Eutelsat's KA-SAT satellite spot beams coverage over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin (different colors show frequency reuse)

On 31 May 2011, Eutelsat Communications announced the commercial entry into service of its KA-SAT High Throughput Satellite, a six-ton telecommunications spacecraft dedicated to providing broadband Internet to consumers and businesses across Europe.

Together with Avanti's Hylas-1 spacecraft, which started operations some weeks earlier, Eutelsat’s KA-SAT belongs to the first European satellites fully dedicated to broadband Internet services. KA-SAT is supposed to provide download speeds of up to 10 Mbps and a maximum uplink of 4 Mbps irrespective of the user’s location.

These first Internet-dedicated satellites for Europe aim to address the "not-spot" problem, which means they aim to reach those places in Europe where it has so far not been possible to get decent Internet connectivity via terrestrial solutions like fibre, ADSL, 3G, or 4G. Eutelsat’s Ka-band system combines satellite and on-ground infrastructure for delivering high-bandwidth services to users beyond range of terrestrial networks.

According to Eutelsat at least 13 million households are still beyond the range of ADSL, and 17 million access the Internet at speeds below 2 Mbps, which excludes them from many media-rich applications. KA-SAT shall make it possible to deliver Internet connectivity at speeds comparable to ADSL for more than one million homes in Europe and large parts of the Mediterranean Basin.
Built for Eutelsat by Astrium, the KA-SAT concept is based on 82 narrow spotbeams connected to 10 ground stations. This configuration enables frequencies to be reused 20 times and takes total throughput to beyond 70 Gbps.

http://www.eutelsat.com

First paper-thin smartphone

Researchers at the Human Media Lab of Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, have designed the world's first interactive paper computer, which is characterised by a flexible, bendable display. The smartphone prototype is named PaperPhone and consists of a thin-film flexible E-Ink display with a screen-size of 9.5 cm. The flexible form of the display is supposed to make it more portable than current mobile computers, so you can stuff it in your pocket without ugly bulges.

Its electrophoretic display does not consume electricity unless refreshed, and the thin-film resistive sensors in the flexible circuit respond to bends in the screen. You can play music files, make phone calls, navigate through e-books, and play games just by performing a simple bend function.

“This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,” said Roel Vertegaal, director of Human Media Lab.

Being able to store and interact with documents on larger versions of these light, flexible computers means offices will no longer require paper or printers.

“The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other just like a stack of paper, or throw them around the desk”, said Dr. Vertegaal.

http://www.hml.queensu.ca/paperphone