prohibit unlimited growth of this industry. So there’s not better policy qualities by growth. There’s a privileged position of a few. And that may give rise to a different notion of responsibility for these providers as well. So far, all providers offer their own proprietary hardware, as we’ve heard, for base stations and other equipment. So working towards standardization and interoperability of equipment could go a long way towards preventing log-in effects. From what we hear at this moment, the European Union constellation, IOS Square, might be the first one to go into that direction of at least standardizing such hardware. We will see about the degrees of openness. Let me close with a few empirical observations so we don’t only speak on this high level. Because in order for Leo Satellite Internet to operate in a given country, as we’ve just heard, certain regulatory and institutional setup is favorable. However, this can be a major undertaking, specifically as the industry is developing so quickly, to put such a framework in place. And that is why it appears beneficial for non-spacefaring nations to, on the one hand, document and share best practices, in order to, on the second, possibly identify opportunities to align their interests vis-a-vis providers. To get an initial idea of where we are standing, we have looked at emerging policy environments in 10 of the partner countries, initially on the African continent, really just to get a very rough idea. And I don’t have time to go into much detail, so I will keep it very brief. But we found that countries are moving relatively quickly to authorize and license Leo systems. So there is demand. Just to give you some examples, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Rwanda currently all have commercial Leo services deployed in their countries. Tunisia is considering trialing Leo connectivity. And others are actively deciding what path to take, or what regulatory approach towards making requirements for businesses, etc. These countries are Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. One thing that will be important to note is also that we found that all of these countries already participate in international satellite organizations. They are all WTO members. They have experience in negotiating issues at the relevant ITU conferences for world radio communication. And they also have experience from previous satellite developments in introducing other satellite systems into their connectivity ecosystem. And what comes on top of that with regard to the topic of our session about data governance is that they are all members of the African Union, which is actively examining issues related to data localization and cross-border data flows, and just has recently put in a framework that will serve to develop local policies around this. So, these experiences will have provided most regulators and policy makers in those countries with years of experience, with skills to handle broadband from space, and I suggest that we build on this to fast-track participation by others. So, to sum up, if asked why Leo Satellite Internet is important for development, I would answer Leo Satellite Internet broadband from space can contribute quickly to closing the digital divide or divides. It can serve to increase robustness of Internet connectivity. It enlarges the market for Internet provision. It is not going to go away for the foreseeable future. And so, there’s a lot of room for dialogue, for coordination, and for mutual capacity building, particularly, not only, but particularly among non-space-faring nations to shape Satellite Internet to the benefit of all. Thank you.

Kulesza Joanna:
Wonderful. Thank you very much. That is exactly the intervention we were looking for with the targeted approach to developing countries and possibly recommendations to governments who are looking into deploying LeoS into their jurisdictions. I will save follow-up questions for the Q&A, and I’m certain there will be questions from the room. But thank you very much for highlighting that specific aspect of new technologies rapidly developing. And last but not least, please let me turn the floor over to Peter Mietek, who’s the General Counsel and UN Policy Manager within AXIS now, an NGO that needs no introduction. But I am certain that in his intervention, Peter will tell us more why AXIS now might have an interest in data governance through low-Earth-orbit satellites. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. The floor is yours.

