Bridging the digital divide

The digital divide that still cuts the inland communities off from those on the coast and from the rest of the world should be eliminated for ever by Space technologies. Here’s how.

Unfortunately, a large part of the population of French Guiana has no access to new information and communication technologies. The rift is widening between the communities on the coast and those further inland whose inhabitants are cut off from all access to the information society. Only Space technology can close the gap, being independent of terrestrial vectors and therefore of the geographical constraints that make communication so difficult for these communities. In this instance, Space technology means satellite links in the C or Ku bands, whose first application will be to bring the telephone to these areas. The first such operation was carried out at the end of 2001, in the framework of a partnership between the community of municipalities of Western Guiana, CCOG (Communauté des Communes de l’Ouest Guyanais) and the CNES/CSG French Guiana Mission, in the town of Grand Santi where a satellite station was installed. It provided not just 4 to 6 simultaneous telephone communications but also Internet access and therefore e-mail facilities. Subsequently, the telecommunications operator Outremer Télécom joined the project and installed a Vsat station which made cellphones available in the town for the first time.

Spreading the cost

CNES believes, however, that bridging the digital divide should not mean creating an economic one. Our ambition is that the inland population should have access to these services at the same price as subscribers in Cayenne. Public funds must therefore be invested, with participation from the Region, the state and Europe, to strike a balance that will allow the operator to make a long-term commitment. The Region intends to spread the cost by broadening the user- or subscriber-base as far as possible over a given channel. If the price of the satellite link remains stable, then the more users there are, the more the price of a communication comes down. Among potential users are the hospital in Cayenne, which hopes to extend telemedicine to inland townships, the education authorities, which plan to provide all schools in French Guiana with Internet access or training organisations which are tending increasingly towards distance learning.

The Regional Council recently issued a call for tenders to potential operators for equipping all isolated sites in Guiana. France-Telecom, Outremer Telecom and Eutelsat are competing, but Eutelsat is unable to offer a Ku-band link, whereas this solution seems best adapted to French Guiana because of climatic constraints. As far as C-band is concerned, the satellite must be positioned above French Guiana. Eutelsat could therefore submit a proposition using this technology. This would certainly be the cheapest solution, but would have the disadvantage that in the event of rain the C-band link would be broken. The possibility remains of using Inmarsat stations. These were originally set up for the purpose of telemedicine, but have the disadvantage of being relatively costly to operate, with only a low data-rate. More efficient solutions are therefore necessary.

Virtual classrooms for real students

For telemedicine, distance learning or videoconferencing, the C-band remains the best solution for providing the greatest number of applications at a reasonable price. This is how distance learning will get off the ground in French Guiana. Students at UCAM recently discovered an installation for distance tutoring, called Edu4, composed of a multi-discipline classroom equipped with a system for monitoring and overriding the students’ computers. The system can also distribute sound and images from different media, and will provide a technical response to the problem of isolation once the necessary connections have been made in the towns concerned. In the meantime, training organisations such as CNAM (Conservatoire national des arts et métiers), have begun to develop online teaching methods. Based on multimedia classrooms for office software training with on-line teaching materials, or distance learning facilities, these new information technologies force us to rethink our approach to traditional teaching methods and suggest ways of solving the training problems of people who are distant, isolated or otherwise unable to travel.

French Guiana is slowly catching up with the modern world of instant communication by joining the vast network of information technology. This is of even greater importance to the inland municipalities where there are no highways and satellites currently provide the only solution for breaking their isolation.