Humanitarian Group Faces Uphill Battle for TerreStar Satellite

The effort, described at www.buythissatellite.org, is hoped by AHumanRight.org to be the beginning of a much larger project to provide free Internet access around the world, said founder Kosta Grammatis. The initial target for the group is $150,000, to cement business plans and handle legal costs, he said. It’s raised $13,553 from 94 donors by Wednesday, its website said. Much of the money came after a recent presentation by Grammatis at TEDx Athens, a conference for presentations of unique ideas, said Grammatis.

Eventually, Grammatis said, he wants to build a “global network solution” to the lack of Internet availability in many places. The network would use ground components with backhaul provided by a microsatellite network, he said. The campaign is at its very early stages, and Grammatis, a 25-year-old visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, concedes that he’s still learning the legal process and the telecom business. The group also hopes to lobby governments to provide segments of their networks at no charge and to buy existing infrastructure to repurpose for widespread use, he said. Bandwidth would also be leased out to companies to help defray costs. Grammatis said he’s following the progress of O3b, the well-financed satellite venture with a similar goal of connecting the unconnected.

Grammatis started eyeing TerreStar when the company’s listing was removed from the Nasdaq, he said. TerreStar has confirmed the ability to move the satellite for Internet use in other places, he said. Ahumanright.org has no interest in taking on the entrenched telecom providers, but would offer basic, low-data-rate Internet that could handle browsing and voice service, he said. Once plans are cemented, ahumanright.org would make a formal bid for the satellite and begin development of “an open source low cost modem,” its website. Donors of $25 or more to the cause get an “adorable pin” that says “I bought a satellite,” and $50 gets a T-shirt that says the same on the front. TerreStar didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While the group has had some contact with TerreStar, Grammatis is hoping for increased interaction with the bankrupt company and other players in the bankruptcy, such as EchoStar and Harbinger Capital Partners. Grammatis has targeted Papua New Guinea as a good starting point based on the orbital slot and a poor broadband penetration rate of about 2.1 percent, he said. His group hopes to attract some big investors and a partner country or countries to begin offering the service, he said. Grammatis’s idea was inspired by William Kamkwamba, an African who “reinvented” a windmill to provide electricity in his village and was later shocked to learn everything he needed to know was available on the Internet. Deutsche Telekom and the NASA Ames Research Center are helping with the project, which also includes about 100 volunteers around the world, Grammatis said.

The group faces a steep climb to win TerreStar-1, said a satellite expert. The satellite is being appraised at about $200 million and carries with it about $80 million in debt, said Tim Farrar, president of TMF Associates. Ahumanright.org points to Iridium’s constellation, which cost $5 billion to build and was sold for $23 million during bankruptcy, as the model for its effort to pick up the satellite, though Farrar believes a similar scenario for TerreStar to be unlikely. Even if the eventual purchaser of TerreStar’s assets really only wants the company’s terrestrial spectrum rights, the satellite may be necessary to keep the spectrum rights, said Farrar.