Iran: Politics and Stirring Up Internet Cyberspace

By Sasha Meyer

A recent op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle urges the Silicon Valley to help the Iranians. The author, Cyrus Farivar, suggests providing censorship-free Internet access by means of terrestrial or airborne base stations deployed near Iran's borders. Farivar is on the right track – Silicon Valley can and should help. But this particular approach might not work.

The reason is that the adjacent countries are either war zones or run by governments that might not be keen on hosting such facilities. As their reaction to the outcome of Iran’s June 12th president election suggests (they all promptly congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his official re-election), their view seems to be that the crackdown is an internal issue. Thus they would likely avoid involvement in a project that would support the reformers.

What way might work? The Silicon Valley, Western NGOs and the general public could lease bandwidth from Google-backed O3b Networks, a satellite Internet company, give it to users in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and pay for it themselves via crowd funding. The rationale for doing so regionally rather than focusing on a single country is twofold: It would create disincentives for any single government to tamper, since that might upset its neighbors. Likewise, some of the countries are inextricably linked to a larger foreign policy puzzle, which also could discourage interference.

O3b's service, slated to start next year, will cover the Earth's surface up to 45 degrees north of the Equator. That includes all of South and Central Asia, except the northern parts of Kazakhstan. Although the initial focus is on providing up to 10 Gbps to local telecoms, plans also include 2 Mbps connectivity for consumers equipped with a 0.5-1 meter dish. That is a size possessed by many ordinary residents of the region.

Google and O3b emphasize that the service will be affordable, so it might be feasible to pay for it via online fund raising, a strategy that has proven successful in recent elections elsewhere. A complementary method could be the click-to-give ad-supported route used effectively by sites like HungerSite. Hollywood stars might be willing to help promote the effort, since they are championing an increasing number of causes.

Secondly, the Western public can help develop an inexpensive DIY (do it yourself) satellite modem for use with O3b services. An efficient and efficacious approach would be an open source hardware (OSH) project. The term refers to the engineers and tinkerers who are doing for electronics what programmers have done for software – creating free and open source products like Firefox and Linux to collapse the cost of innovation. They create and share devices by posting all the schematics and know-how online for anyone to use and modify.

Clubs like NYC Resistor and HacDC engage in OSH projects, and companies – Bug Labs, Adafruit and Arduino – make OSH products. The public can call on these modern day mad scientists to design the modem and fund the project via the Open Source Hardware Bank, which opened earlier this year.

The response in the region (at least among Central Asians) is likely to be positive thanks to a strong DIY mindset there, stemming from a combination of reasonably high educational levels and low incomes.

One promising idea that OSH talent could pursue is software defined radio (SDR). In a conventional radio, all the processes are handled by single-purpose circuits whose functionality can't be altered or upgraded. Hence the high cost and the need for a multitude of radio gadgets – the walkie-talkie, the garage door opener, FM radio and so on – that all look and work differently. With SDR, you have a multifunctional radio device because most of the work is done through software. It can seamlessly switch from one function to another by simply starting up a different piece of software. Upgrades are not just possible but are easy. As a result, SDR can cut costs by 90%.

Not surprisingly, this approach has been embraced by big players like Nokia, Samsung and Intel. But it's the grass roots efforts that are most relevant here, such as the USB device developed by a team led by Matt Ettus. It's a universal radio peripheral that can work as a GPS receiver, TV decoder, GSM base station and radar. Presumably, one would need just another piece of software to turn it into an O3b satellite modem.

Finally, as described here in a previous post, the Americans and Europeans could lobby their governments to build a satellite that would bring a massive amount of bandwidth to the region, much as Japan is doing for East Asia and the Pacific.

A U.S. Connection: An Internet Solution for Central Asia

By Sasha Meyer

Experts have been criticizing the U.S. and the European Union for "losing Central Asia." They say the West is mostly pursuing its national interests, while abandoning support for the development of civil society in the region.

But with the new U.S. budget increasing spending overseas by 10% on the way to doubling foreign assistance, there is a way both to redress this policy imbalance and create jobs in the U.S.: The Americans could set up a satellite Internet service for Central Asia (including Afghanistan).

Japan and Google-backed o3b are good role models. The former plans to provide fast Internet access to the Pacific region, and the latter in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Japan's satellite for the job, Kizuna, is a record-setter. It's capable of providing a 155 Mbps connection to households equipped with a pizza-sized dish. With a larger antenna, 1.2 Gbps is possible. That's about 20 and 150 times faster, respectively, than typical broadband service in the US.

That's also a much-higher speed and capacity than anything achieved previously via satellite. The end-user equipment is inexpensive and is getting smaller and mobile. For example, two American companies - TerreStar Corp. and SkyTerra Communications Inc. – plan this year to offer U.S. consumers satellite-based phone and Internet service via BlackBerry-sized devices.

This new connectivity in Central Asia would bypass the local telecoms systems that like to block access, and would thus expand the region's links to the outside world. But more importantly, it would ensure a free flow of information within the region and lead to a more active citizenry and greater transparency.

Web use in Central Asia would probably repeat patterns elsewhere. In China, netizens are increasingly taking on corrupt local officials (with Bejing's encouragement). In South Korea, an online newspaper run entirely by citizen reporters has influenced the outcome of a presidential election. And in Nepal and Rwanda, farmers use the Internet to conduct business. Distance education, telemedicine and better disaster recovery would also become possible.

This service would likely be rapidly adopted for several reasons. The idea is already familiar, as local telecoms offer something similar. And the end-user gear would probably find its way into the hands of Central Asians fast. Technology has a tendency to become cheap and overcome even the biggest obstacles. For example, Andrey Lankov, a leading expert on North Korea, writes that DVDs and PCs are spreading in the hermit kingdom even though Pyongyang has exercised stricter control over its population than Stalinist Russia ever did.

Demographics would also favor a speedy take up. The majority of the Central Asians are young. And this generation is different from its predecessors. Don Tapscott, who studied youths in twelve different countries, writes: "As the first global generation ever, the Net Geners are smarter, quicker and more tolerant of diversity than their predecessors.” They also value choice in everything and expect constant innovation. His findings are surprisingly similar both in the rich world and developing countries, irrespective of the local culture.

Although this undertaking wouldn't be cheap - the price tag for Kizuna and Ob3 is around $500 million – the cost is comparable to what the U.S. is already spending in the region, such as the $183 million used on the headquarters of the Afghan air corps.

But working in its favor in terms of U.S. politics is that the money would generate jobs in the U.S., as the spacecraft would be built, launched and operated by U.S. companies. Furthermore, R&D that goes into this kind of project would help sustain America's technological lead: Kizuna is part of Japan's plans to become world's most advanced country IT.

Finally, the costs could be reduced by bringing into the project both the EU and Japan, which seems to have a growing interest in the region, given its Central Asia+Japan initiative. Finally, coverage can be easily scaled up to include South Asia, since a satellite in GEO orbit can see one-third of the Earth's surface. A good example is WildBlue that started out with a single spacecraft serving customers across the entire U.S.