Press "Enter" to skip to content

Connecting the other half of the world. | Mark LaPenna | TEDxNaperville


tonight I’d like to dedicate this talk
to my son Austin he’s here in the
audience tonight he has taught me that
passion is great but it’s nothing
without perseverance so Thank You Austin
I saw a funny meme on Facebook a while
back and and it’s kind of funny but it’s
true and it says if you really want to
get to know somebody put them in a room
with no internet and and it’s in its and
it’s funny because you know when you
really think about that there’s about
three and a half billion people in the
world that don’t have internet and so
what I’d like to do tonight is taken a
journey on what it’s gonna take to
connect those people and what we’re
doing currently to try to affect that
currently more than actually half of
humanity are unconnected and it’s about
three-quarters of the continent of
Africa Stanford University professor in
communications Jeff Hancock actually
started off doing a study back in 2000
and he did it until about 2008 and what
he did was he actually had his students
go for two days with no internet now you
know in 2000 maybe even up to 2005-2006
not that big a deal you know probably
actually pretty easy but in 2008-2009
his students vehemently protested it to
the extent where they actually went to
the president of the University and now
you know you can have this is 2008 right
so in you know the professor the
university actually called dr. Hancock
and said what are you doing actually I’m
getting calls from parents you know
students who are complaining that they
won’t be able to contact their friends
for social events more importantly they
won’t be able to hand in homework I
think we obviously clearly they use the
internet a lot their Pew Research did a
Pew Research Center did a study and one
fifth of all humans and not just
Americans actually all humans today that
are in that are connected to the
internet that have connectivity
use the Internet almost a hundred
percent of their time during not just
their employment burnt during the course
of their daily life so you know from a
standpoint of being connected it’s not
just a tool that we use to search and do
research it’s a lifestyle now and what
we hope to do is bring that lifestyle to
the rest of humanity because you know
human beings were wired to be connected
from birth we look for that connection
and as technology has caught up with our
innate desire to be connected we’ve
invented new ways to be connected
I remember MySpace myspace was like I’m
and I was awesome you could have a music
on you got a music on there you could
have a picture on there you could tell
people what you’re all about and you
know they’re really it’s serve no
purpose other than to talk about
yourself and to again connect with other
people and now when you look at Facebook
and you look at Twitter and you look at
all of the social media apps that are
out there you know people are I mean
there’s probably 15 people right now I
can actually see you looking at your
phones right now you can’t get away from
it but you know it’s interesting Pew
Research also did another study and this
is actually just last year and the study
was focused around connecting people
that had never had access to Internet
and so they hooked him up god bless you
and during that you’re even being hooked
up to the Internet the first thing these
people did was contacted a loved one and
the second thing they did was they
shopped but the third thing they did
because we do have some redeeming
qualities as a species as they started
doing research and I started educating
themselves but the desire at the edge
you know where Internet connectivity
ends and a non connected Society exists
the desire exists to be connected there
are towns and cities in sub-saharan
Africa that once they find connectivity
this city starts to grow now what does
that mean how does it grow well it grows
first from an educational perspective
suddenly there’s a huge influx of
information that they’ve never had
access to now I imagine there’s probably
some less than savory searches that are
done as well but for the most part
the human desire to connect is is fed
and so they start to grow and they start
to increase their at their education so
that connectivity is a great asset to
bring to those people the 3/4 of the
content of Africa once again is not
connected but imagine if we could
connect the other half of humanity I
mean what does that mean and I can
imagine some pretty amazing things and I
can also imagine some pretty scary
things you know I look in society
nowadays and I’m a 45 year old man and
who’s running a company and raising you
know raising a son he’s 21 thank God he
doesn’t need me anymore but that being
said I look at other parents and I look
at other grandparents and I look at
children and I wonder what’s missing and
