DW making news available via Outernet

German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle has signed an agreement with the newly-launched Outernet to carry its programming into countries, free from censorship and free of charge.

Outernet is a new platform designed to bridge the digital divide and penetrate censored markets by beaming the best content from the Internet via a constellation of orbiting nanosatellites down to every citizen on earth, free of charge.

DW Director General Peter Limbourg said: “Outernet and Deutsche Welle share many of the same values and goals. It is a clear message to all who wish to censor or restrict access to the Internet.”

Mr Limbourg said that because reception was quite easy to access and because the use of many small satellites would make it quite difficult to obstruct signals through jamming, DW’s cooperation with Outernet would be able to “contribute to net neutrality and circumvent censorship”.

Thane Richard, head of User Engagement at Outernet, said: “Deutsche Welle represents a very exciting step for Outernet in bridging the global information divide by providing quality news along with other relevant content to our users.”

Outernet is making use of a network of small satellites to transmit selected data – audio, video, text and applications – to simple receivers that users can either purchase or build themselves. All software and hardware required to access Outernet is open source. Once the receiver has the signal, it is rebroadcast locally and content can be viewed on any Wi-Fi enabled device.

“No other information channel allows for such a wide variety of content or broadcasts on a genuinely worldwide scale,” Mr Richard added.

Outernet recently officially launched its service in test phase and during this early stage, content will be available in North America, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. DW content will be available throughout the entire test phase.