Knighthawk 3G Brings Soldiers 3G Access Even Where Cell Phones Don't Reach

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You may already be aware that the space program has given us a lot of hardware that we use every day. Things like cordless tools, television satellite dishes, and even certain kinds of ball point pens came out of the space program. Well, this time, the military’s throwing in a device that just might get high-speed internet out to most anywhere that can’t get it just yet, and it’s called the KnightHawk 3G.

An appropriately martial name, the KnightHawk 3G serves as what amounts to a mobile 3G platform, allowing for high-speed internet access to go where ever the unit itself actually goes. How high speed, you wonder? Well, how does a 14.4 meg download speed sound? Don’t like that? How about a 5.76 meg upload speed? It will also provide support for as many as 60 voice calls and 14 HSPDA connections at the same time, meaning the entire platoon (a platoon is typically 40 soldiers) can call home at the same time.

The downside? The KnightHawk 3G is sufficiently ruggedized to provide battle-ready support for all those connections, which means it’s somewhat weighty. In fact, one of these units weighs a whopping 44 pounds, which means you’re probably not going to have the radio guy carrying one of them on his back. But mounting them in most any vehicle on the field would do the job nicely.

One of these on a block would likely provide terrific high-speed internet access for several homes simultaneously, and failing that, it wouldn’t be hard to see these becoming a standard in rural homes in the way a furnace or water pump is today. We all know that there’s a pretty hefty swath of the country that doesn’t yet have high-speed internet except that provided by satellite, and in many cases this is the slowest of all available high-speed options. Will the KnightHawk 3G, or something like it, do for the internet what the Rural Utilities Service did for electricity in the forties? Only time will tell.