I think what’s missing is the fact that
half of humanity has been making the
choices for the whole of humanity for
just far too long and I think it’s time
that we’ve tried to find a solution to
that now it’s great to talk about the
altruistic side of it let’s get into the
numbers today the average human being
consumes about 500 megabytes of data now
it doesn’t sound like a lot but forbes
has told us that within the next five to
seven years that that number will double
to a gigabyte now again not a lot of
data you know from a personal
consumption standpoint but this is on a
daily basis now imagine three and a half
billion people consuming a gigabyte of
data every day now imagine what would
happen if we connected the other half
it’s about seven to seven and a half
exabytes of data now to put that in
perspective that’s all the data humanity
has ever created up until 2011 pictures
research photographs from space
photographs from the space station maybe
the Space Shuttle is dr. Pettit was
talking about but it’s interesting we’re
creating data today at a far greater
rate and so it’s great to talk about
connectivity but it’s interesting
because the plans that were
making today are based upon current
consumption numbers so I’ve spent some
time and some events talking about 5g
I’m talking about wireless connectivity
and bringing the connectivity to the
edge and it’s interesting because right
now the data supply is far below the
data demand already and that’s again
with just the people that are currently
connected when 5g is finally connected
by 2018 2021 in that timeframe we will
have spent 200 billion dollars a year to
connect a system that no longer can
serve the demand of humanity so what’s
the point network infrastructure is
getting over burden and we have to come
up with a solution so what do we do well
I think that space is not the final
frontier we think it’s the great
equalizer and we think it’s the great
equalizer because it’s not as risky as
it used to be it’s not as costly as it
used to be 15 years ago to launch a
satellite you had to have a checkbook
that could clear 150 million dollars now
I know companies that I work with like
I’m launched a satellite for 15 million
so the access to space has gotten
significantly less expensive but
interestingly enough people still want
to talk about fiber fiber connectivity
there’s nothing wrong with fiber
networks or radio frequency there are
great technologies that have gotten us
to this point but we’ve reached an
inflection point and the high cost of
fiber connectivity and data intrusion
possibilities and even terrorism there
was an interesting article that I posted
on LinkedIn about a month ago they
talked about terrorism in the form of
state-sponsored
acts and there was actually a picture of
a Russian trawler that actually was
shown to have the proper equipment on
board to cut undersea fiber cables now
to give you put it in perspective an
undersea fiber cable you probably can’t
see this carpet I’m standing on but it’s
pretty wide and those undersea fiber
cables are about that
why so this wine from coast to coast
undersea and all it takes is one
arbitrary cut and now an entire
continent has lost data connectivity
between another continent or maybe just
a company because some companies own
them but the point is is the technology
now exists that we can terrestrially
bypass connectivity and go from Earth to
space to space back to earth but you
know I’ve studied this for quite some
time and there’s still some barriers to
entry currently there’s 1,800 satellites
orbiting around the earth
and it’s funny I was sitting backstage
and Sony was talking about space junk I
think it was and and there’s a lot of
junk up there there is there’s a lot of
junk that works and it’s still junk but
at the end of the day 1,800 satellites
is really not that much now in the next
seven years that number is expected to
go to 20,000 satellites by 2023 now if
you put that in perspective that’s a an
order of magnitude increase and and the
types of equipment that are flying
around the space and to have a truly
globally connected Society satellites
are pretty much the final answer the
bottom line also which you have to take
into account is money’s not going to
solve this problem money doesn’t change
physics we are getting to the point
where the bottleneck is getting so big
that current satellite companies that I
work with are provisioning their time on
the satellite what that basically means
is you’re prioritized based upon the
priority of your need to connect so some
satellites have to sit and hold their
data before they can get it down to down
to the ground and some companies have to
wait to send their data to off-peak
times so what do we do well we have
decided that we’re gonna pursue optical
communications now what does that mean
well this is what it means this is our
