Japan has announced plans to deploy a massive satellite that will provide high-speed internet (100 Mbit/sec, i.e. faster than you can imagine) to mountains, remote islands, bullet trains, airplanes, and ships. With a 66 ft. dish, even a cell phone will be able to transmit at 10 Mbit/sec, or about 20 times faster than today’s mainstream DSL services.
The disappointing part of the story is the planned operation date of 2015. I figure by that time we’ll be busy flying around in our cars and surfing the web at light speed on our iPod/digital camera/cell phone/PDA/voice recorder devices. So some clunky 100 Mbps connection is going to seem like the stone age.
And although the satellite approach is extremely pricey, it opens up the possibility that we could one day have broadband internet in every corner of the world, as mentioned in Using Technology to Fight Poverty.