A Blockstream announced yesterday the opening of a satellite service to broadcast the Bitcoin blockchain. Partially available today, Blockstream Satellite will allow anyone who wishes to maintain a complete node and monitor the blockchain anywhere in the world, regardless of internet access, with a modestly priced radio receiver [1] Without any connection fees.
However, this free service does not allow you to send transactions to the network. Submitting a transaction is a low-resource operation and can be done as soon as a mobile network is available, regardless of its quality, for example by SMS. On the other hand, maintaining a complete node and monitoring the blockchain (essential for all those who want to open two-way payment channels on the future Lightning Network ), requires a stable connection and involves downloading more than 4 GB of data each month.Blockstream Satellite is a centralized service so it is not the preferred source to download the blockchain when other accesses are available. It can however be used as an emergency solution in the event of an Internet connection failure.
