In our quickly changing world broadband communications is a key medium by which all of us can stay in touch; with each other, with news and events, our work places and colleagues, our educational institutions, and our governments and politicians. Unfortunately, quick changes in our societies and cultures can also lead to great disparities in wealth, and restricted access to newer technologies and communications by huge sectors of our populations. It can also lead to unsustainable communities, whose economies are undermined by restrictions to access to this new, important, communications technology.

Our Distributed Satellite Broadband (DSB) system has great potential to mitigate some of these problems of social exclusion and unsustainable communities, whether we are talking about people in the first, developed world, or the third world. In the first world, for the same or lower cost than urban broadband, rural communities and business will be able to obtain the communications advantages previously only available to people and businesses in close proximity to the expensive land-based infrastructures. Whilst DSB does not guarantee sustainability or social inclusion, it does give rural communities and businesses a chance to compete on an even footing.

For the Third World, the potential benefits are even greater - for with DSB, whole countries will be able to join in with the communications revolution, without the need for the expensive communications infrastructures that the developed world has had to establish.

This is only the beginning. Watch this space.