Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960509171814.4903A-100000@fox.ksu.ksu.edu> Date: Thu, 9 May 1996 17:20:03 -0500 From: kerry miller <mailto:astingsh@KSU.KSU.EDU> Subject: Computers and their Uses To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
http://www.healthnet.org/irish.htmlOut of Africa
Sophie Kevany reports on the Irish connection in developing low-cost satellite communications in Africa and other underdeveloped regions
SatelLife itself is the result of the work of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prizewinners, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). One of the doctors involved, Dr. Bernard Lown, founder and chairman of SatelLife, had already identified lack of communications as a problem for doctors in underdeveloped countries, so he set about solving it by raising $1 million and commissioning the satellite.
For most of the developed world, getting connected is as easy as picking up the phone, and provided the phone system is up to it that's all there is to it. Without a reasonable telecommunications network, however, getting on the information superhighway can be a problem. In Africa or Asia, for example - not so much in the big cities or capitals - but in the more remote rural areas.
Making connections to remote places using low-cost technology, however, is exactly what Professor Gordon Foster of Trinity College, Cublin, does. Now head of the Trinet electronic communications project, he was inspired several years ago when trying to make contact with colleagues involved in a UN project.
One of them, based at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, could only be contacted sending a message first by diplomatic bag to Lagos, then across the city to a radio telephone link, where it was finally read out to the waiting colleague. Not exactly convenient, or speedy or interactive - but it was this kind of problem that in the late 1980s led Professor Foster to begin research into other means of low-cost communication - Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites for one.
The immediate upshot of his research was the construction of his own ground station for satellite communications. Using second-hand computers - on sale for #200 a go - Professor Foster set it up in his tiny office at Lincoln Place in TCD for about #3,000 all told. The ground station connects to a polar orbiting LEO satellite via high frequency radio.
The satellite makes about six to eight passes over the office every day, lasting about 15 minutes each time. Messages are uploaded and downloaded from satellite to radio aerial, and onto the computers via a terminal node controller or TNC - the equivalent of a modem.
The ground station also has a gateway to the Internet so that messages received from the satellite can be transferred directly onto the Net and vice versa.
The project has just completed its "proof of concept phase"; and with up to six working connections to other ground stations, Professor Foster feels the viability of this type of satellite communication has been established.
Probably one of the most dramatic connections was made earlier this year as a result of the Ebola virus breakout in Zaire. During the height of the epidemic, two doctors at Vanga hospital near Kitwit, Dan and Paul Fountain, made contact with Professor's ground station.
"A message just popped up saying, `hello, here we are,' and that was it." Professor Foster says. Both doctors have a background in radio communications, and besides making contact with TCD they managed to link up with the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, feeding and receiving vital information throughout the outbreak.
Another connection with a medical school in Ethiopia is planned for next year. The Jima Institute of Health Sciences (JIHS) in southern Ethiopia currently manages with a limited telephone system and an unreliable fax. An Irish Aid project is underway at the JIHS, and staff from the institute are currently studying at the TCD Department of Community Health. Better communications facilities between Jima and TCD would benefit staff and students of both institutions enormously.
It's no coincidence that both of the above examples are health-related. Although Trinet does not limit itself to health-related projects it's obviously a primary issue in the developing world. Indeed, the satellite Professor Foster is using - HealthSat 1 - was designed and built specifically to facilitate health projects in the underdeveloped world. Owned originally by a Boston-based charity called SatelLife, it was built for them by Surrey Space Technology Ltd (SSTL) at the University of Surrey.
SatelLife itself is the resutl of the work of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prizewinners, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). One of the doctors involved, Dr. Bernard Lown, founder and chairman of SatelLife, had already identified lack of communications as a problem for doctors in underdeveloped countries, so he set about solving it by raising $1 million and commissioning the satellite.
Since then HealthSat 1 has been sold and HealthSat 2 was launched in 1993. Professor Foster still uses HealthSat 1, but will soon move to HealthSat 2.
The aim now is to improve and extend the existing network - to Jima for example. This summer Professor Clement Dzidonu from Ghana, who is working with Professor Foster at TCD, made a tour of existing and possible ground station sites in 10 countries in Africa. Funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, via its UN 50th Anniversary office, the tour was in preparation for a demonstration of remote communications - or "remote connectivity" as Professor Foster describes it - in March 1996. The demonstration will be in TCD and Dr Bernard Lown of IPPNW will make the keynote address.
On top of that, Professor Foster will be working on the development of low-cost, user-friendly ground station equipment or use in the field - the "any time, any place, anywhere" of satellite communications.
"Its already feasible but it's expensive, with current technology costing about #15,000. We need to bring the price of a total system down to about #2-2,500." If it's feasible, he says, it could be with us within the next two to three years.
SatelLife mailto:hnet@usa.healthnet.org Gordon Foster mailto:ffoster@tcd.ie Copyright The Irish Times
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