With greater than 8,000 Starlink satellites within the sky in the present day, low Earth orbit could look like the place to be to attach the following technology of Web and cellphone clients. Nonetheless, some gamers are inserting their bets barely nearer to the bottom.
Beginning subsequent 12 months, Tokyo’s SoftBank Corp. will probably be beaming a prototype 4G and 5G cellphone and broadband service from the stratosphere to Japanese finish customers. Floating 20 kilometers above the Earth, the corporate’s airship-based mast will probably be utilizing energy-regeneration tech and newly allotted spectrum. And the tech might finally pose an actual, aggressive risk to satellite-based platforms like Starlink.
The Japanese telecom big introduced final month it had secured unique rights to deploy stratospheric, lighter-than-air craft over Japan. SoftBank’s precommercial airship “tower” delivering 4G and 5G cellphone service, the corporate stated, will probably be coming in 2026. The solar-powered airship, developed by the Moriarty, N.M.–primarily based Sceyehas already accomplished greater than 20 profitable take a look at flights. In the identical press announcement, SoftBank additionally described its plans to additionally use heavier-than-air, fixed-wing uncrewed aerial autos that the Japanese firm has developed.
A Technical Blueprint for the Stratosphere
In contrast to the SoftBank system’s fixed-wing sign repeaters, Sceye’s airship will probably be an autonomously piloted cell tower working beneath outer house however nonetheless above the climate. The airship will carry the identical kind of base station utilized in terrestrial cell towers (referred to as 4G eNodeB/5G gNodeb), which can adjust to international broadband requirements, as overseen by the Third Technology Partnership Undertakingor 3GPP.
“The cell phone doesn’t know the distinction between our platform and a tower,” says Mikkel Vestergaard FrandsenSceye’s CEO. “We simply plug into current infrastructure and function beneath the identical 3GPP protocol.”
Sceye’s airship makes use of superior antenna methods that allow precision steering of the sign. Often known as beamforming, this 5G tech helps a community cowl huge areas or, conversely, focus bandwidth right down to a tighter cone, relying on demand. The corporate stories that its system’s latency is beneath 20 milliseconds. That might put it forward of Starlink, which delivers in the present day a community latency of 45 msin response to a current survey.
“This isn’t a relay system. We’re the bottom station, in a position to reply to community demand from the stratosphere,” says Frandsen.
With a payload capability of 250 kilograms and 10 kilowatts of onboard solar energy capability, the airship can energy its telecom suite but additionally station-keep—one thing that neither balloons (which drift with the wind) nor fixed-wing UAVs (constrained by restricted payload and energy) can obtain.
Which is why Sceye’s advances in supplies have been essential for high-altitude endurance flights. In line with the corporate, the material comprising the airship’s hull is 5 occasions as robust per unit mass as standard high-altitude platform system (HAPS) supplies. Sceye’s materials can also be 1,500 occasions extra gas-tight, in addition to being extra immune to each UV and ozone harm.
“There’s loads of overlap between excessive sports activities just like the America’s Cup or Components One and our work on HAPS,” stated Frandsen, who recruited engineers from each sectors. “It’s all about pushing supplies to the restrict, safely.”
However even utilizing such a supermaterial for the airship’s pores and skin, staying aloft at an altitude of 20 kilometers calls for additional improvements towards higher effectivity. “On this type of machine, about 30 p.c of the burden goes to the construction, and one other 30 p.c to the power system,” says Vincenzo Rosario BaranielloHead of the Earth Commentary Methods Unit on the Italian Aerospace Analysis Centre (DEFER). “Enhancing these applied sciences offers a aggressive benefit”.
Sceye’s silvery dirigibles are constructed for endurance, able to pointing into the wind, and remaining of their space of operation for months at a time. Ultralightweight and versatile photo voltaic skins and high-density battery packs hold the tools working in a single day. Whereas the system’s temperature- and UV-shielded payload compartment can stand up to excessive stratospheric circumstances. The airship can attain altitude in lower than half-hour, with a single craft in a position to exchange as much as 25 floor towers.
Constructing on New Spectrum
The time has come, says Nikolai Vassiliev, chief of the Terrestrial Providers Division on the Worldwide Telecommunication Unionfor stratospheric methods like Sceye’s and SoftBank’s prototype community.
“We’ve got established energy limits, coordination guidelines, and allotted harmonized bands,” Vassiliev says. “Now it’s as much as operators to deploy.”
Till not too long ago, high-altitude platforms like Sceye’s and SoftBank’s helium-filled airship relied totally on millimeter-wave spectrumtogether with bandwidth between 47- and 48-gigahertz frequencies. Millimeter waves, although, have restricted vary and are notoriously weak to rain and different inclement climate. Which is why, partially, the World Radiocommunication Convention in 2023 opened up quite a lot of microwave bands between 700 megahertz and a couple of.6 GHz for HAPS.
These lower-frequency bands successfully opened the best way for direct-to-device connections from stratospheric airships and different high-altitude platforms. “The provision of harmonized, low-band spectrum for direct-to-device HAPS has essentially modified the enterprise case,” stated Toshiharu Sumiyoshi of SoftBank’s Ubiquitous Community Planning Division. “We will now ship service with commercially accessible handsets.”
In contrast to earlier high-altitude platforms that acted like sign relaysSceye’s high-altitude towers will finally permit customers to cross protection zones with out shedding service, because of handovers between floor and aerial nodes. And that might feel and look to the tip person very similar to on a regular basis terrestrial 4G and 5G protection.
SoftBank remains to be weighing how greatest to deploy Sceye’s stratospheric platforms, whether or not as always-on infrastructure or as on-demand responders throughout emergencies and different intervals of anticipated excessive demand. “Our present plan goals for one plane to remain within the air for one 12 months,” says Sumiyoshi. “However each situations, steady flight or launch in response to a catastrophe, are conceivable. And operational particulars will probably be finalized after precommercial testing in 2026, taking cost-effectiveness and multiuse choices like distant sensing under consideration.”
Baraniello says no matter kind the deployment finally takes, it marks an necessary step ahead. “The partnership between Sceye and SoftBank is critical,” he says. “It reveals that these platforms have reached a stage of technological maturity that permits them to be deployed operationally. From an aerospace-engineering standpoint, that’s a giant deal, and the market’s curiosity will additional push analysis, trade, and improvement ahead.”
UPDATE 1 Aug. 2025: The story was up to date to make clear the ITU’s place on the harmonized bands it’s allotted (the ITU’s addition in daring) and to notice that SoftBank and Sceye’s airships are helium-filled.
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