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O3B Details Plan for Satellite-Based Bandwidth For Africa
slash-sa writes "O3B Networks has been quietly preparing itself over the last 12 months for the
moment last week when it announced that it was going to be offering cheap, low-latency satellite bandwidth that can cover any part of Africa by 2010. It has put in place early finance with Google, Liberty Global and HSBC. Here are more details from the entrepreneur behind the project, Greg Wyler."
"Low latency satellite bandwidth at USD 500 a Mbps or less by 2010"
Maybe for businesses..
With many african states effectively landlocked and with poor or insecure infrastructure this could be the data boom that africa has been waiting for. That is if it isn't choked off by self serving governments.
Africa is just going to eat itself. It's by far the most useless, unproductive continent on Earth and you can generalise to a massive degree and not shoot too far wrong.
The people in power, and those who want to be in power over others are self-serving, arrogant assholes and good luck doing anything in any African nation that doesn't benefit said people.
Are you the one who tagged this nocoppertodigup? Go look at some pictures of Africa and ask yourself what you would do for food if you weighed half what you do now.
...since the Chinese are already putting together the ground systems - WIMAX, etc. ZTE has been there since 2006...
I know that we are techies and we like computers but seriously do we think that the internet is the best thing to get into Africa in a hurry? If you look at what mobile phones have done in terms of communication and micro-payments then its hard to see the point of pushing expensive ($500 in a continent where people live on less than $1 a day) internet access as an important thing. Get the mobile phone network out first. This has the advantage of being lower power and with a built in infrastructure that can help micro-payments.
Arguing for VOIP and other internet based services as a way that internet access would be better ignores some of the basic economics and the experience of most 3rd world countries in the success of mobile phone communications in helping to raise people up out of poverty. Basic communications (voice) is the first step here.
So its good that its being done, but it would be nice to see one of these high profile cases actually support an existing approach that is working rather than always going after the "everyone must have a computer" scenario that makes sense for people sitting in an office in California.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Should've just dragged fiber.
Do you have any idea how the logistic problems with trying to lay fibre from Satelites down to Africa?
First you've got to fire your rocket carrying the fibre up, get it to loop over the satellite without destroying it, then have the rocket carefully navigate back to your chosen destination.
No - wireless is a better solution with satellites IMHO.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Just when you thought the 419 spam couldn't get any worse!
you know what all this bandwidth will be aimed at don't you, given the super cheap labor in africa. call centers and telemarketers. not necessarily a bad thing as it'll bring wealth into the nations that embrace it, but incredibility annoying to everyone else.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This can not be competitive in any way. A fiber costs very little to roll out, and there is good capacity in ocean fibers terminating in many African coastal cities. The only problem with fibers on land is theft. Anything valuable is stolen.
More than 90% of the population lives close to the coast.
To spend millions to build a complicated space based network to cover the poorest of the poorest 10% seems like a very poor investment. (By complicated I just mean that the satellites need to hand a connection between satellites as they orbit over Africa, as well as down linking via multiple satellites, and traffic based dynamic antenna configuration and aiming.)
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
FYI the 'developed' nations raped, plundered and killed so much during the last 400 years in that 'unproductive' continent that it will take them a couple of centuries more to recover. Let's hope by then they'll have mellowed out a bit about it or we'll definitely be seeing worldwar III.
All the arms sales currently going on, supporting I don't know how many puppet regimes selling some priceless resource for pennies on the dollar it is simply astounding.
MP3 Search Engine
I currently work for a company providing IP communications via satellite (both inclined and geostationary). Most of our customers are in Africa, and include some of the biggest ISPs in the more developed regions. since the bandwidth market there has been exploding in the last several years. So I know what I'm talking about when I say this guy sounds VERY optimistic.
The idea of using low earth orbit satellites is great as the latency on geostationary is indeed horrible. you're looking at a minimum of 500ms just to reach the ISP installation (in the US and Europe, in our case) and the RTT to your destination on top of that.If you run into another satellite link on the way, that's 1000ms minimum. so 123ms sounds terrific. BUT:
1) The guy flippantly says "If they want a gigabit, we'll give them a gigabit". For a gigabit, you'll need to work several transponders, with some insane modulation scheme (highest practical I've seen is 16psk, they'll need something MUCH more dense). The higher they go, the more error prone they get.
2) LEO will require tracking, or very high power. which means either a very powerful HPA (for the small links - the ones without the 3.5 meter dish) or a very fast tracking system for the large links with the dish. And what happens when you have to switch satellites?
3) They're looking to solve the last-mile issue with WiMax. This will interfere with C-band transmissions, so I'm assuming they will go with Ku-Band or higher, which is extremll sensitive to rain fade. Africa has quite a lot of rain. Combine this with point no. 1, and you're in trouble.
4) The article indicates they will give the customer a VAST or transmission station and all is good. It is not. Africa is not a nice place. equipment gets stolen and sabotaged. This is from sad experience. And if you do not have techs on the ground (which are very hard to find, at least competent ones) you're stuck either telling the customer "sucks to be you" or trying to support him through the phone with the replacement of a transmitter, which is a bit like trying to help someone fix an engine by correspondence.
5) The human factor - Without sounding too patronizing, the guys in Africa (even the more professional ones) need a LOT of hand holding. I truly hope they have a big and competent support department and NOC staff at the ready, who can understand garbled English through a bad phone connection, as these guys will want help with everything. From helping to identify which device in the network is causing congestion on the link, to "IP experts" who will be brought in to bring up a BGP session and will not know how to access the router, and will want your help in resetting the password step-by-step. You can, of course, tell them to manage their own networks, but you WILL lose customers. That's a lesson we learned the hard way.
