Aerospace firm plans a giant leap for Chinese satellite coverage with global network
Hongyan constellation will extend mobile coverage to all remote and rural parts of the country, with foreign firms locked out of the market
A state-owned aerospace company will this year start launching more than 300 satellites as it presses ahead with plans for the China’s first satellite-based mobile communication network.
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said on Friday that it aimed to have 60 of the satellites up and running by 2020, offering basic smartphone coverage worldwide to subscribers in China.
Yin Liming, chief executive of China Great Wall Industry, China Aerospace’s commercial rocket launch and satellite services arm, said: “Project Hongyan will be done in three phases, and form a global low-orbit mobile internet.”
It did not specify when the 300-plus satellites would be in operation.
The announcement came as US entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX aerospace firm put the first of its Starlink constellation satellites into orbit as part of a similar but bigger global plan for low-cost communications.