Weather Balloons To Provide Broadband In Africa 179
An anonymous reader writes "Two African entrepreneurs have secured exclusive access to market near-space technology — developed by Space Data, an American telecommunications company — throughout Africa. The technology raises hydrogen-filled weather balloons to 80,000 — 100,000 feet, which individuals contact via modems. The balloons, in turn, serve as satellite substitutes which can connect Africans to broadband Internet. 'Network operation centers are located close to a fiber optic cable — say, in Lagos or Accra — and a signal is sent back and forth to the [balloon] in near space,' says one of the entrepreneurs, Timothy Anyasi. The technology will also allow mobile phone operators to offer wireless modems to customers."
This will be nice (Score:3, Interesting)
to fill the gap until we get UAVs that can stay up for extended periods of time.
Re:This will be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
A weather balloon IS a UAV that can stay up for extended periods of time.
Re:This will be nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you want to over engineer things? A balloon is easy to make, cheap to make and can stay up for days.
Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Insightful)
These don't - they stay up for 24 hours. DARPA has people working on fixed wing aircraft that will stay up for months. That's not over engineering - that's much better than this.
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Let's take the 24 hours as the limit. I imagine if you designed a different type of balloon with a different shape, you could easily increase this. But for example's sake, let's stick with 24 hours.
According to the article, these things cost $50/each. Predators cost $15 Million. I wonder what a UAV that stays up for months would cost. Even if you got the cost down to $1 Million, you can send up quite a few balloons for much cheaper.
Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Informative)
The longer a balloon is up - the farther it is going to travel. Anything to change that will drive up costs. And switch around the comparison - so that it makes economic sense. What's the cost of an ultra-endurance airplane compared to a satellite?
The Vulture [networkworld.com] program is aiming for an aircraft that can keep a 1,000 lb payload up for at least 5 years - over a designated area 99% of the time. That's further out - but it makes more sense than balloons for quite a few reasons.
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Re:This will be nice (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps because: "The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don't subscribe to the service. "You're looking at a wide geographic area -- there's a wide jet stream at near space"
BTW, you'll NEVER GUESS where that quote came from... NEVER!
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So is this a balloon on a 100,000' tether?
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From the TFA? I wouldn't know I didn't read it...
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Uuum... whey don't they put some of those new light printed solar cells on top of it. Should give them all the power they need. (Assuming they float way above the clouds and have a night battery buffer.)
Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm waiting for someone to build a solar-powered, unmanned zeppelin. If you inflate it with hydrogen, you can maintain altitude by electrolyzing ballast water or by venting off excess hydrogen. A weather balloon might stay up for days; this could stay up for years.
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Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I hope they use hydrogen for this. Helium is uniquely non-replaceable. It's the product of very slow alpha particle decay, trapped in natural gas fields and such. We'll eventually empty those natural gas fields. There are lots of other ways to make energy, and we can make natural gas if we need methane, specifically, for whatever reason. But we can't make helium except through nuclear fusion. Even then, if fusion delivered 100% of earth's electricity needs, it'd only create a small fraction of what we currently use per year.
We'll always have plenty of hydrogen because it bonds to everything. Helium doesn't, so once you crack open that helium tank, it's just a matter of time until it floats off into space, where it's as good as gone.
Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Insightful)
How much do those ballons use?
Compare to cooling down a NMR magnet, which consumes more than 1000 liters liquid ( > 700,000 liters gas).
Sadly there is a helium shortage, not so much that we are hitting the point of end of resources (which will eventually come), but because not all the natural gas fields that could capture - are capturing helium.
http://www.purchasing.com/article/CA6518723.html [purchasing.com]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6444180 [npr.org]
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You're right, it isn't very significant. I just hope the world starts treating it as if it were precious before it becomes very expensive. We've only been using helium for a century, but it would be quite a shame for all of its uses to be lost to future generations forever.
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Re:This will be nice (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think anyone's done it yet, which of course isn't to say it can't be done. I think such a structure, if buildable, would be very costly and fragile (more so than any balloon).
It would be easier if you were able to deploy it from its target altitude. Otherwise you have three conflicting requirements:
Good luck!
