UK Testing Wireless Broadband Via Airship

fruey writes "A team from York University, UK are about to test high altitude platforms, according to this article, as a way of bringing high-speed internet services to computer users in remote areas out of reach of broadband. They plan to use solar powered engines to keep the aerial platforms in position. The Capanina site have some more information about this stratospheric broadband experiment. More technical stuff can be found at the York University website This technology could deliver broadband communications at data rates up to 120Mbit/s! Screw cable and xDSL, when will stratospheric be available near me?"

Comments

Local satellite replacement.

[ursg]

Nasa's project Helios (the unmanned solar-powered "flying wing") has had a similar Idea behind it:
Why clutter geostationary orbit when you can have unmanned planes circling metropolitian areas? Using solar power, these flying relays could operate nearly indefinitely at a fraction of the price.

The biggest problem that remains: What to do at night, when there is no sun powering the Solar Cells? Helios used Fuel Cells for backup power, but the technology is not yet advanced enough to sustain flight for longer than ~1 week.

Inclimate Weather

[SunCrushr]

Sure its fast, but if its stratospheric, its usefulness may be greatly effected by inclimate weather. Even cumulus clouds can greatly lower the bandwidth of wireless communication when transmitting between the stratosphere and the ground. It will be interesting to see how they deal with this issue.

Re:Altitude?

[fruey]

These are going to be 10 miles up, it's only the experiments that are with tethered airships. The tests will be followed by slightly different style aircraft which will be less affected by weather systems significantly below them. Birds don't fly to those sorts of altitudes either.

Serviceable area will be less than for geostationary orbit satellites, but lower power and higher speeds are possible. The telecoms requirements of this century will probably require a lot of deployment of new stuff, because there's only so much sense in deploying fibre optics all over the place, because the remote areas will get left out.