Peter Micek:
Well, thank you. And yeah, I thank the other panelists for well-laying out, I think, the facts as they stand now, and then some of the potential and current regulatory risks and opportunities. I will come in with our perspective as a human rights organization. AXIS now always needs an introduction. We’re a global organization that defends and extends the digital rights of people and communities at risk. And our team members in more than 35 countries are encountering the emerging low-Earth-orbit satellite sector in a number of different ways, and that is what I hope to present a bit of. So I suppose I could start with some of the risks that we see as a human rights organization. We are very concerned about the consolidated control over this sector as it stands now. Speakers have mentioned Starlink is the first mover. They have that advantage here, but it is up to the whims of the founder and controller of that firm, which constitutes the industry right now of available retail services. And our partners in Ukraine are very concerned that the entire nation, its military, civilians, and civil society are dependent on this one company and its egotistic owner who seems to want to decide the outcome of the war. And there’s really little that we can do about it. So civil society, again, you know, desperate for connectivity, eager to reach the sustainable development goals and, you know, access and exercise our fundamental rights like freedom of expression. And of course we’ll reach for any opportunities we can. Access Now runs, coordinates the hashtag keep it on coalition against Internet shutdowns. This is a global coalition of more than 300 civil society organizations fighting intentional disruptions of connectivity. And inevitably, especially during longer term shutdowns as we see in Sudan and Kashmir and Myanmar, people look to the skies with hope. With hope that they can find a connection that will let them tell their story to the world, release the evidence that they’ve collected on human rights abuses and atrocities, tell loved ones that they’re still alive or that they need electronic money transfers. All the things that we rely on for connectivity become compounded and pressurized in situations of armed conflict and desperation. And of course people are going to look to satellites. And unfortunately, though, as I said, this leaves us in, you know, the hands of very few, you know, Western companies again. So I think it’s It’s worth noting that, you know, the user terminals themselves do put people at risk. So another risk here is that, you know, this consolidated control creates single points of vulnerability. And I know we don’t want to get too much into cybersecurity, but it was really exciting to see this summer at the DEF CON conference a live competition where teams actually hacked into a satellite, a low earth orbit satellite orbiting the earth in real time. And that was, I believe, the first ever such competition where a satellite was hacked in real time for prizes. It was a Leo satellite launched on June 5th. And if someone could put in the chat, it’s HackASat is the website that they used. I’ll put it there. And, you know, a few things were learned from this competition. I think one was it was really interesting to see the satellite went dark for four hours as it crossed over Antarctica, I think it was. And so the teams didn’t know if their hacks were successful. They had to wait until the satellite came back within reach to both deliver their payloads and extract the data. And the winning team was able to hack into the camera on the satellite, which was about this big, and take pictures of specific points on earth, which was pretty cool to see. But underscores that there is active interest in attacking the cybersecurity of these. And so to the extent that we’re dependent on them, you know, with incredibly sensitive data, if we’re talking about places where people are vulnerable and at risk, which, you know, probably overlaps a bit with those spaces that are currently not covered by terrestrial connectivity, then, you know, that highlights. and exacerbates the risks. Same goes for these humanitarian contexts. Many operators are looking at ways to, operators of aid organizations, providers of humanitarian assistance, are looking to more efficiently deploy after natural disasters or human disasters, and are certainly looking at these solutions. But again, what kind of, are we sending them into a trap, you know, where there’s actually increased vulnerability and dependency on these systems that can be, you know, turned off or, you know, deprecated through commercial phase-outs at a moment’s notice. And, yeah, the last point I kind of want to get at was this pixelated regulatory picture, right? We’ve seen the number of different potential frameworks that apply. I’ve mentioned international humanitarian law. There’s, of course, space law. Out here in the Convention Center Expo, there’s actually a high-altitude platform system, a giant wing that’s being demonstrated this week. That’s not a low-Earth-orbit satellite, but it is meant to fly for six months at a time on solar power at about 62,000 feet. Maybe somebody can do the metric conversion. But it’s really exciting to see, right? People are excited about these. But that, you know, would bring in yet another, you know, I think aviation law would apply there. Telecoms law, you know, I think in various ways, these firms are more akin to, you know, the telecoms that we know. In other ways, they’re more akin to fly-by-night, you know, top-of-the-stack application and session-layer web startups. And it’s interesting to see how, you know, these different analogies and different bodies of law might apply. and regulation might apply or might not be adaptable. But as civil society, again, in this pixelated regulatory picture, we don’t know where to engage. We don’t know how to engage. We don’t have access to the International Telecommunication Union, as many companies and governments do. And we are not adept at a space law forum. I don’t know where the intricacies of space law are open to civil society input. I do want to finish by talking about the data protection and privacy at issue. And the positive is that human rights are universal. So these rights that are interdependent, indivisible, they’ve got laser links between all the human rights already set up. This is a framework that we can depend on and that we should utilize. And it’s no different for the fundamental right of data protection. The fundamental right in here is in the individual where they are, where they reside. And to the extent a processor of this data touches and concerns the EU, then the GDPR will apply to any personal data that’s flowing. And we can assume that it will. And so I think it behooves this sector to put a foot forward and to engage in civil society organizations like Access Now, like EDRI in Europe, but across Africa, where data protection, the Malibu Convention is growing steam. Convention 108 already has a footprint. There is a basis for global protection of our fundamental rights to data protection. There’s a growing system of regulators to enforce and apply that right. And we are going to be looking to do so. One caveat, sorry, I’ll finish on this, is that with respect to your presentation, these companies do not need to comply with these various laws and regulations. They are currently operating in Iran and in many other places where they are not welcome. They are not in compliance, but they are delivering services to people, including people at risk on the ground who need the services. And so I think in that sense, it may be more akin to the top layers of the stack in that they may decide not to establish offices in local countries and submit themselves to various jurisdiction if they find it in the interests of the companies. And I will assert that users at risk in Myanmar are very keen on gaining access to these tools in a way that probably will not ever comply with the local jurisdiction regulations. So I’ll leave it there. Thank you.

