Six weeks ago, however, his circumstances changed, thanks to Starlink. Woodward became a beta user of SpaceX’s internet service, which uses a growing fleet of 1,600 satellites orbiting Earth to deliver internet access to people on the surface. As of the end of July, the company was reporting close to 90,000 users. “Within the first few weeks, I became a real fanboy of Starlink,” says Woodward.
“For anybody that’s been living out of the sticks like me, Starlink will come as something of a revelation,” he adds.
But Starlink wasn’t designed just to hook up remote cybersecurity professors: SpaceX has made bigger claims than that. It hopes to bring high-speed satellite internet to many of the 3.7 billion people on this planet who currently have no internet connection at all. Many simply make do with mobile-phone connections—an expensive workaround in its own right. (One gigabit of data in sub-Saharan Africacosts 40% of the average monthly wage.)
And that’s not even considering people who have internet access but lack a broadband connection. Almost the entirety of the US has access to the internet, but 157 million Americans, most of whom live in rural communities,don’t use it at broadband speeds. Black communities aredisproportionately more likely to lack access to broadband internet, even when they are in close proximity to whiter (and wealthier) communities. After living through covid and a time when most people relied on the internet as a lifeline, it’s difficult to think that high-speed internet is still an unattainable luxury for some.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear whether Starlink can actually solve this larger problem. “It’s really meant for sparsely populated regions,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at a conference in June. “In high-density areas, we will be able to serve a limited number of customers.” And many rural citizens of the world will be locked out because they won’t be able to afford it.
Starlink must get costs down fast in order to expand its customer base, but it must also make enough money to continue launching hundreds or even thousands of satellites every year. It’s a delicate needle that might be impossible to thread.
Price points
Typical satellite internet services place just a few satellites in very high orbits, called geostationary orbits. From up there, individual satellites can provide wider areas of coverage, but the latency (or lag time) is greater. Woodward has used such services before but has always found them to be “useless.”
Starlink and its competitors, like OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper, instead deploy tens of thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO). Their closer proximity to Earth means latency is significantly reduced. And while each one covers a smaller area, the sheer numbers mean they should theoretically blanket the planet in coverage and prevent any loss of connection.
Starlink began beta testing last year and is now available in 14 countries. Last December, the US Federal Communications Commission awarded SpaceX $886 million as part of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which subsidizes US telecom companies that are building out infrastructure to help get broadband access to rural places.
But it’s not totally clear whether rural America is a viable customer base for Starlink. The biggest issue is cost. A Starlink subscription is $99. Speeds can vary greatly, but the average user should expect 50 to 150 megabits per second. You’d have to pay traditional satellite internet companies like Viasat (which operates geostationary satellites) double that amount to get the same speeds. Not bad.
It’s the upfront expense that will hit you hardest with Starlink, however. Costs for things like the satellite dish and router come out to a whopping $499—and that equipment is sold to customers at a loss. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has previously said he hopes these costs can come down closer to $250, but it’s unclear when or if that might happen. For much of the rural world, in America and elsewhere, the price is simply too high.
So who will the first Starlink users be? The physical and financial demands of building satellites and launching them into orbit (though cheaper than ever, still a very expensive enterprise) mean Starlink will be operating at a loss for some time, says Derek Turner, a tech policy analyst at Free Press, a nonprofit that advocates for open communication. And getting costs down will mean looking at customers beyond just unconnected individuals in the countryside.
Instead, the early customers are more likely to include the US military, which when operating in remote areas often relies on geostationary satellites plagued by congested service and high latency. Both the Air Force and the Armyare interested in testing Starlink. Some intelligence experts have pointed to the troubled pullout from Afghanistan as an example of where the service could have helped.
Airlines that want to offer passengers faster and more stable in-flight Wi-Fi are also looking into Starlink. Other commercial businesses in rural areas might also find value in it. And of course, there are techies and curious customers in the suburbs and cities with the money to try it out.
In Turner’s view, adding those customers could help bring prices down for everyone, but it also means less bandwidth to go around. Starlink can offset this problem by launching more satellites—which it eventually plans to do, but that’s assuming it has enough subscribers.
