By John T. Moore
How do humanitarian efforts in rural areas of Kenya keep in touch with the outside world? How does a doctor working in the remote regions of Tanzania get the supplies needed for a healthy operation?
In an increasing number of instances, nonprofits are using satellite technology to connect underdeveloped regions to the rest of the world.
Consider two international groups -- VITA, or Volunteers in Technical Assistance, and AVSC International.
E-mail from on high
As part of its arsenal of communications technologies, VITA, a 40-year-old international nonprofit, has been testing and using satellites since 1983 to carry out its mission of providing the poor in developing countries with technical information they need to manage their lives.
More and more of these countries soon will be able to send and receive information through e-mail with a type of low-earth-orbiting satellites, known as little LEOS, that travel at altitudes roughly 500 miles above the earth.
The little LEOs that VITA uses with pass over all points of earth at least four times every 24 hours, says Gary Garriott, VITA's director of informatics. In a process called "store and forward," the satellites deliver and pick up lots of e-mail to and from rural countries.
Each of those passes, lasting roughly five to 15 minutes -- enough time to upload or download at total of 500 kilobytes per day.
"By today's standards, that doesn't seem like a lot," Garriott says, "but that's a whole lot of e-mail received that otherwise wouldn't be gotten."
In 1994, VITA became the first organization other than the U.S. military to get a license from the Federal Communications Commission to use this satellite technology.
VITA's experimental demonstration program showed that satellite technology could be used -- winning the organization the Pioneer's Preference Award of the FCC. Between 1991 and 1994, VITA installed 25 ground terminals in 14 rural countries that had been without major communications infrastructures.
Some of those initial ground stations, which use adapted amateur radio equipment, still are in use. Others, installed in the capitals of several countries, have become defunct since those cities have been equipped with standard Internet capabilities.
The technology used in the demonstration cities, however, does not lend itself to easy and cost-effective duplication. The next step for VITA is to make less expensive and more user-friendly ground terminals available to nonprofits that work in developing countries.
To do that, VITA began contracting with private businesses that needed to build or launch satellites, or both, for their own purposes. In exchange for VITA's use of space on a business satellite over rural countries, the nonprofit allows the company to use its FCC license to operate the satellite in the U.S.
Two previous such deals have fallen through. A commercial partnership in 1995 ended when a Maryland company's satellite had to be destroyed on the launch pad. In 1997, VITA teamed up with another Maryland company to put a satellite into orbit, but it did not function properly.
Another deal may be the best hope yet for VITA. The nonprofit is working in partnership with Wavix Inc., a third Maryland-based company that collects, transmits and sells oceanographic and meteorological data using special ocean buoys and LEO satellites. The satellite that VITA wants to put its license on was launched in April and is working fine, Garriott says.
Because of licensing requirements, the builders of the satellite, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. in the United Kingdom,will turn over its leased space on the satellite to VITA, which will sublease it back to Wavix.
Wavix's ocean buoys will be equipped with terminals that communicate with the satellite. Because of the latest partnership, VITA will be able to duplicate those terminals, which are simpler to use. The more affordable terminals then will be sold to nonprofit organizations in rural countries.
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John T. Moore can be reached at
johntm@mindspring.com