Kulesza Joanna:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Peter. There is nothing more comforting to a moderator than speakers who have differing opinions that is a discussion ready-made. But just to keep us on track, and I do note that our panelists likely do have direct feedback to the further interventions. And I would like to turn the floor over to Berna and kindly request her assistance with the Q&A. There might be questions in the room which I’m not able to assess moderating remotely. If there are questions in the chat or from our remote participants, do feel free to raise your virtual hand and you will be granted the floor. Berna, if you could support us here with the Q&A, that would be most appreciated. Thank you. So if any of our guests on the floor, if you have any questions, you may come to the microphone.

Akcali Gur Berna:
At the moment, we do not seem to have any questions. So maybe, Joanna, you can. start off with your question and give time to our guests to think about theirs.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great, thank you. I do note that Dan would like to directly respond. Dan, do feel free to take the

Dan York:
floor. Sure, I know it’s great to hear what Berna said and Uta and Peter. I think, Peter, I’m with you on sort of when I got involved with the Internet Society Projects back at the beginning in late 2021, I sort of naively had this idea because I had no exposure to satellite information. So I had this naive idea that, for instance, in Sudan, you know, we could somehow get a terminal into Sudan somehow and be able to provide it to people so they could be able to have internet access and share information, all this kind of stuff. And my naivete lasted until I got talking to people like Berna and Joanna about ITU and space law and the regulations around that. And you’re absolutely right, Peter’s absolutely right, that there is no technical reason why this cannot happen. You know, Starlink can be turned on for every country in the world at some point. And on a technical level, that can go on. And it’s what we see happening in Iran. The challenge, of course, is the legal side and the reality that it is bounded on the borders based on this fact that, as Berna talked about, you know, they have to go into each and every country and get approval for the landing rights, for the spectrum to be able to go for down and up. They have to get a consumer approval. They have to go and do all of that for each and every country. And so it is a case where, and if they, you know, I think you can get away with it and doing it in Iran, because quite honestly, the rest of the international world is not really going to be too concerned. And in fact, they would probably prefer it to be turned on there. However, you turn it on for other countries and other spaces, you start to get into, you know, very lots of international pressure, attention, things like that. It’s just, it’s not something you can go and do. You have some countries such as China that have been very clear that if it gets turned on in China, they might take actual activity. they’ve done war gaming scenarios around what it would take to go and shoot down satellites. I mean, there’s lots of different pieces that sort of keep that in check at the moment, which to be honest, I was disappointed about because I was hoping it could be that, you know, get that freedom, get it out there and everywhere. You also raised the other good point, which is that unlike a passive, like a geostationary dish for broadcast TV that’s pointed up at a geostationary satellite, it’s a one-way downlink. It’s just receiving the signals. It’s just passively getting that. But once you do this for internet access, you’re doing two-way communication and you do, to Peter’s point, you can expose, you’re exposing that transmitter. You know, in the Ukraine, I know that there’ve been some of the groups that are there that are making sure that they only turn the transmitters on at certain times, that they put them away. You see pictures of groups of people putting them at a distance away from where the people are in case the signal intelligence hones in on where it is and targets it with a weapon or something. So you are exposing yourself because it is two-way communication. And that is a critical difference in what we’re talking about here. And I also join you, Peter, and others in that concern about, you know, the control of billionaires. It is right now, it’s primarily, you are seeing, you know, SpaceX with Elon Musk. You see Project Kuiper, which ultimately is Jeff Bezos. You know, you see those kinds of solutions up there. OneWeb has now been purchased by Eutelsat. So it’s now a corporate entity under, and Eutelsat is a French corporate, you know, different things around that. But it’s all these bigger players. We don’t have what we had in the early days of the internet, for instance, in the terrestrial-based, where you had university networks, hobbyist networks. A large challenge is just the sheer cost of launching all of this in some certain way. But lots to be, lots to be going on in there. I’ll defer to others.