Musk has said it will take tens of billions of dollars in capital before Starlink has enough capacity to generate a positive cash flow. It’s launched 1,600 satellites so far with no problem, but the eventual goal of 42,000 is an entirely different matter. “It doesn’t scale as favorably as wired broadband does,” Turner says. It’s not at all clear yet how many satellites Starlink will need in order to deliver reliable high-speed internet to hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscribers logging on at the same time.
And for many customers, especially commercial businesses, there are cheaper alternatives to Starlink that can still fulfill their needs. A farmer who’s using smart sensors to track things like local weather and soil conditions doesn’t need broadband internet to connect these devices. That’s where smaller companies like the US-based Swarm come in: it uses a fleet of over 120 small satellites to help connect IoT devices for such use cases. Swarm (recently acquired by SpaceX) offers a data plan starting at just $5 a month. And of course, if you’re in a well-populated area, spending $99 a month with another ISP will likely get you speeds closer to 1,000 mbps.
Backtracking
On the surface, the FCC’s RDOF award to Starlink would suggest that rural America is an essential part of how Starlink will grow. But Turner says this is a misconception, and that SpaceX should not have been allowed to put down RDOF bids in the first place, because it will be building out the Starlink network anyway. “I think the FCC would have been better to direct its resources toward bringing future-proof broadband to areas where it doesn’t make sense economically to deploy,” he says.
Acting FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel spearheaded a review late last year of how RDOF subsidies were awarded under her predecessor, Ajit Pai, and found that billions were doled out to companies to have them bring broadband internet to places where it was unnecessary or inappropriate, like “parking lots and well-served urban areas.” A report by Free Press estimated that about $111 million of SpaceX’s own award would be going to urban areas or places with no real infrastructure or need for internet connections, like highway medians. The FCC is asking those companies, including Starlink, to essentially give back some of the money. (SpaceX did not respond to questions or requests for comment.)
Turner acknowledges that LEO satellites are “going to be a very important innovation in the telecommunication space.” But he still thinks services like Starlink will be a niche product in the US, even in the long term—and sees the general trend continuing toward fiber. Even an emerging technology like 5G relies on very dense networks of antennas that can connect back to fibers as quickly as possible. Cable broadband has improved consistently over time because companies are pushing fiber networks deeper and closer to customers.
Underdeveloped parts of the world might find Starlink to be a boon, since many of these places do not have physical networks like the cable system that the US laid out in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. But beta testing so far is exclusive to the US, Canada, parts of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Chile. It’s too early to tell what kind of impact it could have in the developing world, especially if subscription and equipment costs stay high.
Woodward’s experience is the kind the company would like to replicate for all its customers. But Woodward knows he’s fortunate to be able to afford Starlink, and that it’s able to meet his needs. For now, at least. “It will be interesting to see how Starlink holds up when they get 200,000 users,” he says. “Prices will have to come down, but speeds and service will have to remain the same. That’s all to be determined.”
The first step to finding out is to catalogue what microbes we might have lost. To get as close to ancient microbiomes as possible, microbiologists have begun studying multiple Indigenous groups. Two have received the most attention: the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest and the Hadza, in northern Tanzania.
Researchers have made some startling discoveries already. A study by Sonnenburg and his colleagues, published in July, found that the gut microbiomes of the Hadza appear to include bugs that aren’t seen elsewhere—around 20% of the microbe genomes identified had not been recorded in a global catalogue of over 200,000 such genomes. The researchers found 8.4 million protein families in the guts of the 167 Hadza people they studied. Over half of them had not previously been identified in the human gut.
Plenty of other studies published in the last decade or so have helped build a picture of how the diets and lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies influence the microbiome, and scientists have speculated on what this means for those living in more industrialized societies. But these revelations have come at a price.
A changing way of life
The Hadza people hunt wild animals and forage for fruit and honey. “We still live the ancient way of life, with arrows and old knives,” says Mangola, who works with the Olanakwe Community Fund to support education and economic projects for the Hadza. Hunters seek out food in the bush, which might include baboons, vervet monkeys, guinea fowl, kudu, porcupines, or dik-dik. Gatherers collect fruits, vegetables, and honey.
Mangola, who has met with multiple scientists over the years and participated in many research projects, has witnessed firsthand the impact of such research on his community. Much of it has been positive. But not all researchers act thoughtfully and ethically, he says, and some have exploited or harmed the community.
