Internet Unwired

Information and communication technology (ICT) - the Internet in particular-has a huge potential for sweeping away poverty and ignorance, especially in developing countries. New developments in satellite technology, such as Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems, carry the potential to connect the poorer regions of the world to the Internet.

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Introduction

Just two or three years after the Internet really took off, it is already commonplace to say that the world is being swept by a telecommunications revolution; so we shan't say it. It is a valid question, though, to ask what is meant by the world in this particular case, because hundreds of millions of people in less well-to-do parts of it have never heard of datacommunications, let alone what it could do for them. Something to worry about? Very much so.

Information and communication technology (ICT or IT)-the Internet in particular-has a huge potential to sweep away poverty and ignorance, whichis a far more interesting application than sweeping the world as such or keeping shareholders happy. This article is not about proving that ICT can serve as a powerful engine for economic growth in underdeveloped regions-thousands of examples can be found on the World Wide Web-but it may be worth noting that that idea is now getting widely accepted.

Last June in Toronto, at the world conference called Global Knowledge '97, cohosted by the World Bank and the government of Canada, United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan said, "What is so thrilling about our time is that the privilege of information is now an instant and globally accessible privilege. It is our duty and responsibility to see that gift bestowed on all the world's people, so that all may live lives of knowledge and understanding." Among the 1,500 attendees listening to those words were many representatives of the very countries where the biggest gains can be made. Several of the donor countries, too, are becoming keenly aware that ICT is not a luxury but a necessity [1].

Leading the pack, the World Bank has really embraced the idea that the way to basic prosperity and justice for all is paved partly with ICT. That doesn't necessarily mean a fiber-optic cable running under the pavement; satellites overhead might do just as well-in some respects even better and, above all, quicker. Although only a very small part of our planet has been wired so far, every place on earth has Internet access via satellite: a PC, a dish antenna and some equipment in between are all that's needed to hook up straight to an Internet backbone, even if you live in a tiny village in the middle of Mali or Myanmar. However, for the individual end user or even for a small business, the price of a ery-small-aperture terminal (VSAT) and the tariff per kilobyte sent or received are quite prohibitive, certainly in the poorer regions of the world.

Additionally, in many countries, licenses for the use of wireless communications are hard to get, if they can be gotten at all. In spite of that, a VSAT is a viable solution for larger companies and organizations as well as for Internet service providers in developing countries. For instance, about a dozen African ISPs now have their own dedicated satellite links, including a 3- or 4-meter dish antenna on their premises [2]. The dish is trained or a geostationary-earth-orbit satellite (GEO) at 35,786 kilometers (22,187 miles) above the equator, which relays the signals to and from a ground station somewhere in the West that is directly linked to an Internet backbone. The big disadvantage of such a line in the sky of fixed throughput-usually a few hundred kilobits per second-is the waste of bandwidth that occurs at night and the shortage of it during peak hours.

The good news amid all of the limitations is that satellite service providers and satellite builders-often closely linked, by the way-are becoming very keen on reaching end users directly, and new technologies enable them to do so in an affordable way. They realize that there is a huge demand for high-speed Internet connections and that only
satellites can deliver them quickly to the unwired parts of the world. Where good telephone lines or even ISDN is readily available, the new satellite services have a lot to offer as well: high speed means we are talking hundreds of kilobits per second uplink, and downlinks of a few megabits.

Future users of these direct-to-home interactive satellite broadband services owe a debt to the present users of direct-to-home satellite television, a phenomenon that has given tremendous impetus to the entire satellite industry. One of the spin-offs is a huge amount of research into new technologies; another is enough money for the initial, or even the entire, funding of the new, interactive broadband services. Beware: a few years from now you will need to spend only $1,000-$2,000 on equipment to get your own high-speed Internet link. Transmission costs maydrop to about a cent per megabyte. And there will be a whole range of dedicated satellite systems to choose from: more than a dozen if all the plans proposed so far become reality. Starting about the year 2000, every square meter of our planet will be showered with connectivity. No strings attached. Or are there?