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                Date: 2000-08-08
                 
                 
                WorldSpace: Digitales SATradio gegen Zensur
                
                 
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      In Kombination mit der etwas neueren Satellitentechnologie   
sowie der anderswo beliebten, noch neueren  MP3  
Kompression ist eine neue Form des guten alten Radios  
entstanden, die den Zensoren nicht-demokratisch regierten  
Staaten  durchaus Kopfzerbrechen bereiten kann. 
 
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A satellite radio service could help beat the censors 
 
THE BBC last week took the first steps towards preventing  
its World Service radio broadcasts being jammed or switched  
off by governments or rebels that don't like its message. The  
corporation has signed up to a digital satellite radio service  
called WorldSpace, which will deliver a hard-to-jam signal  
from space to a new generation of digital receivers. 
 
The BBC hopes the deal will prevent a rerun of what  
happened during the Kosovo conflict, when Serb troops  
quickly put local World Service transmitters out of action. It  
also wants to get its news programmes into countries such  
as Burma and Iraq, whose governments ban local relays and  
jam short-wave broadcasts from outside. 
 
"In any coup the rebels aim for the media," says Mike  
Whittaker of the World Service. "WorldSpace has such a  
huge footprint that we can transmit a high- quality signal over  
a wide area." World Service spokeswoman Gill Webber adds:  
"We are keeping hold of the short-wave services but are  
using WorldSpace because they are not under the control of  
local governments." 
... 
Ethiopian lawyer Noah Samara, who calls the BBC deal "a  
historic milestone", set up WorldSpace in 1990 with the idea  
of using satellite technology to broadcast to "information- 
poor" countries in the developing world. He has raised $1.1  
billion for the project from unnamed investors, and has  
already launched two of the three geostationary satellites the  
service needs. The third is due to be launched next year.  
Each satellite has three beams, and the beams all carry 96  
channels of audio coded using the MP3 sound-compression  
system that's used to send music over the Internet. 
 
Voll text 
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_225056.html  
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relayed by  
Andrew Shen <shen@epic.org> 
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edited by  
published on: 2000-08-08 
comments to office@quintessenz.at
                   
                  
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