From: utzoo!decvax!genrad!linus!allegra!eagle!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!neil
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: Satellite News System - (nf)
Article-I.D.: hplabs.1414
Posted: Sat May  7 00:26:46 1983
Received: Fri May 13 06:58:10 1983

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