[FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again

Sun Jan 29 01:56:02 EST 2017

Gary,

I would not like to be the helium drone trying to stay in one spot in a 120 knot jet stream,

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2017 6:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] How we can make the COUNTRY great again

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 <mailto: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 <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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> > on behalf of Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> >
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com <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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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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