February 25th, 2008Surfing The Net @ 1.2 GB/s
Eight years later, most people in North America still have roughly the same amount of bandwidth as the early internet users at the start of the millennium. Japan, however, wants to set the bar a little higher.
In the Land of the Rising Sun, it’s not uncommon to see advertisements for 100 MBit DSL connections to normal homes. Heck, many people have between 25 and 50 MBit connections to their house, and use just a fraction of that capacity to surf the web (very few people here seem to download media the same was as Canadians and Americans). How much is a 100 MBit internet connection in Japan, you ask? About the same as the 25 MBit offerings in Canada.
But Mitsubishi Heavy Industries wanted to push the limits of technology and teamed up with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop a 2.7 tonne Kizuna communications satellite called WINDS. But, for those of you familiar with Norwegian neo-classical/progressive metal, this is not a tribute to the band.
WINDS, the Wideband InterNetworking engineering test and Demonstration Satellite, was launched from the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the Tanegashima Space Center in Southern Japan today and will be placed in geosynchronous orbit over the Pacific Ocean. It comes equipped with three antennas which will be aimed towards Japan as well as South-East Asia, and will be used to conduct experiments with large-volume, high-speed data communications on remote islands and mountainous regions.
How Fast Is Fast?
Scientists at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries tell us that the launch of WINDS will help the country build one of the world’s most advanced telecommunications and information networks, and will have the bandwidth capacity to aid with telemedicine, bringing high quality medicinal treatments to some of the most remote places in the Asia-Pacific region. What kind of speeds are we talking about? How about 1.2 GBytes/second?
Yes … 1.2 GigaBytes, not bits, per second.
Could you imagine filling a brand new 1 TeraByte hard drive with content from the web in under 20 minutes? I can’t … yet.
Aside from telemedicine, this satellite will also be used to bring reliable high-speed internet to islands and other places where traditional fiber optic lines fear to tread. Although the general consumer will not have access to the full bandwidth capabilities of WINDS, a stable 300 KBit/s connection would likely be appreciated.
I couldn’t find any information about how WINDS will get around the problems like interference from lightning or other storms, but I’m sure the communications gurus at Mitsubishi and JAXA have these things well in hand.
This could be the start of a new wave of bandwidth rushes as the global TelCo’s start to launch more high-capacity satellites into orbit to bring services to developing and over-developed nations.
That’s crazy insane fast!
I wrote elsewhere that telemedicine is possible and should be available with current technologies, but obviously the speeds you’re talking about here would give it one heck of a boost. It could also bring virtual reality to the masses and hopefully kill off TV!
VR is an interesting bit of technology … but do we need it, yet?
I could understand if VR was used to connect a doctor to a bunch of machines in some faraway operating room so that a complex surgery could be performed as though the doctor was in the very same room, rather than on a different continent, but how would it enrich the lives of ordinary people?
Of course I’m just asking this for the sake of argument, but it is something that society will need to tackle a little more as these technologies become cheaper and easily accessible. So many are already “unplugging” from reality to escape into their online worlds of imagination, so one would assume that VR would be even more enticing than the current mechanism
This could be the start of a new wave of bandwidth rushes as the global TelCo’s start to launch more high-capacity satellites into orbit to bring services to developing and over-developed nations.
Awesome - anything that promotes more space-based assets is a win in my book.
Doctors operating remotely with virtual reality is one application, but VR could greatly “enrich the lives of ordinary people” by simply offering more convenient alternatives to what we do right now, such as socializing. Rather than try to explain it myself, I’ll let the good Dr. O’Driscoll tell you in his video, Virtual Social Worlds and the Future of Learning
@Brian - With more companies and nations sending things into space, I can see how it would be a win-win for almost everyone involved. Given the extreme cost involved with sending a dozen or so large satellites into orbit, I’m sure that several of the major global corporations would be more than happy to invest a few bucks into space elevators or other alternative methods for getting payloads above the clouds.
@Nick - I hadn’t considered VR being used for educational purposes, but I can see how this would be a huge benefit for anyone. With all the science fiction I’ve read involving people escaping their problems through VR worlds, I had really only considered it to be an extension of video games.
Eventually, when people grow tired of wearing helmets and other gear for VR, perhaps the holodeck will be closer to reality
Thanks for sharing the brighter side of VR.
Now if only we could get the modems to teleport stuff. That would be awesome wouldn’t it … LOL!
I don’t even wanna go into how screwed up the broadband in this country is.
Well, this WINDS prototype does have 3 antennae, so it wouldn’t take much for Japan to point one at Malaysia and feed you guys a fat internet pipe.
That said, the Malay ISPs would probably still over-charge their customers anyways