My tweet from Baikonur summed it up. What a blast!
It was a great week in Moscow and Baikonur, watching the launch of Viasat-1, the first of two next generation satellites that will close the geographical broadband divide for Canadians living and working in rural and remote areas.
It will take some effort to re-adjust to time zones here – there wasn’t much time for sleep since last Wednesday, thanks to a 12:48 am launch time and a Friday night (Saturday morning) 3:00 am departure from our hotel. It meant that Friday night, we just stayed up.
That proved to be not very difficult, thanks to the Circle of Light festival in nearby Red Square.
A generation ago, Red Square was where soldiers marched as part of a parade of military might, with rockets and tanks rolling in front of the politburo leadership.
On Friday evening, Muscovites gathered to enjoy a demonstration of the transformation of their historic square – technology bringing people together for a creative audio visual experience.
Satellite based broadband doesn’t deliver the same experience as fibre – but that isn’t the right comparison, because for many, fibre just isn’t an option. For that matter, DSL and cable modem service aren’t options either. Satellite based broadband service is the right technology for those millions of Canadians who live beyond the reach of terrestrial solutions, who choose between dial-up or nothing.
Canadians with dial-up modems – that often have trouble connecting at 4800 bits per second over rural lines – make downloading emails a nightly exercise, so that you don’t tie-up the line and because attachments take all night.
For these Canadians, Xplornet’s half billion dollar investment in satellites is the fulfillment of a dream – continuing the deployment of advanced satellite technology to finish the job of communications connectivity over this vast country. Canada had the world’s first commercial communications satellite with the launch of Anik in 1972, delivering connectivity to the north. The launch of Viasat-1 continues the evolution of satellite communications to deliver high-speed connectivity for the next decade.
Over the next few months, Xplornet will be working to complete the connectivity testing with Viasat-1’s game-changing technology, enabling all Canadians to access advanced broadband service, regardless of where they live.
The Circle of Light show was a great send-off for us leaving Moscow. We should all be toasting the successful launch of Viasat-1: На здоровье.