Satellite Internet Access to the World's Poor
I read an article yesterday, several in fact, about a plan to deploy satellites to provide high speed internet access to the parts of the world that do not have access (i.e. poor and developing countries, emerging markets, etc). Basically there are 3 billion poor souls in this world who do not have a FaceBook account and can't get up to the minute box scores for the Red Sox.
You can read articles here, here, here and here.
Now that I think about it, those poor souls in Africa can't even read about how their lives are going to change, because they can't click on Forbes.com.
So the basics of the story are as follows...
Rich and powerful corporations around the globe (Google and HSBC) have put their "weight behind a plan to provide cheap, high-speed web access via satellite to millions in Africa and other emerging markets."
They are creating a company called O3b Networks, which stands for the "other 3 billion" people who do not have access. Those unsuspecting victims of internet fraud and endless amount of blogs and porn, beware, its coming.
High-falutin and filthy rich countries like the US of A and most of Great Britain have light speed fast internet access from fiber optic lines and cables that were dug deep in the ground and run across the atlantic in the 90s. But other areas, like parts of the middle east, Africa, South America and the North Pole do not have anything because the cost benefit didn’t make sense to dig trenches there.
So to bridge the information gap between me, sitting in my basement in Milton working and surfing the net, to a family starving on dirty puddle water and grain from Unicef, people smarter than me want to put a bunch of satellites into a low orbit and beam down moveon.org.
The project will cost 800 billion dollars and about a grand has been raised so far. Ok, this is in fact not true. It will cost 650 million and 65 million has been raise. Which apparently is enough to start the project.
Man, I would love to put an addition on my house with only about 10% of the money in my bank.
Anyway, I wonder if, instead of internet access, these people could use something else, like, say, I don’t know, just shooting in the dark here, but maybe…food. Yeah, food. Or water. Some water would be nice. Don’t get me wrong, I love internet access, I can watch the Yankees play while sitting in a hotel in Lynchburg VA. But I have my other necessities taken care of, like a house, clothes, medicine and Advil, Starbucks coffee, 6 televisions, a zip line, prickly pear margaritas and new long distance running shoes every 6 months. But something tells me the people who do not have internet access, not all, just some, need other things first.
So to be fair, most, or at least a lot, of the 3 billion who do not have access to www.underarockandhiding.com probably want it, and have the basics of life already in hand. Some people here in the US can’t get access, so they figure something out, and they are probably not waiting on a UN truck to bring MREs.
But this goes back to my rant about the 100 dollar laptop. I wonder if there are more humanitarian ways to spend the 650 million Lindens than to give a villager in a remote Costa Rican village the ability to upload videos to youtube.
But that’s just me, what do I know.