Akcali Gur Berna:
I would also like to make a short note. So as lawyers, we tend to to explain what the law is, how the regulations apply. And so that doesn’t always represent how we personally think about the matter, yes. So if you ask me a question about the human rights law approach, then my answer would have had a different perspective on the matters that we have just discussed. So I think, as always, we tend to believe that rule of law is important, and that if you are going to breach the rules, then you are damaging the system as a whole. So taking these into consideration, my talk was more about explaining how the rules and regulations apply to the satellite broadband technology as it is. So of course, the civil society approach would be different, the human rights law approach would be different, but that wasn’t my, I didn’t include that in my speech. So I just wanted to make a little note of that, yeah.

Kulesza Joanna:
Thank you very much, Berna. I have a sense that our other panelists might also have something they would like to add. So I’m going to check first if Peter, Uta, or Larry have anything to immediately respond, for example, to Dan’s comments.

Larry Press:
Now, all kinds of stuff has been kind of thought-provoking. I guess I am really, I’ll be upfront. I am disappointed and kind of frightened by Elon Musk. He did amazing things, but he’s getting, if you follow him on Twitter and stuff that he’s starting to post now, it’s very political, and it’s political in a way that I don’t like. So I guess maybe that’s, do the rest of you guys have concern about that guy?

Kulesza Joanna:
Now I can see our other speakers, Peter, Uta, please do feel free to take the floor.

Dan York:
Yes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you know, let’s get to a place where there is, you know, meaningful competition, but within a regulatory framework. I mean, you know, we appreciate innovation. And Larry, I was thinking of your presentation, because you didn’t talk about the 90s, right? Which my understanding is when there was a ton of interest in the Low Earth Orbit sector and a lot of failures. And so I was, you know, wondering, yeah, if you could…

Larry Press:
There was the one you’re probably thinking of is Telesat. And Telesat. Not Telesat. Tell us. What was it called? It was, well, I mean, Iridium GlobalSat, Global… No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Before that. Tell us. Teladesic. Teladesic. Teladesic. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But they… It was Bill Gates and a Saudi prince and a guy who had, at the time, recently sold a mobile company. They did a… They attempted to do this in the 90s, but the technology just wasn’t there. I think it’s the main reason it failed.

Dan York:
And the other point is it was focused on telecom. It was not necessarily fully focused on providing internet access at the kind of scale. And it was really… Which is what… I mean, Iridium is still up there. And actually, they’re looking at launching a new range of satellites to provide data services and pieces like that. But it was a… But, you know, and we don’t know. A lot of the systems that are being proposed right now may fail in a similar way. You have to figure out, do you have the business product that’s there? And the other part is now, 20 years later… almost, you know, 30 years later, I guess, in some ways, in some of that you have this enormous change in the capacity of launch systems and mass production of satellites. That’s a lot of what’s

Larry Press:
changed today. I think Teledesic was, they weren’t going, they were in fact going for, you know, internet connectivity. Internet was different in those days. It was mostly text, for me it was text-oriented, only uppercase because I had a teletype at home. But they, there were, the technology was not up for it and it just wasn’t economically viable. The satellite technology, the launch technology, it just, it couldn’t have been at the time. It was, yeah.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great. Thank you so much. We do have a question from Mike before I hand the floor over to Uta. Please just let me read out the question. It just might be that you would like to reference that question as well. The question from Mike reads, radio spectrum access is regulated to prevent interference and allow coordinated usage. However, in the optical domain, there is effectively no interference that would warrant regulation. What tensions could we see from governments trying to extract fees from the optical spectrum? If you wish to address that question directly, Uta, do feel free to do so. Do take the floor and then I will ask our other panelists if they wish to address Mike’s question directly. Uta, please, the floor is yours.

