Satellite Internet: What’s Hot & What’s Not!

Hot

Plans are afoot to build several medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellites to serve the other 3 billion people in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia who have little or no internet access. The satellite company undertaking this venture is O3B, a reference to the ‘other 3 billion’, who recently linked up with Google and other investors ‘to bring cheaper, high-speed wireless Internet access to areas unlikely to see investments in fiber infrastructure.

MEO what? As its name suggests medium-earth orbit satellites orbit the earth at an altitude of around 5,000 miles compared to its Geosatellite counterparts that do so at around 22,500 miles. As it’s much closer to earth, latency (signal looping time between earth and satellite) is also shorter– around 120 milliseconds.

The plan is for O3B to launch 16 MEO satellite and have these activated by late 2010.

(source: The New York Times)[ad#ad-3]

There’s no specifics yet as to which part of Asia will be included in the coverage but I should think that it would no longer cover Southeast Asia as they project it to be covered by the Kizuna satellite.

Not

And speaking of the Kizuna satellite, July & August has come and gone and yet the promise of Kizuna going live by July 2008 has remained just that– a promise. The latest word on the Kizuna is that it is being tested for commercial operations. But that was an eternity ago.

If not for this news about O3B, interest on the Kizuna would have waned completely. It’s somewhat weird that the Kizuna satellite boys are not providing enough regular updates on what’s going on. Is there a problem? What timeline are we looking at now?

Paging JAXA, throw us a little bone over here please?

Backtype

Backtype is a very good service for those who would like to keep track of their comments. In an age when blog hopping seems to be the only excercise some folks get and leaving a comment is considered a social undertaking, a site that monitors all those places you’ve left a comment on comes very handy.

I have written about comment monitoring via Commented On a while back here. Backtype however is even more easy to use. It does not involve any sort of download or installation on the blogger’s part. All one has to do is register and fill in the username and url you use when you comment. Backtype will then track your tracks all over the internet and when it finds your comment, it checks with you whether the comment made under your name is really yours.

This service is now very popular with big bloggers that the big names are already in there. Another good feature about Backtype is that you can follow your favorite bloggers and see where they have been leaving their comments. I have followed Darren Rowse of Problogger for example and have been to some of the posts that he found interesting enough to leave a comment. It may be encouraging stalking but hey, for those making their living on the internet, you can never have enough stalkers.