One enduring problem, says Mangola, is that scientists have tended to come and study the Hadza without properly explaining their research or their results. They arrive from Europe or the US, accompanied by guides, and collect feces, blood, hair, and other biological samples. Often, the people giving up these samples don’t know what they will be used for, says Mangola. Scientists get their results and publish them without returning to share them. “You tell the world [what you’ve discovered]—why can’t you come back to Tanzania to tell the Hadza?” asks Mangola. “It would bring meaning and excitement to the community,” he says.
Some scientists have talked about the Hadza as if they were living fossils, says Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist and biologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, who has been studying and working with the Hadza for the last two decades.
The Hadza have been described as being “locked in time,” she adds, but characterizations like that don’t reflect reality. She has made many trips to Tanzania and seen for herself how life has changed. Tourists flock to the region. Roads have been built. Charities have helped the Hadza secure land rights. Mangola went abroad for his education: he has a law degree and a master’s from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona.
Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.
Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share. They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost.
But there is a major catch: we don’t know whether those in hunter-gatherer societies really do have “healthier” microbiomes—and if they do, whether the benefits could be shared with others. At the same time, members of the communities being studied are concerned about the risk of what’s called biopiracy—taking natural resources from poorer countries for the benefit of wealthier ones. Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation
—by Eric Schmidt, formerly the CEO of Google, and current cofounder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures
The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history.
Generative AI’s ability to harness customer data in a highly sophisticated manner means enterprises are accelerating plans to invest in and leverage the technology’s capabilities. In a study titled “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI,” Corinium Intelligence and WNS Triange surveyed 100 global C-suite leaders and decision-makers specializing in AI, analytics, and data. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said that their organizations are already using or planning to use generative AI.
According to McKinsey, while generative AI will affect most business functions, “four of them will likely account for 75% of the total annual value it can deliver.” Among these are marketing and sales and customer operations. Yet, despite the technology’s benefits, many leaders are unsure about the right approach to take and mindful of the risks associated with large investments.
Mapping out a generative AI pathway
One of the first challenges organizations need to overcome is senior leadership alignment. “You need the necessary strategy; you need the ability to have the necessary buy-in of people,” says Ayer. “You need to make sure that you’ve got the right use case and business case for each one of them.” In other words, a clearly defined roadmap and precise business objectives are as crucial as understanding whether a process is amenable to the use of generative AI.
The implementation of a generative AI strategy can take time. According to Ayer, business leaders should maintain a realistic perspective on the duration required for formulating a strategy, conduct necessary training across various teams and functions, and identify the areas of value addition. And for any generative AI deployment to work seamlessly, the right data ecosystems must be in place.
Ayer cites WNS Triange’s collaboration with an insurer to create a claims process by leveraging generative AI. Thanks to the new technology, the insurer can immediately assess the severity of a vehicle’s damage from an accident and make a claims recommendation based on the unstructured data provided by the client. “Because this can be immediately assessed by a surveyor and they can reach a recommendation quickly, this instantly improves the insurer’s ability to satisfy their policyholders and reduce the claims processing time,” Ayer explains.
All that, however, would not be possible without data on past claims history, repair costs, transaction data, and other necessary data sets to extract clear value from generative AI analysis. “Be very clear about data sufficiency. Don’t jump into a program where eventually you realize you don’t have the necessary data,” Ayer says.
The benefits of third-party experience
Enterprises are increasingly aware that they must embrace generative AI, but knowing where to begin is another thing. “You start off wanting to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes other people have made,” says Ayer. An external provider can help organizations avoid those mistakes and leverage best practices and frameworks for testing and defining explainability and benchmarks for return on investment (ROI).
Using pre-built solutions by external partners can expedite time to market and increase a generative AI program’s value. These solutions can harness pre-built industry-specific generative AI platforms to accelerate deployment. “Generative AI programs can be extremely complicated,” Ayer points out. “There are a lot of infrastructure requirements, touch points with customers, and internal regulations. Organizations will also have to consider using pre-built solutions to accelerate speed to value. Third-party service providers bring the expertise of having an integrated approach to all these elements.”
