15 June 2005
The Internet and Satellite technology reduce the digital divide in Europe
Marratech has become the 13th partner of the TWISTER Project, a three year pan-European programme to provide broadband access to rural communities throughout Europe which began on 1 February 2004. Communities linked by the project at over 105 validation sites throughout Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Greece, Malta will now be able to participate in real-time interactive meetings on the Internet using satellite and wi-fi access.
Project partners who are busy developing innovative applications in agriculture, education healthcare, community services, and e-business will now be able to incorporate live web conferences with video, full duplex VoIP and an interactive whiteboard into those uses.
TWISTER (Terrestrial Wireless Infrastructure integrated with Satellite Telecommunications for E-Rural), which aims to reduce the digital divide by connecting rural areas to the main Internet backbone by satellite and wi-fi access, is co-funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme ‘Aeronautics & Space’.The TWISTER consortium is led and coordinated by EADS Astrium and includes twelve complementary industrial partners including Aramiska, Eutelsat, and CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, the French National Space Centre). Bernard Durin, TWISTER Communication Manager at EADS Astrium said: "We invited Marratech to become the thirteenth Twister partner in order to bring rich media collaboration to the Project. We have already established the satellite infrastructure during the first part of the Programme but felt that there was a need to introduce more content applications to encourage use by the end users.
"We chose Marratech because of its ease of use and flexibility and the fact that its compatibility with both the unicast and multicast protocols meant that it is ideal for a deployment with satellite and wi-fi networks".
As the Twister Programme is funded by the European Commission, Marratech will be provided free of use to end users for the duration of the Project.
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