We are all aware of President Obama’s highly publicized $787 billion economic stimulus plan. Vice President Biden announced last December as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that approximately $2 billion in grants and loans of this act will be aimed specifically at bringing broadband internet services to communities that up until now have been forced to do without because of lack of availability. President Obama announced just this past week $795 million in Internet projects, saying that these projects would affect more than 685,000 businesses, 900 healthcare facilities, and 2,400 schools. The President was also confident that that these projects would lead to hundreds of thousands of new jobs. We know from previous reports that some of the government funding from the rural development package has already gone to the satellite internet industry in the form of grants to help develop better technologies to provide more high-speed internet access to rural citizens. It is most likely that a good portion of the available funding mentioned last week by President Obama will also go toward the further development of satellite internet technologies. Another option would be to provide subsidies to rural citizens in a certain income bracket that has no other access to broadband internet other than satellite internet. Many of the new developing technologies mentioned in previous posts will be a direct solution to providing more rural areas with high-speed internet access. Any government funding that could be made available to the satellite internet industry would only speed the development and implementation process up and allow customers to get internet access faster. It only makes sense that the satellite internet industry would be the best place to spend the majority of this funding because of the exponential impact it could have. Any developments that are made with DSL, cable, or even fiber optics can only be applied to the immediate area in which the developments took place. Any improvements made to satellite internet will benefit the entire United States network.
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The availability of high-speed internet service throughout parts of rural Africa seems to be scarce. Satellite Internet is not as readily available in countries throughout Africa as it is in other places throughout the world. This is largely due to the fact that Africa is fragmented into many small national markets and has a minimal economy of scale. Low income levels also factor in to the harsh market conditions. Since there is not an expansive market in Africa, and the market that is there is so spread out that the satellite solutions that are available are often several times more expensive than even the services throughout Europe in North America. This obviously does not sit well with the extremely low-income population. However, it seems that relief may be on the way through the utilization of new satellite technology. 
