Sample Use Case: Residential connectivity challenges in rural USA
While many of us take high-speed internet access for granted as a part of our daily routines, today there are literally 10’s of millions of people in USA, South America, and Europe in a similar situation to the Smiths in the mock case below. In some areas, consumers only have access to mobile data.
Significant connectivity challenges exist for homes in rural USA. Meet the Smiths in our example use case in Arizona:
The Smiths and their three children live in a small town in Southern Apache County, AZ, USA. They have a stable but low speed (about 2 Mbps) ADSL connection. The service is just enough to browse the web, one person at a time, and to use email. The Smith children are eager to stream Netflix and other services, but a VSAT 30 Mbps connection with 100 GB guaranteed data to stream video in rural Arizona costs about 150 USD per month. Not only is the cost too high for the household, 100 GB will only enable about 40 hours of HD streaming per month.
- During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Smith children have not been able to attend video lectures from school due to the household’s low-speed internet connect
- Most students living in Phoenix have been able to participate using the fiber connections commonly available to more metropolitan areas.
How can the Smiths find a solution to “digital poverty” in a country recognized globally for its high-tech success and innovation?
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Solution: The Forsway Odin F-50 hybrid terminal and solution - agile Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) - provides a price point of approximately one tenth of a VSAT terminal. With an ADSL connection of about 2 Mbps the hybrid solution can boost internet speed to about 25 Mbps when needed. Most of the normal internet traffic will be run from the ADSL connection, resulting in a much lower total cost than using VSAT for 100 GB guaranteed data per month.
This solution would cost 50 – 60 USD per month, about one third of a pure VSAT package. This is an offering that the Smiths afford. If they cancel their ADSL connection, he can instead use a sim card to connect to a cellphone tower nearby for the upload data connection.
