@tylerhoot I was hoping to work out a commercial agreement with Lacuna Space, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon. It may not happen at all.
@caveman99 Yes, SES surely has several satellites in graveyard orbits that are no longer station kept. In the early days of Othernet, we had a full transponder on satellite that had a pretty steep wobble, but that was with a different operator and at a different time. We’ve been an SES customer for several years now, so they no longer consider Othernet to be novel or experimental. More than anything, we are a nuisance customer because the revenue is so small and they still have general support costs.
@stvcmty I started working on Othernet in 2014 and have actively kept up with wholesale market pricing. On a per-MHz basis, we don’t get the best price, but that’s because the bandwidth that we lease is laughably small. It’s not even a full megahertz. Most operators won’t lease less than a megahertz anymore (power equivalent bandwidth). Those that do force small customers to purchase from resellers, who drastically increase the price (they really have no choice but to). EchoStar is not particularly cheap.
I’m not saying that there is not a single funding source in the world, but I spent almost a decade trying to find these funders, with no luck. A long time ago a church wanted to spread the word over Othernet, but they refused to pay their bills, which almost put the company out of business.
The ideas that are mentioned are interesting, but I have not seen anyone who wants to actually pay for broadcasting their content to specialized hardware. The only reason the free-to-air satellite tv industry works is because there are tens of millions of receivers all over the world.
After almost ten years in existance, I think the reality is that Othernet is only appealing to a small group of hobbyists. It could have been different, I know, but too many mistakes were made along the way (mistakes made by me).
@DyfflinViking I have definitely considered a conversion to a non-profit, but the only real benefit to that is to apply for grants, like you said. But those grants are really competitive and I really don’t have the time or energy to go through that process again. In the past, I applied for numerous grants through a sponsoring non-profit, which could accept the funds if the grant was awarded.
SES does not care about the non-profit status of its customers. In order to have any negotiating leverage with anyone, you need scale or volume, but that’s something we have never had. Changing the legal status of the organization doesn’t really move things forward.
@tylerhoot There is a small chance that a cubesat will launch next year. This cubesat will have a software defined radio payload and also operate at bands that should be compatible with existing Dreamcatchers-without the LNB. But this is a big if and nothing guaranteed as of now. Even if it does happen, it’s still something that will only be interesting to hobbyists; it’s not really solving the original problem of information access across the world.
