Voting via satellite

A couple weeks ago, South Africa, held elections. For some it's a quick process of voting, but for others it can take a while due to long queues. Brazil held its first electronic elections last year. They are in fact the first country in the world to implement fully electronic elections. How did they achieve such a feat? By using BGan technology of course.

The BGan units were used for both voice calls and data transfers and they were able to isolate their network from the Internet to prevent unauthorised access. Brazil were actually able to release their results on the same day as voting. They also reported that the BGan units suffered no downtime despite heavy usage.

I'm quite certain that other countries will be investigating this technology and it is only a matter of time before we in South Africa start voting electronically.

What is BGAN?

Throughout the blog I have been using the word BGAN. In case you are not sure what this means, I have decided to explain it in simple terms.

BGAN is Inmarsat's broadband global area network. Inmarsat is a satellite voice and data provider. BGAN was the world's first mobile communications service to provide both voice and broadband data simultaneously through a single, truly portable device on a global basis.

For those who have jobs in remote locations and that need to be mobile, accessing the Internet meant a return to slow dial-up speeds. But when using the BGAN, you get all the benefits of high speed broadband.