[FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again

Sat Jan 28 21:26:28 EST 2017

https://x.company/loon/

-- rec --

On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 8:46 PM, Gary Schiltz <gary at naturesvisualarts.com>
wrote:

> I don't have much experience with the GEO providers, e.g. Hughes, but I
> seem to remember that the minimum latency of about a quarter second round
> trip imposed by the speed of light makes them very unpleasant to use for
> VOIP, otherwise they are okay. Still, fiber is so much cheaper up until the
> "last mile" (in urban areas), which more or less equates with the "last ten
> miles" in rural areas. I have the impression that a lot of highways have
> fiber optic along them, as the easements are already in place and they
> connect urban areas capable of using the bandwidth from the fiber. But many
> rural roads extend for many miles or tens of miles, with a few houses
> widely scattered along them, so the cost of fiber is harder to justify
> there. On flat land, microwave works very well with little investment in
> towers, but the hillier the land is, the more towers and repeaters are
> necessary. So something like Facebook's drone idea seems quite attractive:
> use the drones as if they were extremely high towers, capable of relaying
> signal from fiber optic connections along the highways down to those widely
> scattered rural houses. One of the problems is keeping the antennas
> aligned, since the airfoil-design drones need to keep moving to stay in the
> air. I wonder if they have looked at using helium balloons for the lift,
> and only use drone technology to stabilize them. That should work if the
> wind is minimal at extremely high altitudes.
>
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 7:06 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps a hybrid GEO/LEO could be made?   The bandwidths are not bad for
>> the existing satellite internet solutions.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gary
>> Schiltz
>> *Sent:* Saturday, January 28, 2017 11:55 AM
>>
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>
>>
>>
>> That's cool, but this type of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites seem to me
>> more sutible for ubiquitous low bandwidth communication, e.g. satellite
>> phones. I don't know how well it would scale - for example, I doubt that
>> millions of people could simultaneously get their full megabit from a small
>> LEO constellation. One alternative that looks intriguing to me is
>> Facebook's Aquila drone, that flies at about 20km altitude - still low
>> enough for microwave broadband communication, but high enough to avoid
>> commercial air traffic.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:32 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Space X just launched the first 10 (of 70) of Iridium NEXT low-earth
>> satellites.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.iridium.com/company/industryleadership/iridiumcertus
>>
>>
>>
>> It’s not high bandwidth (about a 1MB/sec), but should be lower latency
>> than HughesNet, Wildblue, etc.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson <
>> nickthompson at earthlink.net>
>> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Date: *Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 11:13 AM
>> *To: *'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>
>>
>>
>> No BroadBand at my farm in Central Massachusetts.  Awaiting Gary’s
>> International Assistance.  Remember a few years back when Venezuela was
>> supplying cut-rate oil to low income people in New England?
>>
>>
>>
>> Just Sayin’
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Gary
>> Schiltz
>> *Sent:* Saturday, January 28, 2017 10:43 AM
>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again
>>
>>
>>
>> I have been working here in Ecuador to provide internet access to poorly
>> served areas, and it is a challenge, albiet not an insurmountable one.
>> Wireless technology from smallish companies like Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, and
>> Mimosa to name a few, is pretty inexpensive, even here where import duties
>> are high. The big challenge where I'm working is getting line-of-sight
>> between nodes, where there is a lot of dense forest cover over 20 meters
>> high.
>>
>>
>>
>> One thing that I found interesting in the article that Jochen linked to
>> is that the US FCC defines broadband as 25mbps down / 3mbps up. Maybe I'm
>> just used to it, but I find about 2up/1down plenty even for video
>> streaming. More is always better, of course :-)
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Santa Fe, and New Mexico in general, is interesting in that regard.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> But then there is a lot of the countryside that is left out of this. I
>> really like the idea of making the Country(side) important. In NM there
>> issues with the tribal lands which are poorly served, but it's getting
>> better.
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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