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SKA Telescope To Offer Neighbors Cheap Broadband
An anonymous reader writes The Square Kilometer Array is a giant telescope currently being built in the middle of the Karoo in South Africa, which when complete will be 50 times more sensitive than any existing Earth-based telescope. The problem is that it's so sensitive, the thousands of antennas need to be protected from terrestrial radio interference. Given that cell masts and technologies like TB white spaces are the only way people living in the remote areas near SKA are going to be able to get affordable net access, this is a bit of a problem. In order that its neighbors aren't completely cut-off, SKA is offering them subsidized satellite broadband instead. Which is nice.
The area is extremely empty in the first place. That's why they chose it for (part of) the SKA.
The antennae will have dedicated fibre connections (the bandwidth needed for the aperture synthesis is, um, scary, but I suspect
running fibre or copper from there to every village and isolated farm would be stupidly expensive. Carefully chose satellite equipment will broadcast very
little outside it's beam, and on quite specific wavebands.
The article admits that it's not perfect (latency, download caps) but it's better than nothing and imposing radio quiet was an absolute condition of South Africa getting part of this very high prestige project.