Bob, as you know, for a couple of years I've been saying from an engineering perspective DWM will not work as claimed over unmodified POTS lines.
There are things happening in the rural communications field. One of the technologies that is being deployed, that I've worked on, is VSATs (Very Small Aperture Terminals), i.e., communications systems that use geostationary satellites. Instead of say, being able to watch HBO with a satellite dish in a rural area, picture the advantages of being able to send voice & data over the satellite, to a central site in your countries capital and tying into the worldwide telephone network and the Internet. For some information on the satellite industry, you might try intelsat.int or satjournal.com
Running copper wires or fiber optics in the developing countries is very expensive, so I expect to see a lot of wireless technologies in use, either terrestrial (like cellular phones) or over satellite. There are countries I've worked in where you have to wait years to have the local phone company run a wire to your home, but on the other hand, you can get a working cellular phone immediately, so people use them instead.
Paul M. |