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Fixed wing - solar powered/augmented - that's my guess. I don't know what it will look like in the end but people who are a lot smarter than I am have been working hard on this for a while. The military applications are too obvious for it to be otherwise.
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6.7 billion people are working on it?
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I'd say that's a low estimate - if you consider family pets to be 'people' it would be much higher. :)
They'll have these in England soon (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, the humanity!
Re:They'll have these in England soon (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe you're right - perhaps English gents use umbrellas all the time because of the floating cameras...
Re:They'll have these in England soon (Score:5, Funny)
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It's the US company that getting exclusive rights to spy on broadband in Africa. At least your CCTV cameras are domestic...
More than likely they'll just make it into yet another cable channel so the cable companies can proclaim "more value for your money!"
click!
Guy with beard yelling at you to sell some ineffectual product ("and if you order now, you'll get two...")
click!
CSPAN
click!
Court's Lobby
click!
Reality TV - What's doing in Africa - View from above
click!
Dishwashing Network
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If they did that, and didn't censor the feeds, there wouldn't be a problem.
Developing the capacity to watch the watchers is a good thing.
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Untethered (Score:2)
Interesting approach to keeping them in the right spot. I was curious if they used a line or some sort of stabilization system.
Nope. They just let them float away. But they come down after 24 hours and are just tracked down with GPS and replaced.
The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don't subscribe to the service. "You're looking at a wide geographic area -- there's a wide jet stream at near space -- and that allows balloons to keep on floating without stop," Anyasi explains. "It's cheap to bring them down, as balloons cost only about $50, and since they are equipped with a GPS, it is easy to locate them and reuse them."
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Re:Untethered (Score:4, Interesting)
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Longer term, property rights have a way of being modified to fit technological and social convention. Look at the entire concept of "airspace", the contemporary application of utility easements, and various flavors of salvage rights/restrictions, among other examples. If service
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in rural Africa.... I'm sure its not going to be the equivalent of a short drive to the shops!
I recall something about this in south africa for mobiles. Te problem with fixed base stations was that they were raided for copper and orther materials, so they thought about putting the station on a tethered balloon. Why wouldn't that be a better solution that 'disposable' weather balloons (unless the coverage was so good for a near-orbit balloon).
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It's not really clear what is meant by that, but I'm guessing it's like this:
– weather balloon, $50
– electronics payload, $unspecified_large_amount
– launching the balloon (i.e. the cost of the helium), $unspecified_small_amount
That would explain why re-using the balloons is feasible: If you were just saving $50, it probably wouldn't be worth it, like you said. You want the electronics back, though, because they're probably expensive, and since you're going to retrieve those you might as we
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They probably open a valve to let the helium out and try to reuse both the balloon and the electronics pack.
From http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/lift.html [hawaii.edu]
A 7 foot dia balloon lifts about a dozen pounds and takes about two hundred cu feet to fill. At about a quarter a cubic foot, it's going to cost about fifty bucks for the helium.
Helium is NOT cheap... Looking at more than $2 per hour per balloon just for the helium. And helium is not a renewable resource.
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Hmm, yeah, you're probably right. It wasn't really clear whether $50 was the cost per launch or the cost of the balloon, but your explanation sounds likely.
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helium is not a renewable resource.
Well, not until we get a fusion reactor going.
Only one accessible site though (Score:5, Funny)
Disaster? (Score:3, Insightful)
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They are tracked by GPS. It would be fairly trivial to keep the appropriate air traffic control authorities apprised of their location, and, given the kind of concern you point to, I would assume that this is mandatory.
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Also would the gps track the balloon 3 dimensionally. (While it going up and down?)
Since your post reeks of flamebait, I'm going to intentionally answer you in a round-about way. Hopefully, you'll be too obtuse to figure out what the answer is, but I'm sure plenty of Slashdotters will think it's far more interesting than a simple yes or no answer would have been.
The GPS system consists of a set of satellites with precisely known locations transmitting the exact time on a regular basis.
Radio signals propagate at the speed of light; by computing the delay between actual time and received ti
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When was the last time a passenger airplane flew at 80,000 to 100,000 feet?
