Abstract :
VIRGIN GROUP founder Sir Richard Branson and US billionaire Elon Musk, known for his successes with rocket company SpaceX, have both announced plans to launch mega satellite constellations in the next decade providing direct Internet access to the unconnected around the world. While Sir Richard has stepped in, together with chip-maker Qualcomm, as the enabling investor of the OneWeb project of Californian tech-entrepreneur Greg Wyler, Musk revealed his plans during the opening of a new SpaceX centre in Seattle. That leaves the two space tycoons going head to head over a market of some three billion people in the world???s least connected countries.
