If you’re an American already frustrated with how long it takes to download an episode of LOST at the glacial-pace Internet connection speeds available from U.S.providers, you probably don’t even want to read the rest of this story. The Japanese, who already enjoy an average connection speed of 51 Mbps — better than 12 times faster than U.S. bandwidth, on average — are about to get even faster. Way faster.
Google News reports that Japan has successfully launched the Kizuna satellite. Incidentally, "Kizuna" means "bond" in Japanese, and oddly, is also the title of an emotionally overwrought pop song and the name of a gay-themed Manga by the Japanese artist Kodaka Kazuma. But I digress. The $340 million satellite is designed to provide Japan and other parts of Asia with wireless Internet access at speeds of 155 Mbps for residential users and up to 1.2 Gbps for businesses with larger antennas. You read that right. That’s "G" as in Giga. I’d tell you how many times faster that is than the typical U.S. broadband connection, but frankly, it’s too embarrassing. Suffice to say, it’ll set a new state-of-the-art standard for bandwidth.
Spaceflight News has more nuts-and-bolts detail on how the Japanese will make this work. The satellite is equipped with two 8-foot Ka-band dish reflectors, attached to a multi-beam antenna. While Ka-band frequencies typically are hindered by rain, Kizuna’s multi-beam antenna gets around this by allocating its power capacity to regions based on weather conditions and real-time demand.
What does this translate into, in terms of functionality? Think high-def video over the Internet with virtually no compression, instead of those grainy, teeny images from YouTube. (I know — I’m envious, too.)
The real revolutionary impact of the satellite may well be its ability to blast those astounding amounts of bandwidth into every community from India to the islands of the Pacific, including even the most remote, underdeveloped rural areas. That unheard of degree of connectivity has the potential to radically reshape the global flow of information, skills and commerce. According to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s official Kizuna Web site: "Ultra-fast satellite-based Internet-based communications will remove the so-called digital divide by providing high-speed Internet service in areas where the terrestrial communications infrastructure is poor. Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances."
Meanwhile, in the U.S., at least one major Internet provider is apparently rationing bandwidth to prevent P2P junkies from slowing their neighbors’ connections to a crawl. And you wonder why we’re falling behind in the global economy.
