Highspeed-ish internet access in wild and small-town Botswana?

January 6, 2006 3:04 PM

I am looking for net access options for a wildlife researcher operating in Botswana. He currently has limited net access, and is looking to improve his situation, both at his home and in his camp in the bush. Tips on satellite internet and other things I should be considering are appreciated.

A bit more background, the researcher splits his time between a home in Maun and a semi-permenant research camp ~80km to the NW. In Maun they have some sort of wireline dialup that gets 28kbps at best. In the bush, they have a radio based dservice called Bushmail, which is pretty cool in many ways, but only handles e-mail and small attachments (under 100K).

They are going to start a website soon to better communicate their research to supporters and the general public and would like better connectivity so they can post images and multimedia. They'd also like to reduce their generall isolation from the outside world.

I'm interested in what people know about satellite internet access in this sort of situation, and other options we might consider. As cool as it would be, I don't think they'll be trying to setup long haul WiFi repeaters (unless they can piggyback on an existing effort in that regard).

I think the main option for Maun is probably getting an ISDN line from the telco, but I'm really not sure what all the options are for the bush access. I think ideally they'd be able to get 128-256kbps at both locations, but getting 128kbps in town and the ability to more reliably transfer 1-10MB files from the field would probably be a huge improvement.

On a related note, does anyone know how well rsync works over high latency/low bandwidth links?

Tips, experiences, or pointers to other resources would be much appreciated.

posted by Good Brain to computers & internet (6 comments total)

This is a pretty long shot, but: I have a friend who's in the Peace Corps in Botswana, and I get periodic emails from her, so she must have semi-regular access. If you email me, I could write to her, and see if she has any ideas for your friend.
posted by Dr. Wu at 5:18 PM on January 6, 2006

I used to work as a product manager for Globalstar, a company that does sattellite phones and Internet access similar to Iridium.

Globalstar has a network of 40 or so satellites that can provide access at 9.6kbps. It's hardly broadband - hell, it's hardly dial-up, but through the use of accellerator software you can get a comparable experience to a 28.8kbps connection.

For a faster connection, I think you would need something like inmarsat but you are really starting to talk bucks here - US $300+ per month plus equipment costs.

Satellite phones require a line of sight to the sky.
posted by Dag Maggot at 6:04 PM on January 6, 2006

Thanks, Dr. Wu. I appreciate the offer. I may follow up with you later.

Thanks for the info, Dag Maggot. I was trying to remember the name of the LEO sat-com service that wasn't Iridium. A reliable ~9.6kbps sounds more useful in the bush than Bushmail since it could be used to move larger files.

Inmarsat looks pretty cool, but man, spendy.

From what I've been able to tell there are a number of VSAT options, which look much more affordable (and potentially faster) than inmarsat, but they need bigger antennas. Still it might be suitable for both the camp since I don't think it moves very often).

Line of sight isn't going to be a problem, I don't think.
posted by Good Brain at 10:26 PM on January 6, 2006

BTW, looks like Globalstar doesn't have any uplinks in Africa and so doesn't offer service to most of africa.
posted by Good Brain at 1:21 AM on January 7, 2006

According to this rsync is designed for high latency/low bandwidth.
posted by Sharcho at 7:17 AM on January 7, 2006

Very much a long shot, but National Geographic just ended its wild cam in Botswana - live video feed of a watering hole. They might be willing to let your friend know what services they used.
posted by korej at 9:46 PM on January 7, 2006