Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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
I assume this means backwards places like the Fens, Channel Islands, Welsh valleys and Liverpool. It might help to teach them what a computer and electricity are for first.
I wonder if an airship (or zeppelin) based broadband modem would be appropriately called a `z-modem`... ;)
Why don't they just use five ounce birds carrying packets inside of cocounts?
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
Satellites always had terrible lag times for transmission, so this would be much better...but c'mon, the British weather sucks--how long before these little "microlight" planes get knocked out of the sky by wind, attacked by birds, or grounded due to foul weather? Just put money into running coax/POTS or long-distance 802.11-type service.
...to hack into one of these babies and land it on my roof.
Typos... that's just how I role.
Something tells me we'll be getting more "UFO" sightings than usual if this plan gets the green light.
Better make those airships bulletproof.
"Why is my net connection down?"
"The router crashed."
"Can't you reboot it or something."
"No, I mean it literally crashed. Some bird flew into it and the sucker fell from the sky. We'll be getting a replacement up in an hour or so."
It might bring a whole new meaning to "my network's gone down"
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
Gives new meaning to the term "Server Crash".
sorry officer, left my sig in my other computer.
It would be called the Sun phone. What they'd do is launch a big balloon and have it hover over your large metropolitan areas. The phone gives you seemless voice capabiities, and then you plug it into your computer and you've got hi-speed access. And then the really cool feature... the thing lights up, just like the real Sun (only this Sun would be visible at night.)
Yeah, it's just a marketing gimmick I guess, but it seemed like such a good fit. And besides, what else is Sun going to do? Manufacture over-priced blade servers?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
How many of these do they need in the sky for redundancy purposes? just in case a few of them fail, and what happens when they fall to earth...*boink* I thought people liked to star gaze, not look at swarms of platforms 'floating' in the sky.
wouldn't orbiting satelites stay 'up' longer.... oh wait they do
I had heard of these things before (like here, but it's the first time I see anyone talking about it seriously other than in future, vague projects and predictions.
It's like low-cost, low-tech satellite communications (less area covered, less powerful transmission units, but cheaper too), the only thing I see as a possible problem is the interference with air traffic in higher populated areas (probably the reason why they're starting with these more remote locations for implementation).
Damn cool if you ask me.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
I'm sure it will be a badge of honour in small English villages to say "Aye, I get me pr0n from tha' big tit in the sky!"
Trolling is a art,
That the British now have Airships, which previously only existed in Final Fantasy?!
DAMN YOU.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I can only hope DWO will be supported. Unfortunate for this otherwise solid choice otherwise, but it could become the breaking point.
In the end the only other alternative is to create my own. A real possibility in that I can stand by my decision - win or lose.
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.
From Texas?
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
If you add weight(5 ouce packets) you will alter the weight ratio, and the birds won't arrive in time, causing latency. What kind of system is this?
"If I wanted your opinion, I would have given it to you."
I wonder how the latency and ping time would be.
Having used Hughes' DirecDuo / DirecPC 4 years ago before broadband was available at my home, it left the broadband experience wanting.
It was ok for downloading large files, couldn't do online gaming at all, and surfing the web was just ok - you could feel the few seconds where you sent the URL over, but once it got it sent the browser downloaded it quickly enough.
I guess it would depend how their NOC worked - but I still have to imagine this is only good for the same things as DirecPC (which means gaming is still out probably).
I assume microlights would be superior as you wouldn't need to tether them to prevent them from being blown away.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
services from Astra and Eutelsat and others already cover every bit of land from Iceland to Pakistan... at small prices. Try www.eutelsat.net to get some really low prices!! Just a dish, dvb modem, et voila'! Great stuff!
when will stratospheric be available near me?
:)
Check your backyard after the next thunderstorm?
It wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. They are talking balloons at, what, and altitude of 10 miles or so? (I haven't yet read the article but for this I don't need to). Your DirectPC satellites are geosynchronous at worst...you're talking ~28,000 miles.
Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there?
The latency would be/will be a nonissue.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Civilians can't legally own/operate anti-aircraft weapons in the UK, so I doubt anyone will be shooting at it with bullets. Sarcasm is another story, of course...
G
Not painted, displayed on a huge screen mounted to the side, so the ads can be rotated/animated.
Just wait until someone hacks it and replaces it with goatse....
