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Weather Balloons To Provide Broadband In Africa
An anonymous reader writes "Two African entrepreneurs have secured exclusive access to market near-space technology — developed by Space Data, an American telecommunications company — throughout Africa. The technology raises hydrogen-filled weather balloons to 80,000 — 100,000 feet, which individuals contact via modems. The balloons, in turn, serve as satellite substitutes which can connect Africans to broadband Internet. 'Network operation centers are located close to a fiber optic cable — say, in Lagos or Accra — and a signal is sent back and forth to the [balloon] in near space,' says one of the entrepreneurs, Timothy Anyasi. The technology will also allow mobile phone operators to offer wireless modems to customers."
to fill the gap until we get UAVs that can stay up for extended periods of time.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
but with CCTV cameras rather than broadband
that sounds much better than eating.
Interesting approach to keeping them in the right spot. I was curious if they used a line or some sort of stabilization system.
Nope. They just let them float away. But they come down after 24 hours and are just tracked down with GPS and replaced.
The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don't subscribe to the service. "You're looking at a wide geographic area -- there's a wide jet stream at near space -- and that allows balloons to keep on floating without stop," Anyasi explains. "It's cheap to bring them down, as balloons cost only about $50, and since they are equipped with a GPS, it is easy to locate them and reuse them."
weather.com
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar and the damn thing floats right into the jet intake, causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
It is funny if we remember that the internet first goal was to be used by the military as a highly redundant/reliable network.
Cmdr Taco: General McNeil, it seems that we lost the Abidjan balloon.
General McNeil: I know, it must be the hurricane or maybe the North-Koreans shot it down, well TCP-IP should take care of re-routing traffic to the Brazaville balloon anyway...
Good idea although, best bang for the buck to make internet available I would assume...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Second thought -- Palm doesn't want anyone talking about tethers.
Third thought after reading the article -- they're just releasing these balloons and letting them come down after a day in the air? Just hunting the damn things down will be a chore and a half. But this is precisely the market segment the UAV people were talking about. I think the name they were using was aerostat. Idea 1 is using a solar-powered aircraft to fly in U2 territory relaying data. Missions would last three or four months and then the plane is brought back down for maintenance. The idea is that the solar cells would charge during the day and the engines would operate off of batteries at night. The second idea is using some manner of unmanned dirigible where buoyancy is provided by hydrogen and the solar-powered engines are meant for station-keeping.
I guess this is really a matter of economics -- I guess it's cheaper to hire a guy and a jeep and hand him a map versus paying millions for air vehicles that aren't in production yet?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yah, its pretty important to make sure they all have internet access so they can hit up youtube while they starve to death.
How about we spend the cash on some food, or clean drinking water...or something equally less a luxury.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Solar cells,two or thee small electric motors and the ballon becomes a blimp. Far easir to track if you can remote pilot it to known locations
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I would have thought that multiple 100,000 ft lengths of telephone wire would make the balloons too heavy.
[1131] Disconnected: Balloon Service Interrupted. Try again later.
Speaking from personal experience with the near space launches I have completed with a team (http://nearspace.0x58.com) located in Arizona, I hope they don't make the mistake of putting the GPS on the outside of the box. During our second balloon launch we launched closer to night so that we could attempt to get photo's of the sun setting (and boy did we succeed: http://nearspace.0x58.com/launches/CONNERY-2/pictures/Payload_Camera/).
However what we had not counted on was the fact that the temperature would drop so low that the GPS would literally freeze and stop responding and completely shut off, until it got low enough, and warm enough again to turn on. We thought we had lost our package payload.
Other than that, since the balloons are going to follow whatever winds they can find, how are they going to make sure that the area they want to service has a balloon above it at all times? What if the wind is going in the wrong direction? As for recovering the devices, will they be water proof? What if it lands in a lake, or body of water? What about high up on the mountain side somewhere?
Definitely interesting and something to watch in the near future, if this is cheaper than launching a satellite and can be done in a sustainable method and still provide adequate phone service or other services using near space technology!
cat
This could give a whole new meaning to "the internet is down". Of course when signing up you have to be wary when they advertise "high"-speed internet. I guess it should work fine though, given the cheap overhead. I just wish it wasn't only planned for parts of Africa, as it sounds like it will be above and beyond what we've got here in America.
My webcomic
Apparently the balloons need to be taken down daily to have their batteries recharched. I wonder, wouldn't 80,000-100,000 feet be mostly above cloud level and be an excellent opportunity to use solar cells?
The balloons come down every 24 hours due to the limitations of battery life -- and to keep them from floating into territories that don't subscribe to the service.
