Five weird ways to bridge the digital divide

Planes, balloons and 'white spaces'...?

Broadband may be as common, and almost as cheap, as chips in Blighty these days but there are plenty of places in the world where bog-standard fat pipes are harder to come by.

The UN's comms agency, the International Telecommunications Union, is touting the importance of satellite technology in bridging the world's communications divide - as it can offer high-capacity transmission capabilities over wide areas, and bypasses the need to lay cabling and install other fixed infrastructure.

The A to Z of broadband

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A is for ADSL
B is for BT
C is for Cable & Wireless
D is for Dial-up
E is for Education
F is for Fibre
G is for Goonhilly
H is for HSDPA
I is for In-flight
J is for Janet
K is for Kingston
L is for Landlines
M is for Murdoch
N is for Next generation
O is for Ofcom
P is for Power lines
Q is for Quad-play
R is for Remote working
S is for Satellite phones
T is for Trains
U is for Unbundling
V is for VoIP
W is for WiMax
X is for Xbox
Y is for YouTube
Z is for Zombies

Another connectivity contender for getting to out-of-the-way places is long-range wireless IP-based tech WiMax, which can beam connectivity over distances of tens of kilometres. It could therefore be used to snugly blanket whole cities with wireless broadband coverage.

But some delivery solutions really take thinking outside the broadband box to a new level. Here are five weird and wonderful alternatives to getting a fat pipe fix...

Balloons

Looking to the skies is US company Space Data which has pioneered a wireless data and mobile phone services delivery method that makes use of weather balloons.

The company affixes wireless transceivers to hydrogen- or helium-filled weather balloons and releases them so they travel to between 65,000 and 100,000 feet.

From there each balloon creates a coverage circle of more than 400 miles. Balloons do not last long in the upper atmosphere but new ones are launched every eight to 12 hours to provide continuous coverage.

Space Data's so-called SkySite Network service has been used by companies in the oil and gas field - and currently its system facilitates low speed, machine-to-machine comms - but it has plans for advanced balloon-borne wireless services. And according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, internet behemoth Google has shown interest in the company and its methodology.

However, Space Data is not the only company to have attempted to get inflatable broadband off the ground.

A few years back, UK-based company SkyLinc was touting its Low-Cost Integrated Broadband Radio Access communications platform - a delivery method that proposed to use inflatable base stations, tethered to fibre-optic poles, to bring the benefits of broadband to remote communities.

More than just hot air? Time will tell on this one…

That stinks! For smelly broadband… click to page 2

Sewers

Several companies are donning gloves and wellies and poking around in the murky subterranean depths of towns and cities in order to pipe high speed broadband into people's homes.

This method sees fibre cable - for really high-speed broadband - laid in existing sewage ducts, a cheaper and faster way of hooking people up than digging up streets where legacy copper wiring lives. As if sewers weren't useful enough already.

H2O Networks, one company currently splashing around in the UK's drains, is aiming to hook up whole towns with super-fast 100Mbps broadband access over the coming years.

Making use of sewer infrastructure in this way could see smaller towns, such as Bournemouth and Northampton, steal a march on larger entities such as London and Manchester - as H2O said, the latter cities are too big to tackle at this stage.

Click here to see photos of fibre-down-the-drains deployment.

Power surge… click for page 3...

Power lines

The national grid offers the kind of ready-made infrastructure that broadband providers can only dream of.

Therefore the notion of using power lines to pump the internet into people's homes is an attractive one. But the technology has the potential to offer more - any electrical appliance with a built-in modem could be hooked up to the internet via the plug socket.

Q&A: Tiscali CEO

Mary Turner: Bandwidth is key to fat pipe nation…
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The EU has been keen to push the tech as a means of reaching out to those on the wrong side of the digital divide. Its hope is that utilities companies will get involved and bring broadband offerings to more homes.

However, despite plenty of interest in the tech in Europe and the US, power lines have not proved an easy proposition for those seeking to drive data through their wires. The technical challenges have been many. And while there have been trials - Southern Electric ran one back in 2003 - there has not as yet been an overwhelming cascade of services.

Flying high… click to see how on page 4...

Planes

Another sky-high plan for delivering broadband to the unconnected is by using high altitude aircraft.

US company Angel Technologies Corporation had grand plans for Halo (high altitude long operation) aircraft to create 'wireless super-metropolitan area networks' by circling over cities and acting as a network hub - prefiguring today's fat-pipe dreams for blanket municipal wi-fi.

After acquiring suitable spectrum, the company planned to attach pods containing millimetre wavelength antenna arrays to the underbelly of its Halo aircraft fleet.

The planes would then have been launched over cities, circling at altitudes of more than 51,000 feet to provide a comms service footprint on the ground of around 120km in diameter. Homes in the coverage zones would have had to be equipped with space-age-style dome-shaped antenna on their roofs to ensure line-of-sight contact with the aircraft, which the company dubbed "flying antenna".

Rumours of plans for rollouts of other plane-based systems do crop up from time to time.

But this is one surely expensive - not to mention environmentally dubious - broadband delivery solution which is probably best suited to the deep pockets and niche needs of the military.

Click for page 5 - just a wide open space…

White spaces

White spaces may not sound like much but in truth they are terribly useful. Radio spectrum makes use of them to break up transmissions so neighbouring bands do not interfere with each other - meaning we can all get on with watching EastEnders in peace. But a US alliance of tech companies, which includes Google and Microsoft, is eyeing them up with a view to something a little more colourful.

A-Zs…
1. Security from A-Z…

2. Biometrics from A-Z…

3. Broadband from A-Z…
4. Wireless from A-Z…
5. Green IT from A-Z…

The Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA) - sometimes also referred to as the White Spaces Coalition - is hoping to make use of the white spaces in analogue TV spectrum to beam broadband into people's homes.

The group's view is that this spectrum is dramatically underutilised and has the potential to get high speed internet services into any home that has access to TV. "Harnessing the unused White Space holds the promise to extend affordable high-speed internet access to all Americans, improve communication for emergency first responders, and empower tomorrow's innovators," it enthuses on its website.

The problem, however, is the tech must meet high standards of interference protection - broadband that plays havoc with TV signals is not going to be popular anytime soon - so the WIA is busy developing prototype 'white-space-friendly' devices for testing by the Federal Communications Commission.

But it's not the only organisation to have an eye on the potential of unused bits of spectrum. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom recently said it is proposing to allow a wireless tech known as cognitive radio to use interleaved spectrum (aka white spaces), part of the upcoming digital dividend spectrum windfall.

Cognitive radios are devices which are able to share spectrum with other services as they can detect when it is not being used and change transmission/reception path to avoid interference.

So this potential broadband delivery method is awaiting a smart enough chunk of hardware to get it off the ground.