Fast satellite internet service ready to start in Barga Vecchia

The phenomenal rise of the internet across most of the globe has been somewhat slower in many places in Italy, probably due to a couple of reasons. The first one is a little difficult to find out if it was in fact true (anybody out there want to check up on this ? ) – it has been said that when the telephone system was first constructed, they chose thinner copper wire than used in the rest of Europe as it was cheaper and nobody ever thought that generations later these wires would have problems coping with the amount of data being forced through them.

The second problem is that in many places, especially in Barga Vecchia, the signals running through the telephone wires are digitally “dirtied up” as the wires run along side the electricity cables which interfere and slow down the internet.

Help is now on hand as finally a working two way satellite system can bring internet into houses, business and homes without the use or need of those thin over used and congested copper wires.

This afternoon the first dish was installed in Barga Vecchia.

So, how far are we now from finally getting a WiFi system working in the city?

Watch this space*.

Tooway is a bi-directional satellite broadband Internet service available across Europe. The service was launched in 2007 via two Eutelsat geostationary satellites, Hot Bird 6 and Eurobird 3, respectively at the 13° and 33° East orbital positions.
At the end of 2010, Eutelsat launched KA-SAT, the first European High Throughput Satellite to operate in Ka band. KA-SAT was positioned at 9° East, and delivers Internet access and broadcast services toward Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.

Commercial service started on KA-SAT at the end of May 2011. Tooway services over KA-SAT satellite provide up to 20 Mbit/s downstream and up to 6 Mbit/s upstream.

The round-trip time inherent to satellite communications comes from the double hop between earth and space. All communications travel at the speed of light (299 792 458 m/s) from a terminal on ground to a satellite in geostationary orbit (35 786 km), then to another terminal on earth and back. The result is roughly a half a second round-trip time which may be unsuitable for real-time critical applications, including many games, though it is sufficient to support other applications, including (with minimal delays), VoIP.

*From the barganews archives 2010 – So where does the project go from here ?

And here comes the exciting part – it was announced at the press conference by the Mayor of Barga, Marco Bonini that the second part of the project will shortly be activated – namely, a WiFi system over the whole of Barga Vecchia allowing fast internet access for anybody inside the city walls. Just what the ibarga project needed to make it work at full capacity. Interesting times we live in. (full article about QR codes and iBarga here)