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
An interesting overview in the use of avian carriers for packet transport. Seems to follow with your point nicely though I'm concerned of packet loss due to falcon hacking.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
WIRED ran a story on a similar proposal a number of years ago. (I looked for a link but couldn't find one). As I recall, Alexander Haig (yup, that guy) was deeply involved in the project, then to be pointed towards providing ubiquitous cellular phone access across the country. They planned on using geostationary airship type platforms to get around some of the classical problems with cellular antennas and coverage. I guess it never got off the ground ;-)
These things fly in the stratosphere, "hovering at some 12 miles above the earth's surface, much higher than almost all air craft" - or birds for that matter. While the article refers to microlights at the very start, the rest of the article and the other links concentrate on blimps. The air-traffic problem here comes not from the blimp itself, but rather from the cord tethering it to the ground.
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.
There's more than one reason that this could be better than a satellite connection - the latency from the ride to space and back makes satellite-based Internet connectivity almost useless for anything but mail and web.
Presumably, this will be a shorter bounce with less latency, provided they don't relay packets via satellite anyway from the airship..
Q. Weather problems and air traffic?
A. It's 12 miles up. that's well above commercial air traffic, and i suspect (although i'm too lazy to check) most weather problems.
Q. Latency TImes?
A. According to the article, those will be a hell of a lot lower than satellite. Also, it seems to be boasting a very, very high rate of transfer.
Q. How many are needed for redundancy?
A. Well, none. If it crashes it does. Kind of like how, if your ISP gets blowed up, you ain't got no internet. This isn't yet considered stable enough for long term solutions. it's mainly just cheap braodband for areas that don't have it, until they get it - if that makes sense. I see more military applications than anything, to be perfectly honest.
** Chigusaaa!!! You're the coolest girl in the WORLD!!! **
This speed figure seemed to be just thrown out of a hat, with nothing to back it up. (It's also referenced on this CAPANINA project page, but again no more details.
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.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Read the article....
They say 12 miles----
Seems awful high to me, but what do I know....
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
But would anybody notice if they did that & tethered the thing over Times Square?
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
How big are these airships?
It is appropriate that the source of one's internet might also block out the sun for short periods of time, thus rendering it safe for geeks to venture outside.
"Natural light! Get it off!"
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/ broadbandhaps.htm
So is this some sort of heavenly bandwidth??
Man, oh man.. That's funny.
> Will they sell advertising painted on the sides of the airships?
No, because they're too high up to be legible. But they'll insert random redirects to their marketing sites into your HTML pages.
Heh, this made Slashdot. Cool. So, yeah. I know these guys.
Basically, the airships is question are built by a company named Aerovironment (www.aerovironment.com). I've known about them for a while; one of my good friends works for the company. Really cool stuff; the basic idea is that this giant fixed wing circles around a rural area in the mid-to-upper atmosphere (where the air is thin enough to reduce drag, but thick enough to support lift) using solar power during the day and battery power at night. Then you drop some cell / wireless data relays on the bottom of the plane (UAV, to be more accurate), and poof: Regional visibility of a satellite relay, without the lag of communicating with a device being 22,500 miles away in geosynchronous orbit. That it's much cheaper to deploy the device (and possible to recover it as needed) is just gravy.
Things haven't been trivial for Aerovironment -- they lost one of their fixed wings some time ago during a test flight in Hawaii -- but as far as I know, they're the leaders in developing UAV's that simply don't need to land.
--Dan
I seem to remember that a similar (or even the same?) plan was mentioned on /. some time ago. Couldn't find the /. article, however, I found a short article on the BBC website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2932806.stm
Yes.
I would like to see the engines keep an airship in position in a storm or gale force wind.
;)
Maybe a carbon nanotube tether is in order
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
This is just great. Now we have to wait for two emerging technologies to mature: wireless broadband AND autonomous blimps. Not to mention the integration and ground control thereof. It's not like they're not having a hard enough time deploying wireless broadband from the top of a steel pole on a hill--pretty reliable and established mounting technology in most parts of the world--now they have to do it from a floating platform that has been pie-in-the-sky (pardon the pun) for decades. Yeah, it will happen Really Soon Now!
I can't read the university or manufacturer pages at the moment (slashdotted), only the guardian article. But I would expect that only the test baloon over York will be tethered, and that will be at a fairly low altitude (York doesn't have a major airport). The stratospheric baloons will almost certainly not be tethered, because of the weight of 12 miles of cable strong enough to hold them and itself. More likely they will use engines (solar powered electric, for example, so as not to carry fuel) to hold position.
