MOSCOW, Satellites of the Skif system, which Zond-Holding is developing to provide the Arctic with the high-speed Internet, will eventually be able to offer World Wide Web communications across the planet, Company CEO Viktor Doniants told TASS on Thursday.
For this purpose, 12 Skif satellites will be required, the chief executive said.
The Skif low-orbit satellite grouping is designed to provide Internet services at a speed of up to 15 Gb/s primarily in extremely remote and sparsely-populated Arctic areas, to which it is ineffective to lay fiber-optic communications lines. The system is being developed on the basis of the Express 1000 medium-class platform, which has been developed by Information Satellite Systems Company.
‘We are to launch the first six satellites and cover everything that is above 45 degrees north latitude and below 45 degrees south latitude and it [communications] will be present constantly, 24 hours a day. In equatorial zones, we will have breaks: communications will be available for 20 hours and absent for four hours. When we launch the next six satellites, we will cover the entire globe completely without any breaks,” Doniants said.