In short, good luck to them, but if they truly think the technical challenges are the only ones, they're in for a very nasty surprise.
"can't run, can't hide...oh well, return 0"
You're going to need a LOT of fibre to connect even 10% of African households (that's 50 million people).
Also, "More than 90% of the population lives close to the coast." does not seem to be supported by this map of population density.
What does this have to do with Apple?
probably dig the copper up - hence why laying copper or fiber is a bad idea. what point at you trying to make here?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
seriously that excuse isn't going to cut it forever. Crime and corruption committed by black people to other black people is NOT the rest of the worlds fault no matter what twisted logic you try apply.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Does this mean we'll start getting Nigerian telemarketers? Not selling me insurance, but telling me how I can collect.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
And then if they can just sort out the other annoying little things like lack of food, lack of clean water, lack of education, the prevailing tribal mentality that cause them to kill each other on a regular basis etc, then won't Africa be a great place.
Google clearly sees potential for African web access then ... but how do you get it to the consumer if many countries don't have infrastructure or PCs.
Unless of course you had a handset you could re-package / re-price in a "stripped out" form that could access it direct?
In which case you could get voice - data - and web all from one device, all direct from Google?
Of course technically it may not be that easy to create an Android device that could do this - but if it were possible, it'd immediately make Google a pan-African MNO
Should've just dragged fiber.
Do you have any idea how the logistic problems with trying to lay fibre from Satelites down to Africa?
It's worth the effort. Once you lay the fibre not only do you have high speed Internet, you have a space elevator as well.
tackle famine, disease, drought, poverty, ethnic extermination, and tribal infighting...then we can worry about getting the latest nigerian scams to my inbox faster.
if anyones wondering "why satellite" its simple. vast stretches of africa have no electrical infrastructure...let alone water. i have a feeling this entrepreneur just wants to see his name listed next to "brought teh interwebs to afrika furst!!" in the history books.
Good people go to bed earlier.
There is minimal fibre capacity terminating in the southern sections of Africa. The biggest is SAT-3 and that is pathetic and only lands in South Africa. There are new cables in the pipeline, three under construction, but availability will be limited for the first few years. 2 of the ones under construction are to be dedicated for the 2010 World Cup and may (may) be released when that is over. The other will land in July 2009 and then we have to backhaul the capacity to the inland and distant coastal cities over networks which don't exist yet.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
...now we can at least shoot down their scams.
"Click click bloody click pancakes!"
WiMAX just launched in Baltimore today (www.xohm.com) ... why should I care about a non-existent satellite service in Africa that's only for commercial backhaul? It's not like we can afford "03B" in our house. WiMAX on the other hand is around $25/month and offering 4+ megabit speeds.
Yup, what is more, a fibre cable already circumnavigates Africa and was paid for by the usual partners: South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Portugal. The sad fact is that most of Africa is unable to do anything with it.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"400 years". Africa has been 'exporting' its surplus people for millions of years. The colonial period was actually a golden age during which the Western world (all of whom originated from Africa) invested heavily back in Africa. When the colonial period stopped, the investment stopped and Africa went back to its roots of plunder and destruction.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
et's hope by then they'll have mellowed out a bit about it or we'll definitely be seeing worldwar III.
Wake up there, Mister Rip Van Winkle.
We've already seen World War III. And the world lost.
This is simply amazing.
Thus far, radio waves could only travel at 186K miles a second, give or take (depending on a factor called the velocity factor).
Since they figured out the latency with wireless links (satellite is wireless, after all), I'm wondering exactly HOW they got the radio waves to travel faster than the speed of light.
I mean, kill the latency, the packets HAVE to be arriving quicker, when the medium is dead space, right?
Sheesh, marketing speak at it's finest.
--Toll_Free
One of the big problems with Africa is a lack of education, without decent education people can't really progress much.
IMHO that's a huge part of why my (I'm an African, but not poverty stricken, reasonably well off considering actually) continent is doing so badly.
African people (in less well educated examples, i.e. most of them) have nothing to go on but what those self serving politicians will force feed them time and time again, keeping people from realising how they are being hard done by.
My point is that with increased internet access comes increased awareness and better education, even though we're not talking degrees etc here.
Peoples minds can be opened so much with free access to information, and that will hopefully bring about some much needed change to Africa at long last, it will still be a major challenge to get these people on-line with this network, governments etc will have to be on board I would have thought (unless google is going to go out and buy PCs for all the rural farmers or something), which probably means more self serving in the short term at least, as they help themselves to revenues generated by the increased demand for bandwidth.
I hope this network will be successfull.
BTW MosesJones considering African cellular operators are pretty well established already (not in rural areas though), they are fine, pretty self serving and monopolistic too. IMO anything to strip away some of their revenues is a good thing.
Everything that opens up the market for communications is good, especially in places like Africa.
That $500.00 Mbps price seems to be for the African Telco or ISP because O3B do not seem to be selling access directly to individuals.
Sure it's not the rest of the world's fault, but do you really think that having the "white men" take as many resources as they could, divide up the natives' land destroying boundaries that had been in place for centuries, and take their villagers as slaves could have helped?
Just look at what happened in Palestine if you don't think little boundary disputes can cause violence in civilized people.
While it isn't just the "white man's" fault, I think crime and corruption committed in Africa wouldn't be as bad if the "white man" didn't come and screw everything up.
It's also worth noting that not all of Africa is plagued by violence... a lot of the people there are far more friendly than you'd find anywhere else, despite their situation. Of course, they don't make the news as often for some reason.