Elon Musk's SpaceX, just out of the world's most powerful rocket launch, has today won a contract from the leading US regulatory agency to build a broadband network that uses satellites.
Ajit Pai, President of the Federal Communications Commission, proposed the approval of an application by SpaceX to provide broadband services using satellites in the United States and around the world.
"Satellite technology can help reach Americans who live in rural or hard-to-serve places where fiber-optic cables and cell towers are not present," Pai said in a statement.
SpaceX told the FCC, in a letter from the 1 February, that it plans to launch a pair of experimental satellites on one of its Falcon 9 rockets. The launch, already approved by the FCC, is set for next Saturday in California.
The rocket will transport the PAZ satellite to Hisdesat in Madrid, Spain, and various smaller secondary payloads.
On February 6, the company launched the world's most powerful rocket, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, from Florida. The 23 tall jumbo rocket carried a Tesla Inc Roadster from the assembly line of Musk's electric car company.
Pai said he was urging the approval of the project in favor of SpaceX: "it would be the first approval given to a company based in the United States to provide broadband services using a new generation of satellite technologies with low Earth orbit".
FCC Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the satellite service required will be a project of great promise.
"Multiplying the number of satellites in the skies will create extraordinary new opportunities. The FCC should move quickly to facilitate these new services, emphasizing our commitment to space security, "he said.
Musk said in a speech from the 2015 in Seattle that SpaceX had plans to launch a satellite internet business that would help fund a future city on Mars. He said that the company wanted to create a "global communication system" that confronted "the reconstruction of the internet in space". It would be faster than traditional Internet connections.
Over the past year, the FCC has approved requests from OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat to access the US market to provide broadband services using satellite technology, which, the FCC said, "promises to expand Internet access in areas remote and rural from all over the world.
The approvals are the first of their kind, the FCC said, for "a new generation of large non-geostationary satellite orbits, fixed satellite services systems".
In January, Telesat launched a satellite managed by the Indian Space Research Organization to provide "high performance broadband, similar to fiber anywhere in the world" and will conduct trials this year.
The initial deployment will consist of about 120 satellites within the 2021, according to Telesat, a privately owned company operating in the public sector.
The US government, therefore, is working to try to bring high-speed Internet access to rural areas with no services. About 14 millions of Americans in rural areas and 1,2 millions of Americans in tribal territories do not have mobile broadband even at relatively low speeds.