Those who were able to attend the demonstrations were greatly impressed by what applications in satcom can offer people located in remote isolated areas or where terrestrial broadband is not available. The French Senate is investigating efforts to bridge the Digital Divide and in the spirit of this, the Senate invited ESA to offer French Mayors, local government officials and Parliamentarians an opportunity to acquaint themselves with satellite applications.
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Hosted at the Senate's booth, ESA chose two of its projects relevant to bridging the Digital Divide to illustrate satcom applications. TeLeCare from Canada is a tele-medicine project which has been recently begun by Telesat and March Networks. This project which allows 'remote patient diagnosis and monitoring' via satellite. It permits a nurse to videoconference with a patient several hundred kilometres away. The other project was the long running 'Espresso for Schools'; this tele-education project, from the UK, broadcasts multimedia content to UK schools reaching 1750 institutions and 400,000 users. |
| Timon LeDain from March Networks was present to aid in the TeLeCare demonstration. Reactions to this demonstration were very positive. Some visitors who submitted to a remote diagnosis were surprised by the speed and accuracy of the results. The satcom infrastructure for both the TeLeCare and Espresso demonstrations was provided by BySky and based on the Astra BBI system. |  Click for larger image |
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Giovanni Garofalo, Francesco Feliciani and Nathalie Ricard from ESA ESTEC were also present to represent ESA and guide visitors through the demonstrations. Among the distinguished visitors were the President of the French Senate, Christian Poncelet and the President of the French National Assembly, Jean-Louis Debré. |
The critical need of bridging the Digital Divide was emphasised by Monsieur Poncelet, who said, "Nowadays, when a new company inquires about settling in my home town the first question they ask is: "Do you have 'haut debit' (broad-band), if the answer is no, end of the story, but if yes let's talk business."
To further determine how satcom might contribute to bridging the Digital Divide, the French Senate is organising a colloquium at the Senate, Palais du Luxembourg in Paris France on January 22, 2004.
