Laying Fiber To The South Pole

from the not-an-easy-thing-to-do dept

The BBC has an article discussing some of the challenges faced by those planning to lay a fiber-optic cable to the South Pole, to give them internet access. For $250 million I hope they do better things with their new internet access than play Quake online (yes, I'm joking). It seems like an interesting challenge, though I still wonder if it wouldn't be easier/cheaper to put a satellite up specifically for this purpose. The article discusses how they can't use current satellites (most don't go over the South Pole), but that doesn't mean a new satellite couldn't handle the work. Of course, not being in the market for a satellite lately, I have no idea how much something like that costs, and perhaps it's well over the $250 million.
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  • identicon
    Joe Schmoe, 21 Aug 2002 @ 11:49am

    No Subject Given

    From what I've heard from early adopters, Sat is nice but still has frustrating latency...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 21 Aug 2002 @ 11:57am

      Re: No Subject Given

      But... this fiber optic link will link them to another place that has access... via satellite. So, in the end, they're already going to be using a satellite. So, the concern isn't the problems with satellite communications.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    John, 22 Aug 2002 @ 6:28am

    Satellites aren't cheap

    To get full coverage of the pole you would need multiple satellites, probably 3 or more due to horizon issues and redundancy. Decent communication satellites cost $200-500 million each to build and launch. So even though it sounds like a lot of money a cable will probably be significantly cheaper, even when you add in high maintenance costs.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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