neil (05/07/83)
Relay-Version:version B 3/9/83; site harpo.UUCP Message-ID:<1414@hplabs.UUCP> Date:Sat, 7-May-83 00:26:46 EDT #N:hplabs:8400001:000:1911 hplabs!neil May 7 00:26:00 1983 Many people have been complaining about the volume of mail and the cost of forwarding it. I have a suggestion to make that would ease the problem. There is a company called Equatorial Communications Company (Mt. View, CA, (415) 969-9500) that makes a .6 meter, receive only satellite dish. The cost is about $3000 (~$2.5K in quantity) plus a $12/month connection fee per receiver. There may be other, hidden costs -- I don't have all the information yet. A system that used this might work as follows: Instead of backbone sites linking together, backbones buy an receiver and get their news that way. Indeed, many sites could buy the receiver since the cost is about that of three modems. The receiver connects to your computer via RS-232, and can talk all the popular baud rates. The catch is how to submit new news. Since everyones connection is receive only, there are two possible answers. One is that all people who submit news would dial a central site (or perhaps all backbones would send new news to that site...). That site would then send that days news to the uplink transmitter at Equatorial, and they would broadcast it. An alternative is to wait a few months, when Equatorial will have a 1.2m send and receive system that we could put onto backbones. I am not a satellite communications wizard, but the system seems to be able to solve the large phone bill problem as well as the five day end-to-end delay problem that Usenet has. Equatorial seems eager to please, and has talked about giving us some loaner equipment to test the feasibility. By the way, I am not particularly pushing Equatorial, but they are the only company I have heard of with a really affordable system. I you know of others, please speak up! Any comments? Neil Katin Hewlett Packard Labs ucbvax!hplabs!neil (415) 857-4036
bentson (05/10/83)
Relay-Version:version B 3/9/83; site harpo.UUCP Message-ID:<2199@csu-cs.UUCP> Date:Tue, 10-May-83 16:11:26 EDT Consider the following: A large number of usenet sites are associated with a college or university; National Public Radio has a large number of subscriber stations at colleges or universities with down-link It might be worth seeing if a channel off whatever bird they use could be used for the net. Just a half-baked idea.... Randy Bentson Colo State U - Comp Sci csu-cs!bentson 303/491-7016
gh (05/12/83)
One thing not figured into the costs in this proposal is the cost of a slot
on the satellite. I have no idea how much it would cost, but I bet it ain't
cheap.
Graeme Hirst, Brown University Computer Science
{allegra, ihnp4, decvax}!brunix!gh gh.brown@udel-relaygoutal@decvax.UUCP (Kenneth G. "Kenn" Goutal) (05/27/83)
My recollection is rather foggy now, but a couple of months ago I read an article somewhere that said that NPR (or was it PBS?) was going to be getting into the video text biz, by allocating some of their transponder(s?) to the activity and setting up a franchise arrangement whereby entrepreneurs could get the receiving and and fan it out from there. Perhaps whoever is masterminding this effort should hear the suggestion that initiated this particular discussion. Can anybody expand on or at least confirm what I read? -- Kenn (decvax!goutal)