[gurps] Re: Internet on blue planet and like worlds

[Onno Meyer]

Tom replied to me:
> >When you say colony, do you mean the worldwide program, each 
> >individual town or something in between?
> the towns on the cluster islands
> depending on the cluster there is 5 to 15+ towns

So there would be something like half a dozen colonies (call it
ten to be on the safe side) with an average 200,000 colonists. 

That means one microwave sat uplink, used eight hours per 
day for 'play' data, provides 24 megabytes per user. Probably 
not enough. A lasercom uplink would provide 2.4 gigabyte per
user. 

Just going by the GURPS numbers, I'd probably put an uplink
into each town, or perhaps half the towns.

> >* Towns may be more than 100 miles apart, especially on a 
> >  waterworld.
> I didn't look at the maps before replying
> 500km/310miles would be better
> there are few towns that outside of that,
> but they may not want internet access

If it is a town and not an individual homestead, odds are that 
somebody wants net access. Professionals in need of data or
a second opinion, the local newspaper if there is such a thing,
perhaps even a pub in search of an attraction.
 
> under the HCC (the High Commission for Communication) directive a network
> of communication satellite are in place 

If you come from interstellar space, it is relatively cheap to 
build large sats. Cheaper than landing the equivalent amount
of hardware, and Blue Planet has seen massive imports.