On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Don B. Roadman wrote:

> On 15 Jun 2000, at 14:07, Saeed Saeed wrote:
>
> > What about the satelite connections... does any one knows what it
> > requires to set one up?.. I tried to search for this on the internet,
> > and could not find any place to begin..
> >
> > Saeed A. Saeed
>
> Well, I could be wrong, but I'm going to take a wild guess here. I
> would think that you should start out with a Rocket. Or, at least
> publicise a contract for putting up a satelite and try to get nasa or
> ESA, or the chinese to bid on it. Then test it out. I dont think you
> should sell subscriptions before you have probed its bandwidth and
> verified that it works well.

Chuckle...  I could almost see that one coming.  Seriously, Saeed, the
expense might not be far off.  My understanding is that satellite time is
quite expensive, you pay by the bit AND by the channel.  Even if it's just
by the channel, the last guy I talked to said they had (I seem to recall)
a 16Kbit/sec downlink and a very low speed uplink that cost several times
what my direct T1 to a backbone provider cost.

I could be way wrong, but we didn't see any practical application other
than for extremely well-funded expeditions to extremely remote locations.

Dale
---
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
                -- Isaac Asimov