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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"
Due to speed, time, distance physics, geostationary is high latency simply due to the speed of light and the distance out to the geostationary belt.
Because they're approximately 5 times closer to the earth than geo-satellites, the latency is reduced by approximately five times. It's a constellation of satellites?
That leaves low earth orbit. Low earth orbit means dopplar shift and high power or real time tracking.
Maybe for businesses..
Or maybe ISP's who then run WiMax.
The truth shall set you free!
...since the Chinese are already putting together the ground systems - WIMAX, etc. ZTE has been there since 2006...
Have you ever been to Africa?
Imagine this:
A group of people that want to promote a good organization in the poorest Area of Tanzania. They want a website so they can get support from Americans who are willing to help their cause. Their website will have to be American based because the internet in Africa is terrible, and the fact that they have to connect to it through Cell phones makes it worse.
Instead this organization has a representative (that's traveling anyway) Upload the data in Kenya where internet is more reliable.
Now Imagine this:
A student wants to learn all he can at an affordable price. Text books are expensive and internet is basically not available (and even more expensive). The cheapest way is to have a friend from the states ship CD's of data that the student can then look over.
And this:
A Town wants to start an internet cafe, a source of income as well as development for the town. The two options are cellphone usb cards so that the computers hook up to a cellphone provider and use it as their internet (cheap set up, expensive use, price per MB) or Satellite (expensive set up, expensive use, price per Month). Said town is expected to go through a boom with an international airport about to open leading tourists right into the Serengeti. If the internet could be harnessed, this could mean a good economic boom for the town, and the money getting funneled right into the developmental project.
From my experience in Mugumu, I'd love to have this help them out. (and the airport probably won't yet be finished by 2010)