The Peacesat network
p. 26 · Read in the full issue
NOT many people seem to realise it, but the peoples and com munities of the Pacific have at their disposal a remarkable facility that overcomes the miles of ocean that separate them to create a regional
village forum.
I am talking about a thing clumsily called Pan-Pacific Education and Com munication Experiments by Satellite, but more congenially known as Peacesat.
It uses the most modern technology to break down the geographical barriers to communication and allows people all over the Pacific to talk to each other as if they were rubbing shoulders in the village square.
As such, it should be treasured as one of the region’s most valuable institutions.
It has the most amazing potential to better the lives of people throughout the Pacific and to foster a sense of regional community that can only enrich economic, cultural and international relations.
Sadly, it is under-valued, under-utilised and under resourced. Not enough people know about it, not enough use it and it is woefully short of the money needed to change this situation. Briefly, Peacesat links 21 Pacific countries through a series of user-friendly terminals connected to an American satellite, with the whole system managed by the University of Hawaii. They can talk to each other one-to-one, link up a number of stations for tele-conferences or exchange fax and other data communications.
The system goes back to 1971 when the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration gave the University of Hawaii use of a satellite. This reached the end of its life in 1986 and Peacesat went into recess.
It was revived two years later after Hawaii Senator Daniel
Inouye had spearheaded congressional legislation making
funds available for time on another satellite. Subsequently, a New Zealand company, Marine-Air Systems, developed satellite earth stations and terminals for the participating countries.
Peacesat cannot be used for commercial purposes, so can’t be dominated by business, or for personal chats, so does not compete with established telecommunications channels.
It is there essentially to facilitate educational, cultural, health and scientific links between the islands and the United States, New Zealand and Australia, which are also on the Peacesat network.
It also supports medical and environmental emergency communications and has demonstrated its use in these situations many times. One of the most dramatic was when a woman in Alaska, about to give birth but snowbound and unable to get to hospital, was talked through her delivery by a doctor at the Otago Medical School in Dunedin on a channel patched through Peacesat terminals in Alaska, Honolulu and Wellington.
In several environmental emergencies throughout the region, including Cyclone Ofa, Peacesat was at times the only
means of communication that remained operational, so proved invaluable in arranging relief suppliers and assistance.
During an outbreak of dengue fever in the South Pacific, medical officers
throughout the region held weekly
teleconferences over Peacesat which were credited with eventually controll ing the disease.
Medical officers have also used the system to discuss methods to stem the spread of Aids around the Pacific.
Agricultural quarantine officials in
seven countries link up monthly with the South Pacific Commission in Nou mea to discuss strategies for the control of fruit fly which has the potential to decimate any island economies.
Vets from 16 countries around the Pacific also talk to each other over Peacesat every month in a link seen as
vital to prevent the spread of animal diseases. The SPC is a regular user of Peacesat links, as is the Forum Fisheries Agency, which has its own network, linked with fisheries departments in several island states.
On a different level, the system is used by girl guides in 10 countries to hold a monthly get-together in which they exchange games and songs and consult each other on ways of recruiting members and leaders.
School groups are regular visitors to the New Zealand terminal at the Wellington Polytechnic, using it to link up with students elsewhere in the Pacific for social studies programmes. Last year, Samoan students in Wellington had a series of links with young Samoans elsewhere in the Pacific, offering them an opportunity to upgrade their language skills and inform the others about life in New Zealand.
Students of the polytechnic’s Design School took part in an innovative programme with the Art Department of Hawaii University, exchanging graphic files over the Peacesat data link.
Despite this varied usage, Peacesat, at least in New Zealand, only limps along on a shoestring budget. There are no assured year-to-year funds for the ground operation or research and development and individual sites are respon sible for their own running costs.
They are not allowed to charge for use of the system, so have limited ways to raise funds. The New Zealand government used to fund the Wellington terminal but this stopped with other budgetary cuts about a decade ago. It is to the credit of Wellington Polytechnic that it continues to fund the operation and pay a part-timer, Kay Seyb, to coordinate it.
The Honolulu headquarters has suggested the terminals should operate eight hours a day, five days a week, but she says she has no funding to man it for that time. She is trying to recruit a pool of volunteer operators to give greater
flexibility of operation.
“Sadly, it’s not being used to its full potential,” she told me. “But we don’t have the money to advertise it and open it up to more people. If only I could get a few more visionaries in Wellington interested in this ...”. □