One way multimedia broadcasting as a tool for education and development indeveloping nations

An improved quality of life through education and developmental communicati on is an important necessity of societal up-liftment in the new millennium, especially in the developing nations. The population explosion and the ass ociated pressure on the scarce resources to meet the basic necessities have made it more or less impossible for most of the nations to invest reasonab le resources in realizing adequate channels of formal education. Thank to t he developments in satellite communication and associated technologies, new vistas are available today to provide education and developmental communic ation opportunities to millions of people, spread across the globe. Satelli te based Digital Audio and Multimedia Broadcasting is one such new developm ent that is being viewed as an innovative space application in the coming d ecades. The potential of DAB technology to reach education, information and entertainment directly to the user through a specially designed receiver c ould be efficiently utilized by the developing nations to overcome their di fficulties in realizing formal channels of education and information dissem ination. WorldSpace plans to launch three geo-stationary satellites that would cover most of the developing economies in Africa the Mediterranean, the Middle E ast, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Apart from a variety of digital , high quality audio channels providing news, views, education and entertai nment opportunities the end users can also: get a responsive multimedia. Th e multimedia is being planned as a specially packaged offering that can mee t the demand of students, professionals as well as certain special groups w ho have certain specific data and information requirements. Apart from Worl dSpace, renowned agencies/firms from different parts of the world shall pro vide the required content to meet these requirements. Though the Internet o ption is available, higher telephone charges and the difficulty in getting access have made this option less interesting and unpopular in most of the developing countries. The proposed digital audio and multimedia offering fr om WorldSpace to millions of consumers spread across more than 120 countrie s is considered as a unique tool for education and development, particularl y in the developing nations. In this paper, an attempt is made to briefly d escribe the issues associated with education and development in developing countries, the WorldSpace offering and how a developing nation can benefit from this offering in the coming decades. (C) 2000 International Astronauti cal Federation. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.