Donegal Trial For New Broadband Delivery Mechanism, Tethered Balloons

oscarBravo

Originally posted by Victor
Mountains are fixed, tethered balloons / blimps are not quite so fixed. No mountain in Ireland is more than about 1,036m (3,400ft).

These balloons would have to be fixed, they have directional dishes pointed at them! They are going to be pretty constrained as to how far they move, or they're just not going to work.

The point is that before they deploy them, the airspace where they are deployed is marked as hazardous and planes don't fly there. Even before the charts are updated, NOTAMs are sent out with details of new hazards. It's not going to be a problem.

Mind you, I'd be very curious to see details of exactly how they do go about stabilising them.

Originally posted by Ballooba
Just realised that they would have neutral bouyancy or whatever and would just float around at the same level.

Neutral bouyancy wouldn't be possible without dynamically adjusting the lift as atmospheric pressure varies. It would be simpler to have positive lift and make sure the tether doesn't come undone.

phreak

what would latency be like from one of these balloons?

dahamsta

This is going to sound silly, but has anyone told someone in the Government about this? Do you know how long it would take one of them to discover this on their own?

adam

dahamsta

what would latency be like from one of these balloons?

Logically, you'd asume it relates to the distance the radio wave has to travel (and presumably the legth of the wave), so I'm guessing it wouldn't be far off wireless, and a hell of a lot better than satellite.

adam

phreak

Originally posted by dahamsta

Logically, you'd asume it relates to the distance the radio wave has to travel (and presumably the legth of the wave), so I'm guessing it wouldn't be far off wireless, and a hell of a lot better than satellite.

Thanks...i was worrying that it would be like satellite and therfore useless to gamers.

Lex_Diamonds

Personally, this sort of thing would worry me, what then Skylink???:eek:

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by dahamsta
This is going to sound silly, but has anyone told someone in the Government about this? Do you know how long it would take one of them to discover this on their own?

Distance should not really add any latency here, not really anyway. Latency across my wireless network is as low as 1.7ms. Depending on what technology they use, I am guessing this should may be similar. At the very least, it will be a hell of a lot lower than Eircom's inverleaved ADSL for sure.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Lex_Diamonds
Personally, this sort of thing would worry me, what then Skylink???:eek:

Thats why most of them are filled with helium which puts out fires these days.

MarVeL

Thats why most of them are filled with helium which puts out fires these days.

Of course VoIP will have to be shifted down an octave in this case

oscarBravo

Originally posted by dahamsta
[Logically, you'd asume it relates to the distance the radio wave has to travel (and presumably the legth of the wave),

Um, just the distance, surely? I don't think the wavelength affects the speed of an electromagnetic wave?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by MarVeL
Of course VoIP will have to be shifted down an octave in this case

The blimp company will provide special software to do this.

andrew163

I don't think the wavelength affects the speed of an electromagnetic wave?

youre right, all EM waves travel at the speed of light

Nitrox

This is all great, absolutely perfect even, fast, cheap and readily available, so i hate to be the one to pop the "baloon"
Looking at how succesfull the goverment has been so far does anyone think that they will alow something this perfect to compete against Eircom and the rest, because i really do not see anything that could possibly compete with this at a low price and speedy deployment. Only other option is VDSL, and i really dont see that happening anytime this century!!
Any way, would be jumping for joy when this finally hit Ireland in 10 or 20 years.

Mr_Man

This could be a nice bit of leverage for Dermot Ahern to hold over Eircom i.e. stop pissing about and provide a proper rollout of DSL or the ballon goes up. Remember that having sold Eircom off the governments interest in keeping Eircom in clover has been somewhat reduced.

M.

Stonemason

This is going to sound silly, but has anyone told someone in the Government about this? Do you know how long it would take one of them to discover this on their own?

I e-mailed both skylinc and the ESB last thursday to try and find out what kind of money it would cost to set something like this up .I figured if i had the numbers it would save the government a year trying to find out themselfs.Then i was going to send said info to Bertie .Havent had a reply yet from either .

STaN

Originally posted by Stonemason
I e-mailed both skylinc and the ESB last thursday

Why the ESB?

Stonemason

Why the ESB?

The balloons need to connect to a network?.I figure that why connect to Eircoms copper network with all its restrictions.The fiber can take as much as the balloon system can chuck at it and as the the radio/balloon system get more refined and faster ESB,s fiber should be able to handle it.Hopefully ESB,s fiber network will link directly the one of the main pipes coming in and out of Ireland this would save on any bottlenecks.:D

Capt'n Midnight

Just found an article in Technology Ireland July/August - 2002
ie. one year ago - The difference is the baloon is not tethered.

Page 7 shows a picture of a Blimp and some details

at altitude of 21Km a platform could cover 19,000 Km2
- do the maths - radius of 77Km on the ground
- ie. max LOS distance is 80Km - WiFi is good for 8km so would have to be a licensed frequency only..

Good News - the sun always shines at 21,000m also no rain and very little wind so you could use a solar panels and stay up for a decade...

It said a system should go into operation in Brazil this year (2002)