Broadband by Cubesat?: Meet the Outernet Project

outernet

Radio Free Internet?

The cubesat revolution it would seem, is just beginning. And if a bold plan announced on Monday comes to fruition, it might just lead to revolution of the rather messy kind.  The Outernet project, a creation of the non-profit New York based Media Development Investment Fund, seeks to develop and deploy a fleet of cubesats, numbering as many as 150 , in order to broadcast packaged content to a nearly global audience via wi-fi multicasting .

According to MDIF, which likens the project to short-wave radio broadcasts “timely, accurate, relevant information is critical to free societies. It enables fuller participation in public life, holds the powerful to account and protects the rights of the individual.”

The Outernet Project hopes to begin radio testing aboard the International Space Station as soon as September of this year, with a goal of deploying the first operational cubesats in early 2015.

Though certain countries are likely to be none too pleased about the prospect of external news sources over which there is no control,  Outernet’s long term goal, free two-way broadband delivered from orbit, is certain to run into determined opposition from established telecom providers.

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