The drifting might be a tougher nut to crack though. Rather interesting idea for rural areas actually.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
Neat Idea, they should deploy these in rural america where verizon doesn't go and the comcast/at&t duopoly is fierce..
It's going to end in tears. I can already see a movie being made. Black Hotspot Down.
IT is ballooooon!
Bow-ties are cool.
When you take into a ccount that any time they try and lay fiber it gets stolen and sold for it's scrap value, this is a great idea. Less chance of the infrastructure being stolen/damaged.
This seems like an awfully expensive solution. Does anyone remember Stratovision? It was too costly to keep a B-29 in the air 24/7 just to broadcast. Why should it be any different with disposable air balloons carrying easily lost technology?
If God meant for cell towers to be attached to balloons, he would have, uh, err, done something different!
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Offtopic? geez, that's a bit harsh.
Yeah, I was pretty brief, but I couldn't really think of any way to elaborate on my point that wouldn't have drawn it out unnecessarily. "That's freaking awesome" pretty much said it all.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
So what happens then when these untethered balloons are floating up into the jet stream and a Airbus or 747 doesn't pick it up on radar and the damn thing floats right into the jet intake, causing an explosion and bringing down 400 souls to their death?
More than likely? Thousands of customers below will go "Hey, who turned off the f*ckin' Internet?"
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Or at least it has the potential to, if they make a rural RF sharing option available.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Life imitates art on this one. One of the characters in the novel Spin founded a company with simular technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(novel)
The US has been using these along the southern border for years. They are tethered & fly at 15,000 feet and provide radar coverage along the border to interdict drug smuggling by air. They had problems with leaky balloons, and the need to ground them for maintenance, at which time they were vulnerable to bad weather on the surface. There were formal no-fly zones posted in their vicinity. Apparently there was no problem with aircraft running into them. I've driven along I-10 and occasionally have been able to see them in the air, they definitely look like hovering flying saucers.
I have an important transaction in progress with someone in the ministry of finance. This will maybe help the transaction go smoother!
There is also a book called 'The Golden Age of Ballooning' published by the BBC. It's in an attractive hand-tooled binding, is priced £5 and failure to buy it will make you liable to a £50 fine or three months' imprisonment.
And now ...
"Look its a bird!"
"Its a plane!"
"Uh its my ISP bro..."
The company that actually produces and operates these balloons is SpaceData corp. http://spacedata.net/
They currently offer low bandwidth coverage across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. This is used, for example, to monitor oil wells in the middle of nowhere which are otherwise left untended allowing them to take readings without having to make a costly trip to the well.
The iPhone "Ed's iPhone" cannot be updated at this time because the activation server is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.
Oh, the humanity....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
My parents live in Africa and get better cell coverage than I do here in the USA. They can drive from northern Zambia to the tip of South Africa and never lose signal.
So Why not just use the existing Cell Towers to provide broadband?
I'd be interesting to know what's the quality of such a link: latency, throughput, how many retransmissions, etc.
OutputLogic
Sun^H^H^HOracle Microsystems floating giant Blackbox zeppelins over the savannah to provide email/newsfeeds/hosting...
I for one welcome our new airship based overlords.
...will be the ping/lag. Like trying to play CPMA with someone in UAE.
Well, better than nothing. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
And there goes their infrastructure....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If they can access the internet they can perhaps improve their agricultural output for a few years, until the demand is satisfied and the surpluses go to waist. Access to the internet certainly will not cause them to reform their governments, construct efficient cement plants, power plants and transport networks or conquor malaria.
South Africa (in particular Gauteng and the Western Cape) has economies of scale in all these fields and is accepting African migrants en masse. Instead of sending Zimbabweans food aid, it is after all much more productive to employ them in South Africa, by for example building houses. So investing in the South African economy is by far the best way to help the continent's poor (and has been more profitable than investing in America during the last decade).
Surely, I say to you, if Hell has a broadband link directly to Slashdot then please open the earth and help me come on down on the one exception that we aren't limited to HURD and computing signal in Base2.
Africa really need such cheap solutions in order to reduce poverty. It is a very serious situation
It is a great idea if you review the USAF ID chart at http://videographyblog.com/USAF_ID_chart.jpg
Are they possible? I once bought lead foil advertised at "ten thousanths of an inch thick" thinking it might provide the envelope for a lead balloon. Sadly it was 10/1000 inches thick not 1/10000 inches thick. I think a balloon made from gold foil is possible but getting lead to the same thickness may not be.
Helping them in South Africa is so much easier than helping them in their country of origin.
You blame Zimbabwe's leadership. Others blame the voters for not rising up sooner.
What I'm saying is that a country with a large GDP like South Africa is much less likely to descend into that spiral. The same goes for provinces and municipalities within South Africa: The ones with more money are more accountable and efficient.