prototype for a space-based 10 gigabit
per second
tickle transceiver that’s able to move
data wirelessly between two points up to
6400 kilometers and the vacuum of space
to the vacuum of space or from the
ground to space to space back to the
it works based upon sending light
between two points but the best part
about it is it’s low-cost it was
invented by Jet Propulsion lab and NASA
not by us we license to sell it and it’s
been proven at altitude up to about
25,000 feet so what we plan on doing is
it attaching it to the ISS in late 2019
early 20 2020 and performing what’s
called an on-orbit demonstration to
prove that it works and we believe that
it works because the guys at NASA Jet
Propulsion lab told us it works
hopefully they’re right they tend to be
some of the smartest guys in the room so
we’re confidence is pretty high but you
know let’s talk about this scalability
of it because we’re pretty sure it’s
going to work so from a technology
standpoint the way we deliver this
system is we deliver it in small batches
first in first adopters and what we’ve
been able to do with this technology is
find several first adopters to the tune
where we’ve actually sold pre-sold a
little over 25 million dollars in
hardware pre-sales and our joint venture
partners have actually gotten to the
point where they’ve got almost 300
million dollars in services pre-sales so
we found that the market likes the idea
they’re willing to take a risk on the
technology and they’re willing to put
their checkbooks with their mouths where
their mouth is so now what we need to do
is we need to scale that system the best
part about optical as opposed to
radiofrequency radiofrequency
I don’t know I’m gonna I should probably
show my age here a little bit but I
remember as a child driving in car with
my dad and all we had was an AM radio
and the way an AM radio works in case
for some of you that don’t know how it
works there’s a dial on both sides and
one’s a volume and one’s the frequency
dial and it only goes so far down and it
only goes so far up and it’s a great
explanation to tell you how current
radio frequency systems work they’re
limited
by the amount of bandwidth they can send
and that they can participate in what we
do is we use optical we use light which
is not limited by those physical
limitations so we step outside of the
current norm and we deliver a system
that uses light that is bountiful low
cost reproducible and scalable so what
we’re able to do is take a technology
that works 10 times faster cost five
times as less and take the money in the
profit that we make from selling the
first units warchest it and scale our
network much more quickly than fiber
optic has ever been able to scale and
much more quickly than radio frequency
will ever be able to scale the way the
system works and to be able to deliver
true terrestrial bypass you have to
obviously be able to move tremendous
amounts of data vacuum environments are
the best way to do that vacuum and bar
environments contained no atmospheric
interference they contain no human
interference no terrorism and the best
part about lasers based on physics
they’re completely unhackable now that’s
a pretty bold statement so she had a TED
talk that people say don’t say that but
it’s based on physics and it’s a hundred
percent accurate you can’t hack a laser
beam as soon as you interfere with the
beam it collapses and the data is lost
and any optical scientist will tell you
that so what does it really mean well we
take the data from one point on the
earth we sent it up to a satellite and
we shoot it over to another satellite
and we drop it down in another area in
less than 150 milliseconds and that’s
about as fast as a Google search and
we’re data agnostic we really don’t care
what your data looks like how big it is
we change the complete pricing model to
we now only charge you for what you use
no more monthly fees no more contracts
now I’m not speaking to the cellular
carriers out there but
hopefully one day trickle-down economics
might help you on that but really what
it does it do it levels the playing
field suddenly it helps us give the
other side of the world of voice and
what if businesses could have access to
3.5 billion new users we’ve asked that
if companies like Microsoft and Google
and Apple they don’t even know how to
answer the question it’s such a big
number amazing isn’t it
connecting the world with the purpose is
OK and it will give us profit imagine
companies like Apple becoming 2 trillion
dollar companies but more importantly
than that
imagine companies that don’t exist
imagine the next round of Google’s the
next round of Amazon’s
the next round of Microsoft the
companies that haven’t been invented yet
what about them imagine if we took the
rest of the world and put it in a room
and gave it Internet thank you [Applause]
Please follow and like us: