# Ground networks use costly redundancy to guarantee reliability

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ground-networks-use-costly-redundancy-to-guarantee/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Bridgit Mendler](https://realalpha.app/people/bridgit-mendler/) · Bridgit Mendler is cofounder and CEO of Northwood Space. · Co-founded Northwood Space, building shared satellite ground infrastructure; earlier a Disney Channel actress and singer.
- Host: [Molly O'Shea](https://realalpha.app/people/molly-oshea/) · Founder, Sourcery · Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.
- Show: Sourcery
- Episode: [Bridgit Mendler Gives Us the First Tour of Northwood's New HQ + Factory](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/), Aug 31, 2026
- Moment: 26:20 to 29:17 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ground-networks-use-costly-redundancy-to-guarantee/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1580

## Quote

> “sometimes they'll have, like, **three times the amount of ground capacity** that they would otherwise”
> — [Bridgit Mendler](https://realalpha.app/people/bridgit-mendler/) at [28:19](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1699) · Sourcery

## Takeaways

1. Customers pay for reliable, controllable throughput and surge capacity.
2. Some operators keep three times the ground capacity to avoid outages.
3. Ground capacity can take 18 months to plan and deliver.

## About this segment

Bridgit Mendler describes customers who need flexible, dependable satellite capacity and the extra ground infrastructure they buy to avoid outages. Cutting cost and delivery time could let them serve more customers with less risk.

From “Bridgit Mendler Gives Us the First Tour of Northwood's New HQ + Factory”, Aug 31, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[26:24](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1584) So what are the main categories of customers that you have on the commercial side? Yeah. Largely, I think it comes down to comms, earth observation, customers who their ultimate end customer might be like a U.S. government or a sovereign government. And so, like as I mentioned, on the comms side, for those use cases, you think about they're monetizing bits and the customers that are buying their bits are the ones that need more reliability and flexibility than maybe like a SpaceX-driven architecture.

[26:58](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1618) sure so um you know think about a customer where they need to make sure that that amount of throughput is always on they need to make sure that that amount of throughput is something that they can control um they need to make sure that if they have some kind of like bulky bursty load that they need to send from point a to point b that they can actually accomplish that so you know it could be anything from like an enterprise that today is using a a private network right like there's a ton of businesses that don't use the public internet but use private networks that kind of falls into the same category, or like a, you know, a hospital or something where they need to make sure that when everybody is watching the World Cup, they can still maintain their connection. So there's a lot of different use cases, both on the government and commercial

[27:41](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1661) side that require that level of reliability and flexibility. And so historically, the way that they've solved that from the ground side is a lot of redundancy. So think about like, if you want to be able to surge to support, you know. World Cup scenario. Like, basically, if there's a whole bunch of extra customers in an area, they want to be able to capture that revenue. Maybe the satellite can, but maybe they don't have enough ground support for it. But if they wanted to have that surge capacity, that's going to be really expensive for them to support and maintain all around the year.

[28:19](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1699) Or, you know, if they're serving a use case where they can't afford to go down, sometimes they'll have, like, three times the amount of ground capacity that they would otherwise need to have just to make sure that in every scenario, it doesn't go down. So all of that translates to a lot more networking on the ground, which today is super expensive. And it is also really long to deliver. And so both like the cost and the time horizon that they need to address that against, think about like, you know, 18 months in advance, thinking about the ground that they have to provide. If we can condense that time period and condense the cost, that enables them to have a lot more optionality with the customers that they can serve and also to just have it be like a lower risk endeavor from a cost standpoint. As critical national and global

[29:10](https://realalpha.app/v/8SGgaMiGv6g/?t=1750) infrastructure, what are the biggest challenges that you've faced and had to overcome? What are