OK, having read the article, I was too simplistic, but not enough to change the argument. The airship operates at ~12 miles and covers a 40 mile circle. If it has a ground station directly below it (roughly speaking), then if you are on the edge of that 40 mile coverage, the max range your wireless signal would need to traverse is ~42 miles each way. So a two-way comm would traverse ~84 miles. This is still MUCH less than the ~112,000 mile range a two-way comm signal must traverse via satellite internet (28,000 mile high geostationary orbit, 56,000+ mile signal range up and down, then the return signal).
Still - no real latency issue.
hhIn Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I'm thinking that it'll work similar to the way cable modems work. Bandwidth available varies with congestion...You have to remember, not everyone would be using it at the same time, and not even everyone would want to subscribe to it.
However, it is feasible that in the worst case, it would be 120mbps at 4 AM and 60 bps at 6 PM. However, it'd probably be closer to 512 kbps at 6 PM.
Gyromills would make a better platform and they would generate electricity at the same time.
Are there pirates in small English villages?
"A large gathering of people have gathered to protest outside Slashdot HQ after the website linked to a test page hosted on the new wireless blimp. Within seconds, millions of geeks accessed it, crashing the blimp's navigational system, engine systems, and of course the web server itself. The blimp just missed the Pentagon by a mile or so, but people already have started to call Slashdot 'a bunch of geeky terrorists'."
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
He was supposedly a decent candidate for "Deep Throat," the Watergate informer who helped bring Nixon down. He declared he was "in charge" at the White House (Constitution be damned) during the Reagan assassination attempt. Now he's involved with cell phone access schemes?
These airships become more mysterious and sinister all the time, don't they?...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
....so if these things have status lights would they be LED Zeppelins.....?
It's not "York University". York University is in Canada. The department in question is part of "The University of York".
Might seem petty, but it's a bit like calling MIT the Technology Institute of Massachusetts.
I'm just waiting for Pink Floyd to do a Shoutcast of their concerts from a high-altitude inflatable pig.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
there's this company named skylinc whose name I keep seeing pop up... they call their platform "Low-Cost Integrated Broadband Radio Access (LIBRA)." it's basically the same thing... a few aerostat baloons a few km up drag a fiber-optic teather up with them... they then have the capability of covering 5000 square kilometers with approx 2Mb per person at 15,000 people.
From their FAQ:
When will the system be available?
SkyLINC will launch the first LIBRA communications platform within the next 12 months. The first users of this system will be online during the second quarter of 2004.
Where will these systems be made available?
SkyLINC have a number of different opportunities available for the deployment of the first system. The business case and requirements for each location are being assessed and an announcement will be made in the near future. SkyLINC remain open to additional deployment opportunities and seek strategic investment/partnership to launch anywhere in the world.
Is the system affected by weather?
SkyLINC use a specially engineered aerostat, designed to remain in the sky for long periods of time, whilst withstanding strong wind and adverse weather conditions. However, it is expected that the aerostat would need to be grounded during a extreme conditions such as a tornado. Weather systems are monitored to ensure that the aerostat is protected.
Can the link be made secure?
Yes. By using Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology, any wireless network can be made secure for the transfer of confidential information. See the link for an explanation as to how a VPN operates.
Do I need to be able to see the Aerostat?
By using remote site distribution SkyLINC will ensure ubiquitous connectivity within the 40km foot print. Therefore line of sight to the aerostat is not necessary.
How does LIBRA interact with aviation users?
LIBRA will be deployed within an Air Traffic Zone(ATZ), sometime called no-fly zones, which is controlled by the Aviation authority. An ATZ appears on aero-nautical charts used by pilots and air traffic controllers.
What is contention?
In the case of some communication systems, multiple users connect on to a data pipe and hence, share bandwidth. This is known as Contention. Unfortunately, if all users decide to connect at the same time then the end user connection speed drops considerably. The acceptability of this 'drop' in bandwidth depends on the application of the link. Needless to say, during a video conference, a drop in bandwidth would result in loss of images. Hence, for some applications an uncontended link is essential.
What is a symmetrical link?
To communicate we need to transmit and receive data. The amount we can transmit and receive depends on the bandwidth for the up-link and down-link respectively. A symmetric service has the same bandwidth to receive and transmit! This is essential for some applications, such as video conferencing.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
This gives the term,"My ISP has crashed" new meaning.
