Fly Me To Papua New Guinea
Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, Telesat — all big satellite operators who continually try to get their stories out and reported on by the general business media, and, if they’re lucky, some broader medium. Doesn’t happen much, unless there’s a catastrophic failure during launch or in-orbit.
Along comes Kosta Grammatis with an idea to buy the Terrestar-1 spacecraft and move it from 111 West to a location assigned to Papua New Guinea, possibly 31.5 West over West Africa or something closer to home. So guess what happens. They put up a Web site to raise $150,000 to get it started.
Futurismic’s Paul Raven posts something on it yesterday, Boing Boing picks it up, then Gizmodo. Expect this to go viral in a way the major satcoms can only dream of.
But seriously, I doubt secured debtors such as EchoStar will let this baby go to another location. It’s in a good spot for broadcasting in the S-band. Free Internet? Good luck building modems for the masses. And each modem needs electricity, so get busy with power generation, too.
Let’s see just how big this gets.