Uta Meier-Hahn:
Thank you. I very much appreciate the question. And at the same time, I find it very far reaching and at this moment, a little bit beyond the level of discussion at the moment of, at this stage of development, but also it’s something that I would want to think about, frankly. But I have also been asked, so what are possible avenues if we acknowledge, or if we all establish together that there is an importance of some kind of multi-stakeholder input into the development, the further development of this industry, and possibly policy options? And what could be things that we could be doing? And I just wanted to throw a couple of things in the room, so maybe those can be picked up by people who listen here. So for one, of course, there’s an option to hold listening sessions by all the providers and future providers of these systems. This, of course, includes the EU, but maybe also the other providers could be interested. It would certainly go a long way towards providing some transparency into their system, which, as this session exemplifies, could be demanded. And it would give the public an opportunity to have their views heard. Another important thing could be to also talk to financing and investment opportunities and see what the ways of support, having, for instance, blended finance impact investors come in to support satellite internet from space in the countries that currently cannot or have not afforded it so far. We should and could document the best practices in terms of regulatory approaches, also with regard to how do these companies that do exist and the countries that do want to be customers, how can they do a quick onboarding and how can they activate the services quickly? There’s another aspect of really doing research, financing research about this, because as we’ve probably all seen in our preparation for the session, there is not so much empirical evidence with regard to many of the important questions of this topic. There may be an opportunity for some countries to think about it. about twinning programs to sort of move together forward on this topic, and specifically with regard to Iris Square, I feel like it’s worth throwing in the room that, depending on the views that are being held from the finances of this constellation and the populations that stand behind them, there may be an opportunity to also think about connectivity from space as an in-kind sort of development service, if you will. So not only providing countries with the capacity building they need to set up their institutions, etc., but also to really directly just provide that connectivity. I’m not sure if that’s being done much before, but it could certainly be an avenue. And then certainly there’s coalition building in general, just to foster the interest of this very large common consumer group. Thank you.

Kulesza Joanna:
Wonderful, thank you very much. I’m curious if any of our speakers might have an answer for Mike as well. That seems a really interesting question. I do agree it is an early stage of development for the optical spectrum infrastructure to governmental. Yes, Dan, please go ahead.

Dan York:
I think it’s a good question. I mean, the basic point is that if you’re doing optical connectivity, it’s a direct connection, you’re not in the, yeah, it’s not shared as Mike said. I think it’s really early. I think we have to see where these things get proved out. Larry provided a great overview of a lot of the different work that’s happening in this space to ground connectivity and what’s going on in that. But I think we’ve still got a bit to go. To Mike’s point, it’s probably good to be thinking about that in advance so that these things don’t get trapped into regulatory capture or wind up with great impediments to doing that. But I think we’re still early.

Kulesza Joanna:
Mike, turn it up a bit. You know, just make sure

Larry Press:
Yeah, I just, I feel like if we just have a kind of a bull session here, actually, I should turn on my. There you go. You know, with respect to kind of having how to subsidize it and whatnot, to some extent, I think that takes care of itself. If the people in an area, people in a nation, can’t afford connectivity to say SpaceX or to one of these little things, to the extent that that will mean they have excess capacity over that nation. And to some extent, I remember when Elon Musk first did, he came out and said, hey, we’re going to charge the same price everywhere. And that was crazy, because it makes no sense. You want to charge a price that’ll kind of keep your up to ease up your entire available capacity. So to some extent, just the economics of it take care of kind of different income levels of different countries in different regions. Make sense? I mean, it’s coming to pass, he definitely charges different rates in different countries.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great. Thank you very much, Larry. I’m just going to quickly check if any of our panelists would like to add anything to the session we are about to wrap up. And before I do so, just going to check if anyone would like to add anything we might have missed, or if there’s any direct feedback from the room. Berna, please go ahead.

Akcali Gur Berna:
Just to add to Uta’s points, well, we overlap. But, you know, what would we advise to the developing countries? So I want to refer back to our policy paper and quickly list what we had recommended them to effectively use this technology. So we recommended them to re-evaluate and update the domestic regulations related to licensing and and authorizing satellite broadband services to consider the different business models and the impact on their autonomy when deciding on gateways, for example. And we recommended forming regional alliances to enhance achievement of their local policy goals. And we also recommended them to participate actively in the ITU consultations, especially in the ITUR, which manages frequency spectrum and orbital resources. And again, if this is done through regional alliances as they are doing now, it will enhance their chances of achieving their desired outcomes. And also they should reassess their commitments under trade treaties. They are not set in stone. They could be renegotiated and these should be considered with their renewed interests and priorities associated with this technology. And also familiarize themselves with space law, which hasn’t been of interest to many non-space-faring nations. I think awareness of rules is essential to make informed decisions. And holistic concentrations of these actions, I think is necessary to ensure that their initiatives align with their sustainable development goals.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great, thank you very much. And Dan, please go ahead.

