Mar 16, 2009, post by Artur Ślesik
Thales Alenia Space today announced it has started construction of 16 of its Low Earth Orbit communications satellites for Jersey Channel Islands based O3b Networks Limited, with options for additional spacecrafts. The satellites will offer low latency Internet backhaul to emerging markets and developing countries worldwide at speeds up to 10 Gbps with a combined total capacity in excess of 160Gbps. Thales Alenia Space started design activities under contract in 2007 and has received Authorization To Proceed (ATP) with the construction phase of the project. The delivery of the initial satellites and service activation are scheduled for late 2010.
O3b Networks recently announced this new satellite network with support and funding from Google, Inc,, Liberty Global, Inc., and HSBC Principal Investments. Bridging the gap between current satellites and fiber optic cables, O3b Networks will provide fiber-like trunking capacity to telecom operators and backhaul directly to 3G Cellular and WiMAX towers.
This contract further demonstrates Thales Alenia Space’s position as the world’s leading space telecommunications system manufacturer. O3b Networks will rely on a flight-proven platform. This platform is perfectly suited for telecommunications constellations with excellent in-orbit performance and secure development. It provides a cost-effective solution with a recurrent service module that features low-cost adaptation to the specific needs of various missions.
Greg Wyler, Founder and CEO of O3b Networks, stated: “We have selected Thales Alenia Space for the manufacturing of our satellites as the result of a detailed opportunity analysis and competitive bidding process. Thales end to end system design experience and capabilities made them thebest candidate to support our go-to-market strategy and provide the most reliable heritage and solution to support our unique mission. We are well under way with the development and will have the initial system in orbit by the end of 2010″.
Reynald Seznec, President and CEO of Thales Alenia Space added: “We are very proud to have been selected to design, build and assist with the launch of a new major Low Earth Orbit constellation project. For this innovative project, we will leverage our strong heritage in both LEO platforms and unique capabilities in mission-critical payloads. We have organized ourselves to execute flawlessly on this contract and look forward to the late 2010 launch of the first batch of satellites.”
more > o3bnetworks.com
Mar 11, 2009, post by Artur Ślesik
O3b Networks, the developer of a new fibre quality, global Internet backbone, announced today that Microcom DRC has signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract for O3b Networks’s Quick Start service. O3b’s Quick Start carrier managed service provides high-bandwidth, low-latency Internet access directly to Microcom. Once connected, Microcom will offer more affordable, high speed Internet access to its customers.
O3b Networks, funded by Google Inc., Liberty Global, Inc. and HSBC Principal Investments, is building the world’s first ultra-low-latency, fibre-speed satellite network. The network is designed to improve Internet access for the millions of consumers and businesses in emerging and developing markets. Activation is scheduled for late 2010.
“As the largest wireless ISP in the DRC, we have successfully addressed customer access to our network; for us, the challenge is to provide a low-latency connection back to the global Internet,” said Leon Ntale, CEO Microcom. “With O3b’s Quick Start service, we have access to a fibre quality service without the overhead of a fibre network. With the O3b backbone, we look forward to providing high speed Internet access to the 60 million people of the DRC.”
“Microcom, like many emerging market operators, has significant opportunities to provide new data services,” said John Finney, EVP Sales and Marketing for O3b Networks, Ltd. “In most markets,the reliable low latency backhaul does not exist. This is where O3b comes in. Our solutions allow operators to provide an Internet experience similar to developed markets.”
more > o3bnetworks.com
Mar 09, 2009, post by Artur Ślesik
The road from Nairobi winds 100 miles to Entasopia, deep in Kenya’s Masai country. The asphalt gives way to sand and dust, until finally it is just a dirt track climbing over broken hills and plunging back to desert flats. The going is slow.
The outpost, with about 4000 inhabitants, is at the end of that road and beyond the reach of power lines. It has no bank, no post office, few cars and little infrastructure. Newspapers arrive in a bundle every three or four weeks. At night, most people light kerosene lamps and candles in their houses or fires in their huts and go to bed early, except for the farmers guarding crops against elephants and buffalo.
Entasopia is the last place on earth a traveller would expect to find an internet connection. Yet it was here, in November, that three young engineers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with financial backing from Google, installed a small satellite dish powered by a solar panel, to hook up a handful of computers in the community centre to the world.
In recent years the mobile phone has emerged as the main modern communications link for rural areas of Africa. From 2002 to 2007, the number of Kenyans using mobile phones grew almost tenfold to reach about a third of the population, many of whom did not have land lines, according to the International Telecommunication Union.
But many of the phones were simple models made more for talking than web browsing, and wireless data networks are slow, with sporadic coverage.
Satellite connections are faster and more stable, which is why they are attracting interest from the likes of Google, as a way to provide internet connections to the estimated 95 per cent of Africans who, according to the telecommunications union, have no access.
Although providing access is outside the normal business realm of Google, with this project it is looking at how obstacles might be overcome in Kenya and other parts of Africa.
The dish at Entasopia was intended to operate for months with little maintenance under harsh conditions. This station, along with two others in villages almost as remote, is part of a larger push by Google into small, marginal communities, providing them with new tools to access information, work with distant colleagues, and communicate with friends and family.
Google paid for the final design of the stations and is covering the monthly fees for satellite bandwidth. The company has also invested in O3b, a start-up that hopes to deploy a constellation of satellites over Africa by the end of next year.
The head of Google’s East Africa office, Joseph Mucheru, said, ”Building infrastructure is not necessarily Google’s objective, but if you look at all the areas that Google has gone into, in many cases it has been to fill a gap.” Just how much opportunity there is remains unclear. Google is uncertain whether such satellite stations can pay for themselves in rural areas, given the cost of equipment and bandwidth. Communities may well benefit from the connection, but they do not all have the means to afford it.
But when internet connections arrive in small towns like Entasopia, they put new tools into the hands of people hungry to use them, and for some there, that has had wide repercussions.
James Mathu has worked for the Kenyan agriculture ministry in Entasopia for five years, advising farmers on the environment, crop husbandry and soil conservation. The stable internet link allows him to send information to district headquarters in Kajiado, instead of spending days travelling there and back to deliver monthly reports, which are too lengthy for him to send via mobile phone.
”It is a five-day affair,” he said, estimating that the internet saved him 12,000 shillings a year, or (about $A237), in a country where the gross domestic product per person is $2651.
Julius Kasifu, 40, is using the internet to try to help others. His family runs a farm, but because his legs were crippled by polio as a child, he was limited in the farm work he could do.
In Masai society, he said, disabilities like his were seen as bad omens. Traditionally, disabled newborns were abandoned and their mothers put through a ritual cleansing to banish evil spirits that were said to have caused the disability, while the place where the birth took place was burned. Even now, such children are often kept hidden in the family manyatta, a wattle-and-daub hut.
Kasifu is leading a campaign to raise awareness and build a shelter, called Tuko, for such children. With the internet connection, he has been able to upload a short video about their plight.
But there are significant limits to how many Kenyans the internet can reach. Even if it is available free, not everyone can take full advantage of it. One particular obstacle is computer literacy and literacy itself: many of the adults in Entasopia, especially women, cannot read.
more > canberatimes.com