Re:Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
When was the last time a passenger airplane flew at 80,000 to 100,000 feet?
Yeah, but the balloons have to travel upwards through the same airspace that airlines and other aircraft travel through.
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Yeah, but airspace is big. Maybe not really big, not hugely, vastly, mindbogglingly big, but still big.
And the commuter corridors are not that wide and are generally horizontal while these balloons travel more or less vertically at that altitude, so when they do intersect, they do so rather briefly, and show up on radar.
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Um..... last I checked, planes don't fly at 80,000 feet. They fly between 25 and 35 thousand feet.
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According to another commentor ascent, OTOH, might actually be pretty rapid - inflate the balloon with a low density guess and watch the sucker go.
Re:Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
As I am not familiar with African law, just with FAA flight regulations here in the United States.
Having been on a near space team (http://nearspace.0x58.com), and having launched two near space balloons, 92,999 ft, and 83,000 ft I can tell you that they pose no problems for jet liners. The balloons are big enough to be spotted by any pilot worth his salt, and they only stick around the altitude where jets fly in the first place for just a minute or so because they ascend so fast.
Also, depending on the weight in the United States you have to file a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) which gets distributed to all of the flight control towers, air traffic controllers and will also be distributed to pilots flying in the area you are planning on launching. Anything under 6 pounds you don't have to notify, but it is generally nice to do so as a courtesy. 12 pounds is the limit for amateur near space balloon launches. I have no experience with bigger near space payloads.
Re:Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
At night all balloons are required to have a flashing light that is visible for up to 2 or 5 miles.
So yes, at night as well.
Re:Disaster? (Score:5, Funny)
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar
causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death
Looks like you've answered your own question there. I just hope I'm not on that plane.
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I just hope I'm not on that plane.
As long as Patrick McGoohan (RIP) and James Caviezel aren't on the plane with you, you're fine.
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What happens? (Score:3, Funny)
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar and the damn thing floats right into the jet intake, causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death?
More than likely? Thousands of customers below will go "Hey, who turned off the f*ckin' Internet?"
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Well, to start with, the jets you refer to fly at about 35,000 feet. That's 50,000-70,000 feet lower than the balloon.
Even on launch, it would not be much of an issue. The launch team notifies air traffic control of this and they issue a NOTAM. That is a notice that such-and-such area will be launching something during a certain timeframe and should be avoided.
Also, balloons ascend at about given known rate. Let's say the balloon is 100 feet long and ascends as 2
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The origin of the internet (Score:2)
It is funny if we remember that the internet first goal was to be used by the military as a highly redundant/reliable network.
Cmdr Taco: General McNeil, it seems that we lost the Abidjan balloon.
General McNeil: I know, it must be the hurricane or maybe the North-Koreans shot it down, well TCP-IP should take care of re-routing traffic to the Brazaville balloon anyway...
Good idea although, best bang for the buck to make internet available I would assume...
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No, the internet was invented by Al Gore for research Universities to share data and information and all information on the internet wants to be free and the fact that for-profit business are on the internet (instead of our beloved for-profit universities) is a shame, they're not even legally supposed to be here because the internet is not for corporations but for the free and uninhibited spread of information among users (as long as they're not idiots, wake me up when september ends and the freshman get a
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What do you expect? It's still Septemeber. They'll learn eventually though.
first thought -- gonna need a really long tether! (Score:4, Funny)
Second thought -- Palm doesn't want anyone talking about tethers.
Third thought after reading the article -- they're just releasing these balloons and letting them come down after a day in the air? Just hunting the damn things down will be a chore and a half. But this is precisely the market segment the UAV people were talking about. I think the name they were using was aerostat. Idea 1 is using a solar-powered aircraft to fly in U2 territory relaying data. Missions would last three or four months and then the plane is brought back down for maintenance. The idea is that the solar cells would charge during the day and the engines would operate off of batteries at night. The second idea is using some manner of unmanned dirigible where buoyancy is provided by hydrogen and the solar-powered engines are meant for station-keeping.
I guess this is really a matter of economics -- I guess it's cheaper to hire a guy and a jeep and hand him a map versus paying millions for air vehicles that aren't in production yet?
