by It may seem hard to believe for those of us who stay on top of the world’s newest technological advances, but there are huge swaths of the world that still have limited access to the Internet. As the Daily Mail reports (via AppleInsider), the non-profit Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) wants to change all that with a so-called “Outernet” service.
The project aims to bring the Internet to the roughly 40 percent of the world’s population that doesn’t have unrestricted access to the Internet, whether because of cost or censorship. It’s an ambitious undertaking, and if the group manages to pull it off, it’s possible that even citizens of reclusive North Korea could have access to uncensored Internet.
Source: Outernet
According to the project’s website, the Outernet would work by shooting hundreds of small “cubesats” into space by 2015, which would then create a free-to-access network around the globe. Specifically,” AppleInsider says, “In order to serve the widest possible audience, the entire constellation utilizes globally-accepted, standards-based protocols, such as DVB, Digital Radio Mondiale, and UDP-based WiFi multicasting.”
The service is limited, unfortunately; under the current model, visitors would only be able to access certain websites owing to the uni-directional broadcast system. It’s a little like television in that regard. Plans, however, exist for a two-way system, such as what most of us are familiar with.
Several hurdles threaten to impede the project’s progress. For one, there’s the issue of raising the “tens of millions” needed to literally get such a project up in the air (along with permission and assistance from NASA); for another, there’s the threat of fights with the telecommunications companies who currently grant most Internet access. But this isn’t some far-flung goal; if everything goes according to plan, the “cubesats” could start launching into space as earlier as June of 2015.
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