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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."
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."
It would be fairly trivial to keep the appropriate air traffic control authorities apprised of their location, and, given the kind of concern you point to, I would assume that this is mandatory.
They couldn't track planes on 9/11 how do you expect them to be competent enough to track weather balloons. Also would the gps track the balloon 3 dimensionally. (While it going up and down?)