Re:first thought -- gonna need a really long tethe (Score:2)
Solar cells,two or thee small electric motors and the ballon becomes a blimp. Far easir to track if you can remote pilot it to known locations
IRC (Score:4, Funny)
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Not to burst your bubble, but &*#L: 34:LH kjk'3l
NO CARRIER
Near Space Balloon Launches (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking from personal experience with the near space launches I have completed with a team (http://nearspace.0x58.com) located in Arizona, I hope they don't make the mistake of putting the GPS on the outside of the box. During our second balloon launch we launched closer to night so that we could attempt to get photo's of the sun setting (and boy did we succeed: http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/ [0x58.com]).
However what we had not counted on was the fact that the temperature would drop so low that the GPS would literally freeze and stop responding and completely shut off, until it got low enough, and warm enough again to turn on. We thought we had lost our package payload.
Other than that, since the balloons are going to follow whatever winds they can find, how are they going to make sure that the area they want to service has a balloon above it at all times? What if the wind is going in the wrong direction? As for recovering the devices, will they be water proof? What if it lands in a lake, or body of water? What about high up on the mountain side somewhere?
Definitely interesting and something to watch in the near future, if this is cheaper than launching a satellite and can be done in a sustainable method and still provide adequate phone service or other services using near space technology!
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I hope they don't make the mistake of putting the GPS on the outside of the box. ... the temperature would drop so low that the GPS would literally freeze and stop responding and completely shut off, until it got low enough, and warm enough again to turn on.
As long as the GPS works after the balloon comes back to earth, it should be fine... they're only using it to retrieve the balloons, from what I read.
Other than that, since the balloons are going to follow whatever winds they can find, how are they going to make sure that the area they want to service has a balloon above it at all times? What if the wind is going in the wrong direction?
You probably know better than I do, since you actually launched a balloon, but aren't winds at such extremely high altitudes generally pretty stable?
As for recovering the devices, will they be water proof? What if it lands in a lake, or body of water?
Well, one would certainly hope so. And that they float, too.
What about high up on the mountain side somewhere?
Africa's pretty flat... although that might be a point to consider if you're thinking of implementing this idea somewhere that isn't flat.
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The winds even at really high altitudes can be very unstable. The flight path for our first balloon was absolutely amazing, the second balloon was launched from the same location and ended up on the other side of Phoenix.
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You didn't anticipate that equipment attached to a balloon flying at high altitude, where it's cold, would get cold?
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Here you go, some random pictures that I find the most amazing. They are full quality, hence the long download times.
http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/DSC01327.JPG [0x58.com]
http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/DSC01345.JPG [0x58.com]
http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/DSC01349.JPG [0x58.com]
http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/DSC01421.JPG [0x58.com]
http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/DS [0x58.com]
Redefining technology (Score:4, Funny)
Solar cells (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently the balloons need to be taken down daily to have their batteries recharched. I wonder, wouldn't 80,000-100,000 feet be mostly above cloud level and be an excellent opportunity to use solar cells?
The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don't subscribe to the service.
The drifting might be a tougher nut to crack though. Rather interesting idea for rural areas actually.
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If you are going to bring them down after 24 hours for drift reasons, there's no reason to use solar cells - batteries are dead-nuts reliable and cheap.
Brett
Obligatory F-Troop (Score:2)
IT is ballooooon!
good idea (Score:4, Insightful)
When you take into a ccount that any time they try and lay fiber it gets stolen and sold for it's scrap value, this is a great idea. Less chance of the infrastructure being stolen/damaged.
Not sure (Score:4, Interesting)
If God meant for cell towers to be attached to balloons, he would have, uh, err, done something different!
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Because both the disposable ballons and the "technology" they carry are cheap and easily replaced, which is decidedly not the case with a WWII-era heavy bomber equipped with contemporaneous TV broadcasting systems.
Beats the Hell Out of Bushmail (Score:2)
Previous Use of Radar Aerostats (Score:5, Informative)
Yay! Nigeria will be covered. (Score:2, Funny)
I have an important transaction in progress with someone in the ministry of finance. This will maybe help the transaction go smoother!
