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)."

Comments

latency aside ...

[timothy]

there are a lot of places in N. America where your options for internet service are either nothing or nothing. With a service like this, one could go camping at Big Bend, Yellowstone, or Canyonlands National Park, and check email in the heat of the day :)

For a house, sure, it's not ideal when cable / DSL is available and cheap, but for mobility, this would be great. (At least, and I'm hoping-guessing, if it doesn't take ultra-finicky setup like current sat. options do.)

timothy

Hope they don't screw this one up!

[Anton Anatopopov]

I am sick of all the taxpayers $$$s going into funding all this astrological nonsense. If man was meant to go into space, God would have enabled him to breathe in a vacuum. As it is, this is just another example of American taxpayers dollars going to waste. Jesus we need to get some priorities here...

that's one way to look at it ...

[timothy]

and maybe "checking email" wasn't the keenest example to pick out by itself.

But though it obviously can cut both ways, I like the idea of (when it's possible) being able to decouple internet access from location.

Right now, I'm in Utah, and parked at a Flying J truckstop, posting to Slashdot and (yes) checking email. $5 for a daypass, $25 for a month. WiFi is getting widespread enough that (with planning) it's an OK way to work from the road by hopping between such sites, but the reason I mentioned The Canyonlands ... it would have been much more pleasant to be able to camp there overnight, work part of that time, but then do some exploring (and some use out of my Nat'l Parks Passport ;)). Since I'm on my way from El Paso to Seattle at the moment, there are a lot of places I wish I could have stopped and enjoyed the scenery, but didn't have time to, this round.

timothy