Pretty Pictures!
This idea completely defies the KISS rule (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I can see the possible benefits: having a network zeplin flying over iraq could have brought us some really high-quality CNN footage. By the same token, taking extremely expensive, highly delicate, slow moving experimental air equipment into a warzone where the enemy posesses missiles is probably a stupid idea. This is a cool concept, but I can't fathom how it could be used as a long term set up. At best it could be used as a temporary network suppliment, but the ongoing maintenance, inspection and operation costs would be astronomically high and, ultimately, cost more than running a cable to the area that couldn't connect to broadband in the first place. having said all that, as someone else pointed out, how many subscriber cells can you fit on one airship?
It seems like the weight of batteries needed to power the engines at night, not to mention the transmitters, would make it far too heavy to sustain flight.
Wind/storms/other aircraft: Flies at 10 miles, far above storms and other aircraft.
0 6. htmlr /p09.h tm
m .html
What about the tether: 10 miles of rope, are you taking the piss?
Weight: It's carrying capacity increases with the cube of it's size, the bigger the better.
Power: Solar panels on top increase with the surface area. Batteries for holding position at night. Power increases with the square of the size, lifting capacity increases with the cube of the size, the bigger the better.
Latency: 6x10^-8 seconds for the radio wave to travel.
The Japanese have been testing them for a while now:
http://www.jinjapan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj9803
http://www.nal.go.jp/eng/newsletter/99winte
Less likely:
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skyco
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Does anyone else see the danger in this? I live in a community of people that like to shoot at things flying overhead. The last thing I need is some drunken redneck shooting down my bandwidth out of boredom.
Are your neighbors' guns capable of shooting 12 miles straight up into the sky? I'd be more worried about the random bullets falling back to Earth than them actually reaching the airship.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Must... use... better... html. ;) Link provided below.
Stratospheric Net Service Floats into Action
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Hmmm, or would the limitation be in the ground-based client transmitters? Yeah, that's probably it. Ok, never mind me.
Dyolf Knip
It's 12 miles up.
;)
My question is... why is a British article about British scientists explaining distances for their British project in miles? Shouldn't it be "some 20 kilometers above the earth's surface"? Have we Americans already won the metric battle?
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
What's it going to be next? Comments about airships bursting into flames?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...but I, for one, welcome our new Zeppelin bandwidth overlords. /me ducks
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
How many places are "out of reach of broadband"? As opposed to "not profitable enough to enable broadband for"?
Most places have landlines. Ok, I know there are some really remote locations that do not -- like Cwm Brefi. Isn't it just a question of upgrading the existing telephone exchanges to increase coverage? No new wires, right?
I don't much care whether my broadband comes via cable, DSL, or wireless. This airship idea sounds great but it's years off. I think I'm going to go door to door trying to reach our DSL trigger level (35 signed up, need 100 -- damn old people!).
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
It wont be the same. There will be a latency but it wont be anything close to that with satellite internet. Think about it. ... Let's see, speed of light traversing 20+/- miles (up and back down each way) and this being factored into latency, vs speed of light traversing 56,000+/- miles (up and back each way). See a HUGE difference there? The latency would be/will be a nonissue.
I had satellite internet for a while and latency was a real issue. But let's do some math:
56000 miles x 5280 feet = 295680000 feet
1 meter = 3 feet 3 inches or 3.25 feet
295680000 / 3.25 = 90978461.5 meters
C = 299792458 m/s
90978461.5 / 299792458 = 0.3 seconds for a round trip.
I'm currently getting 30ms ping times to www.yahoo.com from here at work. 0.3 seconds is 300 milliseconds. A ping time of 330 milliseconds, while not great and maybe not enough to be a LPB, is respectable for a home internet account. When I went through a satellite, I was getting 1 second ping times, as in 1000 milliseconds. I think the bad ping time had more to do with the ISP than the distance to orbit.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Not completely germane, but I wanted to share. There was a webpage I used to read almost 10 years ago called Messages From the Future. It was at the time one of my favorite web sites. It was written by a guy who went by Rhb who was posting messages he claimed to be receiving from persons in the future of 2005. One of thing the future Rhb had written about was that Bill Gates would launch a pirate network based on drone planes that would fly over major cities (I don't mean pirate in the warez sense. Rather in the pirate radio station sense-outside of the law and government control). In the MFTF, this was done by Gates in response to increasing government censorship over the internet. Still, this is nearly exactly what Rhb from the future said said would come to pass in 2005 or so.