Dan York:
Sure, I would just, one thing I wanna say about the panel was I just wanna say to Uta that I loved her points that she had because I think you very succinctly summarized really some of the key issues and points around here. I would add a point, the robustness, the resiliency is something that we’ve seen as a critical part. I’m a volunteer here in the United States for an organization called the ITDRC, which is the IT Disaster Resources. And they have been deploying into places like Florida when there was Hurricane Ian, and also into the wildfires that are going on out in the Western part of the United States. And they can take a satellite dish on a pickup truck, for instance, and be able to bring it in and provide wifi connectivity for the first responders and the other people who are in the incident command area. It’s a kind of ubiquitous connectivity that we have never had access to before. It’s just mind blowing and what it can do and the kind of spaces around that. So I think it’s important to, for all the challenges, there’s an amazing amount that it can do in the right ways. And I think we need to figure out how to get it right. I think it really is. I would also point what Bernard just mentioned. A lot of us in the internet space, if we interact with the ITU, we primarily interact with the ITU-T, the telecommunication sector, or the ITU-D around development. We don’t do as much historically with the ITU-R, the radio telecommunication side. But that’s where all of this happens in satellites because of the spectrum. And people should pay attention to the World Radio Congress coming up later this, in the next November here, so November, December, because that will be the, every four years, the gathering of people to talk about this. And while LEOs aren’t directly on the agenda, there’s side conversations, there’s other places, there’s things that will be paying. So I would encourage people to pay attention to that. And my final point would just be, we need to have more of these conversations because this is this new emerging field. There’s a lot of satellites gonna be launched over the next while that’s happening. And we need to collectively make sure that we can get it right to the degree that we can from a societal point of view. So I encourage everybody to read Berna’s document that was in there, read our LEOs document, read other documents and share this, get people talking about it because we have to be talking about these questions.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great, thank you. Peter, do go ahead.

Peter Micek:
Quickly, thanks. Yeah, to sort of piggyback and reinforce Dan’s comments, we need to have more conversations, but as civil society, we are heavily dependent on governments in this space. Governments are… I think putting forward a lot of the funding necessary, they’re going to be doing a lot of the procurement, including through their defense industries and defense spending. And presumably, they’re the ones talking to these companies. I’m a very privileged person, white male in the US. I know the public policy director for SpaceX, and I can’t get any of my calls returned. And so I think just to underscore what an asymmetrical disadvantage we’re at when we’re trying to influence public policy in this space, that we are heavily dependent. And governments, it seemed to be a lot of competition over this sector. But I’m buoyed by things like yesterday, the Freedom Online Coalition launched these so-called donor principles on human rights in the digital age. And I think those are getting at ways to harmonize and raise standards around government procurement and support for new and emerging technologies and should urgently be applied to this space. Thanks.

Kulesza Joanna:
Great. Thank you very much, Peter. I could do nothing more but to strongly support all the points that have just been made. We do need to have more of these conversations. And I do welcome a relatively significant presence of Leo’s on the agenda of the IGF. It is a theme that the multi-stakeholder community should pay attention to before it’s too late, as our speakers have emphasized during this panel. We are out of time, so I will refrain from summarizing the panel more thoroughly. Thank you very much for joining us. Sincere thanks to our speakers. Thank you for all the points that you guys have made. Thank you for being here, both virtually and in person. And to those of you who are in the room or online joining us, do feel free to reach out to the speakers directly and share your feedback because this is the time to do Leo’s policy that serves the broader internet community. Thank you, everyone. With this, the session is adjourned. more. Thank you, Joanna. Yeah, I wish we could keep the bull session going. Thank you, Joanna, for leading us. Thanks a lot. Thank you. It’s always a pleasure. Thank you, gentlemen. Have a good afternoon. Thank you. Bye. Bye, everyone.