Space & Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) has released Path to the Good Life, its newest video in the Better Satellite World campaign. It tells the story of how Francisco Licuy, a schoolteacher in rural Ecuador, brought the educational wealth broadband internet access to his students through satellite, delivered by HughesNet.
For the eight billion people on planet Earth, in rich countries and poor, education is the key to a good life. But without access to the internet, a quality education is hard to come by. In Latin America, broadband reaches only half as many subscribers as it does in North America and Europe. That gap denies students the education they need for today’s jobs, and robs businesses of the skilled people their success should depend on.
Companies like Hughes are doing something about it, connecting millions of people to the internet with satellite. And remote villages are not the only places falling into the broadband gap. None of the eleven high schools in Callao, Peru’s chief seaport and airport, had internet access. Frustrated parents bought pre-paid cellphones just so their children could go online. HughesNet service installed at each school changed everything by allowing the schools to download educational content to their computers, and students and staff to connect to it through Wi-Fi. Without the expense of individual internet accounts, the students gained access to 60,000 books on over 25 million topics, refreshed regularly from internet downloads.
“The smart use of satellite is bringing schools online that might never have gained access,” said executive director Robert Bell, “and doing it at a cost that governments in these nations can afford. That is bringing the good life closer for billions of people. We’re grateful to Hughes Network Services for helping us tell that story.”