O3b Networks, which by the way stands for “the other three billion”(people worldwide with no internet access), announced on Tuesday that they plan to put 16 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites into space, in an effort to bring Internet Access to developing countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.

These satellites will orbit at an altitude of about 5,000 miles, much lower than Geosatellites which orbit at 22,500 miles. The main advantage of this is that signal latency is significantly reduced, from the 600ms of geosatellites, to about 120ms, which is closer to fiber-optics standards.

Fiber-optics are not a feasible solution for underdeveloped countries as they are simply too expensive for the limited infrastructure there. And considering that buying geosatellite backhaul can cost around $4000 per megabit per month, that wasn’t looking like a viable option either until O3b came up with their cheaper MEO satellite plan which will lower that to about $500 or less. The satellites themselves have a lifespan of 10 to 15 years.

Major investors into the O3b project include Liberty Global, a worldwide internet and telephony operator, HSBC Principal Investments, and Google. The combined investments of the three companies amount to $65 million, although the entire project will cost $650 million.

Google has been known to support such initiatives before, and this is quite understandable considering high-speed internet access is required to make use of the content-rich web apps that Google offer to the public, and which increase their ad revenues.