Development Seed Blog

I received some fun photos and answers to some questions I had about satellite feeds and telecenters today from our friends Roselie Vasquez-Yetter and Lynne Riedesel over at I-Linx.

I just uploaded four pictures from the demonstration, all of me updating this blog! This was I-Linx's first demonstration of the technology in North America (don’t know how many other Inmarsat service providers have conducted demonstrations as well, if any, over the past month). But Roselie confirmed that this was the first demo targeting the international development community.

I am interested in portable broadband satellite IP modems and the work that I-Linx is doing because it has obvious benefits for the development community on the ground and as the technology continues to evolve the price will diminish to a point where it could maybe be used by remote telecenters!!!

According my email conversation with Roselie, the RBGAN is used in many contexts including:

“deployment of headquarters proposal development teams into new areas of the developing world where they don’t have permanent field offices; assessment and M&E visits; feasibility studies in remote locations; telecenters; use of the units to implement field programs, mobile clinics and post offices; remote banking, etc.  CHF gave an example in Afghanistan where the units are used in a very rural area in the Himalayas to send information regarding building specs, supplies, etc. to and from Kabul to build schools and clinics; another client Televital is using the RBGAN to transmit diagnostic medical data from households to hospitals in India”

Here is what we are looking at (Thanks to Lynne for the kind technical explanation that she emailed me):

The unit used in the demo is called an Inmarsat Regional BGAN (RBGAN), which is a portable broadband satellite IP modem.  The RBGAN provides a packet data-only service with peak data rates of up to 144 Kbps, which is higher than current terrestrial GPRS data rates. There is also a VOIP attachment that can be used with the RBGAN to add Voice and/or Faxing capability over the broadband IP connection. I-LINX hardware pricing is $699/terminal and the airtime price is @ $9.99 per Mb.   
RBGAN service is currently available in Europe, North, Central and West Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. I have attached an RBGAN Product Overview as well as a link to a useful article written by the Executive Director of Humaninet on the uses, pros/cons of RBGAN and its successor the BGAN which will be introduced next year. The BGAN will offer increased connection speed to 432 Kbps and a global versus regional coverage area.  So essentially all areas not covered by the Regional BGAN, such as Latin America, North America, sub-saharan Africa, the rest of Asia et al, will be covered by the Inmarsat BGAN. 
 
http://www.humaninet.org/wis/satcom/RBGANNextStep.shtm

Note: While Development Seed primary focuses on internet outreach for progressive organizations and its main income stream is through website design, we are very interested in telecenters. More than half of our clients are from Peru and we are planning on expanding to other Latin American countries in the coming months. Making internet access more available and learning from locals about how they are using the internet has obvious and profound implications on how organizations should try to communicate online information to the public.