ROOM
10
Special Report
László Bacsárdi
Head of Institute
of Informatics
and Economics,
University of Sopron,
Hungary
T
he internet plays an essential role in
everyday life - from communication,
broadcasting and navigation to real-time
information about any topic and, of
course, virtually all business and government
operations now depend on it. In the developed
world, people can hardly imagine a daily routine
without the Internet but, despite the benefits it
delivers to 21st century life, only 39% of the
world’s population has internet access - meaning
some four billion people continue to live their lives
without it.
Internet access could greatly improve the lives
of these four billion people, so many companies
are now seeking to provide internet services to the
developing world.
Today, the primary technology for providing
internet access is based on fibre optical
communication. Physical cables are laid
worldwide to connect continents and to provide
broadband access. The three main exceptions
are local Wi-Fi networks, mobile broadband and
satellite communications.
In all three cases, internet connections
are supplied over a small region by a local
broadcasting router, gateway or antenna, which
is eventually connected to the global network via
fibre optic cables.
However, such architecture is not feasible
in many developing countries, where the
requirement of building new infrastructure is a
significant barrier to internet access. Often this is
compounded by the sheer expense of connecting
populations distributed over large areas where
the adjacent infrastructure - such as electricity -
might also be absent or of insufficient reliability.
The idea of providing global internet
coverage to disconnected populations has
been widely discussed by both academia and
commercial companies. In 2013, a student team
at the International Space University (ISU)
suggested providing sustainable and affordable
internet access for the Brazilian Amazon region
using microsatellites.
More recently, several companies have
begun to experiment with their own ideas on
how to introduce global internet coverage,
including the balloons of Google’s Project Loon,
the drones of Facebook, and the satellites of
SpaceX and OneWeb.
Sky-fi dawn of the
space Internet era
In the near future billions of people across the globe could benefit from
broadband internet access in remote areas provided by balloons, drones
and satellites. After investigating the possibilities, risks and opportunities
of these technologies members of the Space Generation Advisory Council
(SGAC), a group of students and young professionals in the space sector,
have made four recommendations to help spread the ‘sky-fi’ concept.
