pubs-lab@utcs.UUCP (Taras Pryjma) (12/30/84)
It seems interesting to note that nothing has been mentioned in the current discusion of Stargate, of the ability of Stargate to go anywhere that WTBS goes now currently. I seem to recall awhile back, in the early days of TVRO systems, of various people playing with their satellite dishes and picking up signals from European, Soviet and Japanese satellites and displaying them on their TV sets. Thus by implication, anywhere that WTBS can be received, the Stargate feed could also be received, the implications for this are immense, due to the fact that the distribution of moderated news groups that Lauren keeps talking about could easily be distributed to anywhere that signal reaches, such as Western Europe, Japan and Korea, with relatively no additional cost. In other words Usenet, or the Stargate portion of it, would finally become truly international computer network. At least it would be a one of a kind network, not at all like BITNET or ARPANET, due to its purpose and structure. I don't know if anybody considered the volume or the bandwidth of Stargate operating at either 1200 or 9600 baud. The volume of material even for one hour of constant transmission is simply horrendous. I have a terminal at home with a 1200 baud modem, and I know that I can't afford the time to read even a small percentage of USENET traffic that I would find useful, never mind the junk. To put another point in perspective, if the the telephone tarriffs are the same here as in other jurisdictions, the point of Stargate is to reduce, as much as possible, the long distance portion of the phonebill that many sites face. Since the cost of local calls in alot of jurisdictions are flat rate, the idea of using the SCA portion of FM signals does not make economic sense, never mind the technical problems involved. Also since, we are transmitting computer data anyways, dosn't it make sense to use packet networks, such as Datapac, Tymenet and Telenet with the appropriate PAD devices or X.25 boards to further reduce long distance charges that many sites incur. Regardless of whether we are talking about Usenet traffic or not. It also seems to me, that the users of USENET, must at some point or another justify the amount of time they spend reading and submitting articles to various news groups not only to their employers, but to themselves. This must halve at some point some economic value, if only for discussion of certain timely topics that the net has done in the past. In the future, along with the amount of verberage that will inevitably be generated, I think that you will find that another group will come onto the net. A group of people such as doctors, lawyers, engineers (none EEs), and other professionals that will use the net to discuss issues that they find important and topical once they, like us, discover the power and the additive nature of this network. Taras S. Pryjma
pubs-lab@utcs.UUCP (Taras Pryjma) (01/02/85)
I think Lauren seems to think that the footprint of a satellite is alot more pronounced than it really is. Most Canadians know that they can pick alot more US cable material than Lauren gives them credit for. To make my point, TVRO has been a hot topic in Canadian politics for the last five years. Just because you design something to give good reception for a particular area, does not mean that the fringe reception is not that great. If the desire is there, then people or companies in the fringe areas will build ground stations to pick off that signal. Which is just the point, it might be technically possible to extend the signal away from North America to some extent. The footprint of the satellite is still of great importance, but that does not preclude, depending on where the satellite is sitting in the sky, that people in far off places could receive this signal if they wanted to cotribute to a fairly large dish ground station, even aa a joint effort .... they could. I do not know if Lauren knows this but WTBS is owned and operated by Turner Broadcasting, which last I heard of was also operating CNN. WTBS is not distributed in Canada very widely, however CNN-1 is. Therefore would there be any possibility that the Stargate signal could be piggybacked onto the CNN-1 signal instead of WTBS???? Another point to make, is that in many companies it might be easier to justify a pickup of CNN-1 rather than WTBS from cable. Taras Pryjma
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (01/03/85)
Sigh. I spent 2 days out in Atlanta putting in this stuff -- I think I know what I'm talking about. Certainly the WTBS footprint extends into parts of Canada, Mexico, and out into the oceans as well. But there are definite limits to the fringe, which are pretty easy to work out based on global geometry and line of sight from a single point in orbit. And there's no way to "entend the fringe" by antenna retuning (within the geometry limits) without adversly affecting reception in the primary coverage areas. The footprint patterns for a given satellite transponder are well known and fairly precise. The satellites are designed to put as MUCH power as possible into the target areas and as LITTLE as possible into the non-targets. Some have spot beams for Hawaii and Alaska to avoid flooding the Pacific with wasted power. The domestic satellites must be considered to be only that--DOMESTIC. To the extent that Canada and Mexico can receive the signals, that's fine, but you can forget about anything useful for Europe or the Far East. I'm also not addressing the issue of the legality of Canadian points receiving satellite transmissions directly. Apparently the Canadian laws are stricter about this than the U.S. regulations. I've said this before but I'll say it again. Turner Broadcasting, which own WTBS, does NOT own the satellite uplink facilities of WTBS. Turner Broadcasting does not run any vertical interval data services of their own, and apparently has no plans or interest in doing so for the forseeable future. Given their rate structures, it can be fully expected that any future data services they might run would be *extremely* expensive. The WTBS uplink is owned and operated by a SEPARATE COMPANY. It has been this way since day one, since under FCC regulations Turner cannot own both a local TV station (WTBS ch. 17) and the national distribution mechanism for that station. Such ownership, even if made legal, would subject Turner to programming charges based on a national market, not the Atlanta market prices he pays now, so you can see why the current situation is stable. While this separate company is symbiotic with Turner, it is this separate company that has the complete control over the WTBS satellite vertical interval. They make the decisions about what data will be on there, how much will be charged, and all related decisions. It is this company, not Turner, with which we are dealing, and it is this company that has made the data space available for free for the experiment. They are also the ones who have made all the investments in equipment for supporting data services, local computers, and all the other things required to support the vertical interval services. I'll make a lot of this even more clear at the Dallas conference when I give my talk. The politics of national satellite services are somewhat complicated, but can be understood with some backround info. --Lauren--