ALFA Ministeries report on WorldSpace Satellite Radio Program
August 27, 2002 - September 27, 2002

The World Space System was connected on 27th August 2002 at ALFA office and we have been able to use the Africa Learning Channel (ALC) audio as well as data programs. The ALC audio program has provided us with both local and international radio FM's with news and music as the major thing noted on them, but they never provided us any educational or development related material.

ALC data has provided us information about health, education, development and news from across the continent. But what is noted is that some of the information got is not up to date (not updated frequently), for example news. During the first week after the system was installed, we received no information, but later we were able to view information about Irin weekly round up news from WSF multi media service. In the same week, a lot of files were noted as being down loaded, but we couldn't view them.

In the following week, information was received about health on Trachoma and education, but this was quoted in Swedish language. Later on we also viewed information about development (Technology - VITA) were there was very good information about development projects which is relevant in our field area.

This information only lasted seven days on the computer and was deleted. Since we had set the number of days that content will be stored before it is deleted as seven days. After that, the information was deleted and we got the instruction reading " Expired 4 days old content files have been deleted. It is recommended to defrag your hard disk to achieve optimum performance". After this instruction, it was noted that we were unable to view any content from WFS apart from the table of content found on the screen and this has stayed for almost the last week. However, we got worried because when we checked on "world space client background tasks" there were so many files that had been down loaded perfectly and the data receiver log screen also showed us files that had been down loaded as PFCT with their status being explained but nothing viewed.

It was noted that it was difficult for us to view some of the information files that are being downloaded. For this matter, I can say that information viewed is little compared to what is down loaded

However, the system seems to be helpful and quite impressive though we still lack some technicalities to utilize it well. Otherwise, we are requesting our WFS multimedia suppliers to assist us more in the area where problems are identified in order to view more content broadcasted information that haven't utilized.

Lastly, the one-month period has been short for us to judge the benefits of the system so we are taking another month. Otherwise thank you very much for connecting us to World Space Foundation Multimedia Service (WSF-MMS), you have really helped so much.

Prepared by: Catherine Nansubuga, Project Coordinator (ALFA Ministries)

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Last update: October-13, 2002