The url which no longer works was
Link
I just now found at least a partial archive but havn't checked it out much yet to find related material
Link
He made other prediction for example that Jackie Chan would be a headlining actor rather than just a stunt man or B movie actor. That was notable for me because that was the first time I had ever heard of Jackie Chan and he was indeed at that time, strictly a stunt man or B movie actor. Every person ever mentioend in the messages from the future by name, I did as much as I could to track them down and for several years, follow them. I corrosponded with Rhb and he never broke character. The page never declared itself to be a hoax or work of fiction.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
blimps and dirigibles are considered by some to be obsolete technologies, but I think they are due for a resurgence. New materials make lighter than air and helium assisted airships more feasible, especially in unmanned applications like communications. The biggest problem with lighter than air ships is wind, which makes large manned crafts dangerous. But then again, we go flying around in giant metal jumbo jets, which seems a lot more dangerous than a large craft that can hover with it's engines idling.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Britain is somewhat unique in Europe in that they still use miles. Here in Ireland we "converted" a few years ago and hence use a mix. Of course the road signs never indicate which unit they are in, you have to estimate the age of the sign to work it out.
I love a megastate where giant platform ideas are hatched in Italian restaurants, rather than secure bunkers catered by Denny's. They come up with WiFi blimps, rather than bunkerbuster nukes.
--
make install -not war
Thanks for that link to York history. I'm glad the archaeologists are "backing up" the excavations before "reformatting" them for cable. Here in New York, it's instructive to learn from the nominal root of our city. We can also learn from your solutions to the cabling impasse, especially if you choose wireless.
--
make install -not war
The article (presentation) mentions they're targeting 802.16a (WMAN) as the network tech. That offers a max 155Mbps. Sounds like a lot, until you divide it among the entire city of York, which must share the band like one "wire" to the network. At 150K people, we're talking about 1Kbps per person, average - if even 1% hit the Net at once, like for WiVoIP at a football match, that's barely enough at 100Kbps per person, leaving zero bandwidth for any other activity in the city. This network would be best used by a single organization, with managed, prioritized access. Like the city's emergency and maintenance services, which could actually use this scale of bandwidth for the greatest value.
--
make install -not war
you guys are smart, very smart.. I wonder what school you went to.
Terzic Igor Cheap, Reliable Web Hosting, and Programing
Boy! A couple of smaller versions of this would be perfect for burning man!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
...IP over avian carrier!
It seems like on a regular occasion, we here on /. hear about wireless broadband this, blimp-based that. We have been hearing about it for what? At least 5 years. Yet the only wireless broadband I know of in my market (Phoenix, AZ) is Sprint's Broadband (ie, what was SpeedChoice), and they aren't accepting any new customers (not that I would use them - my friend down the street got it before they locked, and his upload rate is HORRIBLE).
Come on, what is taking so long? Does the rollout for getting space on a tower somewhere really take this long? Does it really take this long to get licenses and such in place? Does is take this long to get an airship into the sky?
Or is this all some kind of a ploy to grab money from stupid VCs who don't realize the .com bubble burst?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
So how long before we see on slashdot:
Breaking news: 15-year old charged with hi-jacking a microplane via wi-fi?
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Its only a featherlight, fixed wing..... It'll stay in the air forever.
What happens the first time gravity wins and this thing piles into a house? Gravity may be played with but its real patient. Without an orbit to keep them up....
"I'm sorry I haven't made my homework sir - but a storm last night blew away our internet airship"
-.sig sauer-
Ugh. As I am interested in doing some online gaming (never really having done it, just experimented via my dialup with limited success), satellite is a nonplayer. The REAL clincher, though, is the price. We pay ~$40/month for DirectTV satellite. For an internet connection to, we would have to ADD $70/month. So, pay ~$110/month for the whole ball when the satellite programing is rather weak to start with...
Not a chance. I'll wait (as long as it takes) for an airship-based broadband connection to be available before I cough up for crappy satellite (no cable available in this rural burb). Alternatively, I am hoping that a new housing development half a dozen miles away will include someone using wlan in their house...so I can piggy-back off their cable internet connection. I have the parabolic antenna just waiting for a target to come within range.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.