The current plan would have six to twelve satellite ground stations installed at universities around Nigeria.  One of these would be installed in Abuja at the Nigerian Universities Commission's headquarters and the rest distributed to universities in all the regions of Nigeria.

The NUC-based satellite ground station would give the NUC planners, trainers, and decision makers ready access to the Internet.   The NUC's technicians, who will be responsible for supporting the outlying universities, will be able to develop day-to-day experience with the equipment and the technology.  And academics from around the country can use the Internet connection in the NUC's thirty-station computer lab.  Abuja is a central location with good transportation access and facilities.

The other satellite ground stations will be fanned out to those universities that the NUC has identified as Centers of Excellence.  At this point the list includes: the University of Jos, Amadu Bello University, the University of Ibadan, BUK in Kano, Owerri, and Calabar.  OAU at Ile-Ife is viewed as being a Center of Excellence but already operates a satellite dish.  They may be invited to participate in the rest of this program but won't require the initial infrastructure investment.

The satellite ground station equipment installed at each satellite center will have a total potential capacity of up to two megabits on either the C or KU bands.   Originally, each institution will be configured for a 64 K uplink (outgoing) and one-megabit downlink (incoming).  However, the one-megabit downlink will be shared between all participating universities.  This provides and inexpensive way for the Nigerian Universities Commission the ability to increase the overall amount of bandwidth coming into the Nigerian University systems and dramatically increased throughputs for all the participating parties.

The way the shared bandwidth works is this: the Nigerian Universities Commission will contract with their satellite vendor for one megabit of broadcasting capacity.  All member ground stations will share this bandwidth, so if eight ground stations are receiving data simultaneously, they will experience throughput of 128K or better.   But if only one institution is receiving data, it can receive it at a full megabit.   So, at minimum each institution will experience a 64K uplink and a 128K downlink.

One of the first technical challenges for us is to see if it is possible to have common things like USENET news groups intercepted and cached on every machine in the system in order to conserve overall bandwidth by eliminating duplicate broadcasts.