Google’s other plan to connect the unconnected: satellites

There’s a lot of attention focused on Project Loon, Google’s ambitious and bureaucracy-defying plan to blanket the Earth with internet signals from high-flying balloons. But there are multiple components to its plan to connect the world’s unconnected, and part of that plan is sitting atop a Soyuz rocket on a launch pad in French Guiana.

The first four satellites of O3b’s broadband constellation are ready to make their journey into medium-Earth orbit (MEO), where they will project spot beams down to some of the planet’s most poorly connected countries: from Rwanda to tiny Pacific islands. The project certainly isn’t Google’s alone. The search giant is part of a long list of investors and banks that forked over $1.18 billion to fund the startup. The others include satellite giant SES, cable operator Liberty Global, investment bank Allen & Company, North Bridge Venture Partners, Satya Capital, and the Development…