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."

Comments

Boom time

[gevreet]

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.

Re:Boom time

[bschorr]

Well, what would you prefer to see instead?

Re:Boom time

[Kintanon]

I would prefer to see most of the interference with local economies stopped. UN food donations destroyed the economic viability of local farmers and put them out of work. Continued interference and improved prenatal care from UN medics and US Missionaries is resulting in more babies being surviving. US missionaries reinforcing the local taboo against condoms has done nothing to help the birth rates or slow the spread of AIDS on the continent. The result is a place where the average life span for people who survive past 3 years old is around 19 with almost no one living beyond 35.
Not to mention that a large portion of all of the actual useful aid like medical supplies is confiscated by warlords for their own use. If we REALLY wanted to help Africa we would be sending in the occasional team of Marines to obliterate warlord camps and airdropping condoms with instructions and a good story about how wearing them will protect you from demons. The birth rate will decline, a large part of the population will die and the remaining people will actually have enough to eat.
All of these things are more useful than broadband internet, but that doesn't mean broadband internet is bad. Giving villages access to a larger view of the planet can only help things really. Even if it's not the best or most immediate help.

Mobiles not laptops

[MosesJones]

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.

 

Re:Cheap?

[jamstar7]

You'll need those guards to protect the cable after it's buried too, or the local "entrepreneurs" will just dig it up and sell it.

Fiber optic cable isn't inherently resellable. They won't bother digging it up.

On the other tentacle, the way the local warlords in Africa play politics with food and food delivery, the local 'entrepeneurs' cutting the fiber is a very high probability, almost a no-brainer.

Africa has some serious problems, and I don't even pretend to be an expert. They've got an AIDS epidemic eating its way through the entire continent, rampant famine and drought conditions since just this side of forever, practically no infrastructure over the level of a mud hut north of Johanesburg and south of Cairo, and anyone with an axe to grind (which is just about everybody there) is out to kill their neighbor for fun, profit, or something to do on a slow Saturday night. Will this fix things in Africa? No. Will it hurt things in Africa? Possibly, by draining what little is left of the available capital still there. Will it help things in Africa? Maybe. It's a start, anyways. Change for the better has to start someplace, and this just might help.

Re:Cheap?

[Hurricane78]

Unfortunately this all does not matter, as long as the world trade organization keeps them intentionally in a tight grip. :\
And: No. I do not care for conspiracy theories very much. As a matter of fact, ask the "Yes Men". They can tell you tales from the inside, and prove it without drifting off to loony space way.

Harder then it seems, trust me

[jiggerdot]

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.