Being on the board and surfing at the same time? by Barbora Misakova

Being in touch with everyone is easy while you are at home where is no danger and when all what you probably want to talk about with your dudes is what the weather , brand new jeans you have just bought or last night party you were on. But what if you are somewhere you badly need to call someone because you are in danger or something bad happened to you and you are not able to connect with anyone. You have no phone, no internet connection because you are thousands miles from some broadband connection or cell phone network. What would you do? Fortunately there is Inmarsat & British satellite operator which provides voice and data services in remote areas dedicated mainly for maritime vessels and other users at sea. Inmarsat is a winner of European Space Agency contract for its effort to develop Europe's satellite programme. This whole project cost £360 millions, but East of England Development Agency, London Development Agency and South East England Development Agency helped with realizing this project by amount of £36 millions. This new satellite called Alphasat I-XL should be the most technically advance satellite in the world and it should support a new generation of mobile technologies and so enable to communicate across Europe and Africa. These days are ships using Sailor Fleet 77, ship's satellite communications system which is quite slow; it supports 256k bits per second transmission but this speed depends on other factors, so this system is reliable only on 90 percent. There is no doubt about definite success of Alphasat I-XL which will enable communications in crisis and disasters emergencies also enable governments to communicate with dispersed populations, and it will provide connections of houses, schools and businesses in remote locations. Now probably the most important information is that Alphasat I-XL is scheduled for launch in 2012.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080117/tc_pcworld/141451;_ylt=AtFHQT2ruV5zqTy8jXKYjo.s0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.