April 24, 2007 — The Internet, which has done well to connect distant places and people, is now branching out even further — into space.
This month, the U.S. military announced a project to test Internet routing on orbiting satellites.
IRIS (for "Internet Routing in Space") will allow different branches of the military, such as the Army, Navy and Air Force, to communicate with each other instantly and spontaneously. It could also spread to the civilian market to give users in remote locations broadband service where no other electronic communication exists.
"You can be in a place where there is nothing in terms of wireless phone or Internet yet you can have broadband connectivity direct to the Internet via the IRIS satellite. It's a revolutionary tool for closing the digital divide," said Don Brown, vice president of hosted payloads at Bethesda, MD-based Intelsat General Corp., which is responsible for integrating the initial router on a satellite, launching it and managing its operations.
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