The Golden Age Of Ballooning (Score:2)
There is also a book called 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' published by the BBC. It's in an attractive hand-tooled binding, is priced £5 and failure to buy it will make you liable to a £50 fine or three months' imprisonment.
And now ...
what is it? (Score:3, Funny)
"Its a plane!"
"Uh its my ISP bro..."
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*BANG*
I wonder if you can shoot them...
I guess not, except if your bullets reach low earth orbit. ;)
Repeat from 1937? (Score:2)
Cell towers already there.. (Score:3, Interesting)
My parents live in Africa and get better cell coverage than I do here in the USA. They can drive from northern Zambia to the tip of South Africa and never lose signal.
So Why not just use the existing Cell Towers to provide broadband?
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Are you sure their system is using cell-towers and not satellites ?
My understanding is that satellite phone are used a lot in Africa, it costs a bundle too. Weather balloons would be cheaper than satellites, which is the point TFA makes.
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So Why not just use the existing Cell Towers to provide broadband?
Because it's very expensive and sometimes impossible to backhaul a connection to very rural cell towers. They are also expensive to construct and maintain and are a visual blight when you dot them all over the landscape.
The only thing that will suck... (Score:2)
...will be the ping/lag. Like trying to play CPMA with someone in UAE.
Well, better than nothing. :)
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...will be the ping/lag. Like trying to play CPMA with someone in UAE.
Well, better than nothing. :)
The latency should be much, much better than current geosynchronous satellite options. I wouldn't expect balloon-based repeaters to have latency above 100ms. Compare that to WildBlue/Hughes with real-world latency of 1000-2500ms (they claim 500-750ms).
Just one surplus surface to air missile (Score:2)
And there goes their infrastructure....
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it was a joke.
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I hope you're making a joke, because "modem" stands for MOdulator/DEModulator and correctly describes any device that converts outgoing signals from digital to analog and incoming ones from analog back to digital.
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...so it correctly describes a few devices that don't convert ATD/DTA. My statement was still correct... ;p
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This may be news to you, but not everyone in Africa is starving.
Re:really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only that but communication tools are vital to improving the livelihood of Africans. I've been working with an open source tool, Frontline SMS [frontlinesms.com] - it's already being used to do some amazing things.
Rather than continuing to send cash and some food, which has thus far not really been much help - we can help build infrastructure that will give people more control over their own lives and the ability to improve their circumstances on their own.
I saw a demo a couple weeks ago by some guys from a communications lab from a local university. They are building a system to provide educational materials via mobile phones - iphone and android right now. They've got grants to get androids on the ground in developing nations. The system can work completely via sms if necessary but an internet connection is better.
There are some exciting things going on in tech in Africa and this is cool to see.
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Africa is a large continent and as well as South Africa is doing, I'm sure that a broad set of solutions are what is required. Internet access itself isn't as important as communication in general - which can take place outside the internet, so I wouldn't focus on that too much.
The ability to communicate and organize is absolutely essential to everything you list in the first paragraph - and measures like this make that possible on the scale necessary.
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's just trolling. I almost fell for it, but decided not to feed the troll.
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Neat Idea, they should deploy these in rural america where verizon doesn't go and the comcast/at&t duopoly is fierce..
I wish the only issues were a duopoly. In many areas of the US, high-speed, low-latency Internet access is simply unavailable.
When it is available, the only current option is to spend $5-30k for telco "special construction charges" and $500+/month for a T1.
Consumer level satellite options (WildBlue, Hughes) have really tight bandwidth quotas and latency of 1-2seconds. The quota on the $100/month WildBlue "Professional" tier is 17GB down/month (30-day rolling cycle) and 5GB up with a $400 dish/modem p
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I can only imagine the lobbying going against anything like this in the USA. The baby bells love their monopolies, so do the cable companies. Flying one of these over any major metro area could potentially cost them tens of thousands of customers almost instantly.
With a few billion set aside in the stimulus package for broadband penetration it would be nice to have someone get some to get the Nasa pathfinder [wikipedia.org] project working for this sort of thing. I haven't heard anything about the skytower concept since