Big-Time Broadband For Afghan

President Obama plans to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan this year, boosting total U.S. forces in that country to more than 40,000. Other NATO countries, primarily the United Kingdom, have sent about another 20,000 troops.

All those troops -- and their gadgets and gizmos, including bandwidth hungry unmanned aerial vehicles used for surveillance and reconnaissance -- require big, broadband pipes, and the Defense Information Systems Agency is trying to find some folks able to provide them.

DISA, in a request for information, which closed on April 27, said it wanted to find out if commercial carriers can provide circuits that operate at speeds between 155 megabytes per second and 622 megabytes per second into and out of Afghanistan.

At the lower end, that's more than 25 times the data rate of the average 7 megabyte-per-second home broadband connection in the Washington area. But one of the key differences between Washington and Afghanistan is Washington has a robust broadband infrastructure and Afghanistan does not.

I have a feeling that if DISA does find a commercial carrier that meets its requirements for broadband terrestrial links it will end up paying a high price -- and folks, I have been told that it could be difficult to meet the 622 megabyte-per-second requirement at any price.