Out of Africa

Redwing Satellite Solutions near London provides the wireless connectivity

portion of the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria. Among the components

Redwing supplies are the ground-based satellite hardware, use of the company's

ground station hub in the United Kingdom, backhaul to the Internet backbone

and rental of the space segment.

The system uses 192 kilobits/sec of outward bandwidth that is shared

by the sites, but each location has a dedicated 32 kilobits/sec link to

the backbone. That may not seem like a lot, but it's enough to support 25

people per site doing something on the Internet at any one time, said Mark

Bennett, the main technical consultant for the project.

The hardware and operating costs are about $40,000 per site to establish

and $2,000 per month for the satellite bandwidth and connection to the Internet,

but the monthly fee should go down as more partners sign on, Bennett said.

"There is so much demand for satellite bandwidth that people can't launch

the satellites fast enough," he said.