The first four of 12 satellites in a new constellation to provide affordable, high-speed Internet to people in nearly 180 "under-connected" countries were blasted into space on Tuesday.
The orbiters, part of a project dubbed O3b, for the "other 3 billion" people with restricted Internet access, were lifted by a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kourou in French Guiana at 1927 GMT (3.27am Singapore time), according to a live broadcast on the website of launch company Arianespace.
The project was born from the frustrations of US Internet pioneer Greg Wyler with the inadequacy of Rwanda`s telecommunications network while travelling there in 2007.
He came up with a plan to bypass costly ground-based infrastructure like fibre-optics or cables by deploying a constellation of small satellites around the equator to serve as a spatial relay between users and the worldwide web using only satellite dishes.
