One of the leaders of Outernet, an ambitious project which aims to beam free global Wi-Fi from space, says there is nothing stopping his team from achieving their mission.
Aaron Rogers, Branko Vukelic, Edward Birrane and Syed Karim are looking to boldly go where no Wi-Fi provider has gone before by launching hundreds of 10cm cube-shaped satellites into space, allowing them to make Wi-Fi universally accessible with no cost involved.
Mr Karim says that despite some researchers dismissing their theories, his team are confident of their ability to turn plans into action.
“We have a very solid understanding of the costs involved as well as experience working on numerous spacecraft,” he told ibtimes.co.uk.
“There’s really nothing that is technically impossible to this.”
Karim and his group plan on bringing their miniature satellites into the void on the back of International Space Station resupply missions.
If successful, the new Wi-Fi network would increase the accessibility of educational tools like course materials for teachers, information such as crop prices for farmers and basic websites such as Wikipedia.
According to a statement at outernet.is, the project will use Wi-Fi to provide the internet for the millions of people who cannot afford mobile access.
It read: “The price of smartphones and tablets is dropping year after year, but the price of data in many parts of the world continues to be unaffordable for the majority of global citizens.
“In some places, such as rural areas and remote regions, cell towers and internet cables simply don’t exist. The primary objective of the Outernet is to bridge the global information divide.”
The project is currently in its early stages and is accepting monetary contributions of any size.
