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Ariane Launches A New Way To Get Online
pdaoust007 writes "According to the BBC, 'Europe's Ariane 5 rocket has lifted off after three earlier delays, carrying the world's largest commercial telecoms satellite.' There is also coverage from the CBC and some video here." What's really interesting is what's on board that satellite, though: "Telesat Canada, a subsidiary of BCE, has commercialized the Ka-band technology to allow universal high-speed access to internet service. Apparently, this should make high speed access available anywhere in North America. Gear will be $500 and service $60/month ($CDN)."
How much bandwidth do they have? It seems like eventually they'll oversubscribe and people will simply be better off with dialup.
Actually, the huge advantage is that the satelite can cover areas that no other broadband access could reach (such as the northern regions of Canada, Alaska and all those small towns no company considered implementing infrastructure as a valuable solution.
Qui ne va pas à la chasse n'a pas de gibier
PHP Queb
Actually, since another company bought up the Iridium sattelite fleet at a bargain price, they are doing much more than reflect sunlight. Anybody can go buy an Iridium phone for a little over a grand and purchase either prepaid minutes or subscribe to a monthly plan.
Now certainly, the prices of airtime and equipment will keep the general public from adopting this, but the ability to make a phone call from anywhere on the planet is very valuable to some people. Think about people who sail across the ocean, or who's job sends them to lots of remote places.
The original Iridium company probably overestimated the market for their product, but now that another company was able to get into the business at a greatly reduced expense, it seems like a useful and viable business model to me.
Also, the cost of sending up this *one* communications sattelite for broadband is tremendously cheaper than the cost of putting up the *72* sattelite constellation that Iridium uses (66 active plus 6 in-orbit backups).
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Where are the slash-groupies? I distinctly remember being promised slash-groupies!
While satellite Internet sounds attractive on the surface, the speed of light mocks you and your attempt at moving data with any reasonable respect for latency.
.. Your data has to get there and back, meaning 240ms minimum to your gateway. Include the reality of equipment inefficiencies and the average latency of actually accessing something across the Internet and you're reaching 400ms before you know it. A decent modem/PPP connection can get you to 80-120ms.
120ms for a one-way trip (@ ~36,000km orbit)
However, if the _bandwidth_ is high enough (say, that of a semi-truck or 747 packed with DVDs) and we had a decent (and easy to use) QoS system available, this could make a nice addition to your existing DSL/cable connection.
Use DSL/cable to start a transfer, system recognizes that it's one gigantic file transfer and moves it over to the satellite network.
$60/month is more than anyone currently pays for DSL...
Sorry, but anyone that gets real DSL access, ie >= 750 upload, no PPPoE, a handful of static IPs, no restrictions on any kind of server (as long as it's not deemed abusive) is easily ~$60. You can keep your SBC "DSL" with its dynamic IPs and peer disconnects at regular intervals.
Well, they could hardly use the shuttle could they? Now there's a pretty useless piece of junk.