BTs Broadband via Airships Proposal
Posted: 10th Mar, 2003 By: MarkJ
The Scotland on Sunday newspaper has reported that BT is touting a new broadband solution for Scottish cities, airships.
BT has envisaged the possibility of combining a wireless broadband solution into floating airships that then transmit the connection downward to residents and businesses below:
The phone group is monitoring advances in technology which could see blimps replace or supplement communications satellites by 2013. The cigar-shaped balloons are more readily associated with the war years, when the US navy used them as cheap radar platforms.
Ian Rose, head of BTs satellite systems team, said so-called high altitude platforms (HAPs) had a number of advantages over satellites in space.
He said: "One of the advantages is that you could lay down fairly high-capacity networks fairly quickly. And because they can be brought back down easily, you can alter the payload to deal with new technology."
Satellites tend to stay up for 10 to 15 years, by which time their equipment may be out of date. But blimps could be altered to handle advances such as fourth generation phone networks.
It's certainly an interesting and far cheaper alternative to some of the other methods, such as the satellite solution mentioned above.
That said and we've yet to see a public trial of airship based broadband. So what do you think, is it a good idea or not?
BT has envisaged the possibility of combining a wireless broadband solution into floating airships that then transmit the connection downward to residents and businesses below:
The phone group is monitoring advances in technology which could see blimps replace or supplement communications satellites by 2013. The cigar-shaped balloons are more readily associated with the war years, when the US navy used them as cheap radar platforms.
Ian Rose, head of BTs satellite systems team, said so-called high altitude platforms (HAPs) had a number of advantages over satellites in space.
He said: "One of the advantages is that you could lay down fairly high-capacity networks fairly quickly. And because they can be brought back down easily, you can alter the payload to deal with new technology."
Satellites tend to stay up for 10 to 15 years, by which time their equipment may be out of date. But blimps could be altered to handle advances such as fourth generation phone networks.
It's certainly an interesting and far cheaper alternative to some of the other methods, such as the satellite solution mentioned above.
That said and we've yet to see a public trial of airship based broadband. So what do you think, is it a good idea or not?
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