Where To Now?

Recent innovations in satellite technology offer the potential to change lives in sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, newer satellite modems are relatively low-cost and now affordable, even for small schools and community centres, which means that even schools in rural areas can afford the equipment. Once the equipment has been purchased, the next issue is the cost of the service. This too, is generally significantly cheaper than it was a decade ago, although not all of these improvements always filter through to the end-customers.

So what is left? Clearly the capital cost is a major issue and this is where most innovations have focussed. In regions where there is a lack of electrical infrastructure, the cost of feeding the Infrastructure can be a substantial proportion of the overall school's power budget. In areas where the only power is supplied by small generators or large batteries, the power cost is substantial.

In parallel, there have been major improvements in the power consumption of computers. Multi-core microprocessors can be arranged so that individual cores can be put into a deep sleep mode when not under load in order to save energy. Improved scheduled algorithms mean superior, more efficient use of the available resources. Similarly, network interfaces can be stopped while there is no traffic in order to save energy. Given these innovations, a school's computer network, consisting of 20 machines, can be implemented having a total power requirement of less than 350Watts. These innovations offer enormous potential to schools in rural areas. The remaining issue is the energy cost of  the satellite equipment which amounts to a sizeable proportion of this total. This should be easily remedied since the satellite modems are often based on the similar operating systems as the schools' computer networks. It seems that it should be possible to migrate the innovations from other areas onto satellite equipment.