Secretive Startup Promises Satellite Internet for the Masses

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- For years, parades of companies have been trying to create an all-encompassing global wireless network that would have the power to connect every imaginable object to the internet, reaching places impervious to cell towers and fiber-optic cables. Silicon Valley startup Skylo Technologies Inc. says it’s come the closest so far.

The San Mateo company’s small but powerful antenna, which it unveiled on Jan. 21 after three years of development in secrecy, can connect to pricey satellite-based internet services and relay their bandwidth to hundreds of other devices. Similar technology is already on the market, but Skylo’s founders say theirs does the job way better for way less. “If this type of connection was available for a few dollars per month, it would open up entirely new markets for people who are completely unconnected and underserved,” says Chief Executive Officer Parthsarathi Trivedi.

Satellite services have long served people living on islands, vacationing on cruise ships, or hiking in the mountains. Typically, the equipment to run these systems costs thousands of dollars and requires bulky antennas that must be manually angled in certain directions. The Skylo antenna, essentially a flat circuit board about the size of a dinner plate, uses software to lock onto satellites so it can transmit data to nearby devices via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Customers will need to buy the antenna, which costs less than $100, then pay for Skylo’s service, which starts at $1 for a limited amount of data. The antenna is meant to be easy enough for customers to install themselves by, say, bolting it onto the roof of a boat or truck.

This is a logistics play, not the kind of effort to get everyone using Facebook that’s become so fraught over the past few years. Skylo says it’s not trying to deliver high-speed internet to homes or buildings. It’s more interested in allowing boats at sea or truckers on rural routes to send and receive short bursts of data for cheap. (No Netflix in the Sahara, unfortunately.) Its investors, including Innovation Endeavors, SoftBank, and Boeing’s venture capital arm, HorizonX, have bet $116 million so far that Skylo’s technology will be cheap enough to attract millions of customers who have sparse wireless access otherwise and little in the way of disposable income.

The company has spent months conducting tests of its hardware and service in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. In India, trucking companies are using hubs to track their fleets and make pickup routes more efficient. And fishermen have used it to receive weather updates and help with auctions for their catch. “There are 300,000 motorized fishing boats, and they are away for at least seven days at a time,” says Mahantesh Patil, Skylo’s vice president of sales in South Asia. “They want to know which fish are in demand at the markets and where to move if a typhoon is coming.” Other customers might include small farmers, who could coordinate tractor rentals during busy harvest seasons and even track the temperatures of animal vaccines or bull semen in transit to confirm that the precious cargo stays within the range needed to keep it viable.

Rajesh Agrawal, a board member of Indian Railways, has overseen the testing of Skylo on passenger cars and says freight cars are soon to follow. “India is a vast country with dead zones all over where we might lose connections for up to an hour,” he says. Skylo has enabled passenger cars to steadily report their speed, direction, and any maintenance concerns like, say, a slipping wheel. Agrawal says the plan is to order thousands of hubs in the coming years.

Skylo will have to contend with plenty of competition. The companies promising to deliver their own low-cost data networks this year include a host of satellite startups that won’t have to worry about the obstacles faced by middlemen. CEO Trivedi contends that Skylo, which will be more widely available this summer, will remain cheaper by using existing satellites rather than building out infrastructure and that its rivals can’t match his antenna technology. “Our prices,” he says, “will be low and consistent around the world.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeff Muskus at jmuskus@bloomberg.net

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