When Satellite Dishes Come to the Aid of Internet Users

CDs, DVDs, external drives, and of course the internet are various ways of exchanging digital content. However, each of these methods may have varying degrees of ease or complexity in transferring information based on their characteristics in reproduction and distribution. Meanwhile, an IT project that has been offered to Iranian users for the first time in the world aims to turn satellite receivers into a free tool for receiving digital content. Tosheh is an IT project that intends to deliver digital content to its audience via satellite dishes and receivers, and so far, it is Iranian users who have had the chance to be the first users of this innovative method of digital content transfer. When we talk about digital content here, we mean content that internet users spend hours and significant amounts of money to find via the internet; a collection of photos, videos, and texts that can take a long time to find and receive, even without internet restrictions. Tosheh aims to provide a daily supply of digital content to its users so that they will almost be free from visiting many internet sites. But what exactly services is Tosheh going to provide to its users? Mehdi Yahyanejad, an internet expert and the innovator of IT projects such as Balatarin and Tosheh, tells Radio Farda: 'Tosheh is a digital information distribution platform that uses satellites and can deliver a very large volume of information in a short time and for free to the audience.' Studies show that most internet users are more consumers of content than producers. The asymmetry between the amount of downloaded and uploaded information is such that many internet service providers offer asymmetric services to their users, where the speed of receiving information is much higher than the speed of uploading. Yahyanejad adds another reality to this topic, stating that many people living in a shared geographical area, such as Iran, have similar interests, and throughout the day or week, much of the texts, videos, and photos they see on the internet are common. Tosheh bases its services on these two topics: the ease of receiving information and the gathering of shared consumable content: 'In the Tosheh system, what we did is help users in downloading information. If we can gather everything that is common among users, and we can say that about seventy percent of users will see these videos and news, if we can collect and send these to them, we provide a large part of what users wanted to download and see from the internet. This is exactly what we do in Tosheh. We collect a lot of content that is interesting to the Iranian audience, from videos to audio files, PDFs, and news; we gather these and send them as a package, a Tosheh. Currently, we have about one gigabyte of new packages every day, which we send via satellite, and those who are in Iran can receive them, record them on a flash drive, and open them on their laptops to view.' But if you want to receive your needed information through Tosheh, what tools do you need? The basic tools you need are a dish and a satellite receiver, and of course, a flash memory of up to 4 gigabytes to transfer the received information to a Windows computer equipped with the Tosheh application. More details from Mehdi Yahyanejad: 'The satellite must be set towards Yahsat, go to the Tosheh channel, and they can record about an hour of the Tosheh channel on a USB memory. They can connect this memory to their laptop. They can receive and install our software by sending an email to [email protected] and open the information package [on their laptop].' Another noteworthy point is that after requesting to receive information on the Tosheh satellite channel, you do not need to stay on this channel. You can continue your satellite browsing, visit other channels, and watch other programs while Tosheh is receiving your daily information onto the flash memory. But how does receiving information through Tosheh differ from other methods of transferring and distributing information, such as the internet? 'Tosheh is a completely new method. In terms of the amount of information sent, many might want to compare it with the internet. In Iran, downloading about one gigabyte of internet content costs about three to four thousand tomans. We send the same amount of information for free to our audience every day. On the other hand, Tosheh solves the censorship problem; many websites, especially video websites, are filtered in Iran, and we actually solve the censorship issue for the audience. From another aspect, the fact that content is curated means a lot of thought goes into this curation, and efforts are made to ensure the content is both interesting and of high quality. This is also something the Tosheh team is working on. Therefore, the sent content is interesting, informative, and entertaining. Putting all this together, Tosheh is a new method that has many advantages; it may also have disadvantages, but it has significant differences from other methods of information distribution.' If in the method of internet information distribution, restrictions like filtering disrupt users' activities, the usual method for disrupting satellite broadcasts is jamming. You might also wonder how effective jamming is on the delivery of information through Tosheh. 'This is a good question. Since the direction of the Yahsat satellite used is perpendicular to Iran, the jamming currently sent at the city level has little effect on it, as it is somewhat difficult for it to enter the satellite dish. Another point is that since this content is repeated every hour, meaning it may be repeated up to four times during the day, if at any time jamming occurs and slightly affects the reception of information, it is enough to record the content for one, two, or three hours instead of one hour. For example, they can start recording information from the beginning of the night and receive the content in the morning, which would have five to six hours of recorded content. With this method, since the package is constantly repeated, if jamming affects one part of one of the packages and weakens it, we can compensate and repair it.' Now that the use of smartphones is on the rise, what does Tosheh have for these users? Mehdi Yahyanejad says that in this regard, the future technology of Tosheh is on the way: 'In the next technology we provide, we want to allow users to connect their mobile phones directly to satellite receivers, even during the night when the phone needs to be charged, it can be charged through the connection to the satellite receiver, and they can receive new content on their mobile phones. We even [plan to] add a feature that during the day when they are in the city, going to work, university, or school, they can automatically share content among others. This is a new technology we are working on and hope to present it as soon as possible.' Of course, Tosheh also has an Android application that allows users to receive the daily information package and share it with others without an internet connection. Tosheh has been experimentally offered to Iranian users for three months and has been tested in many areas of Iran. During this time, many users have provided their problems or suggestions for improving the efficiency of Tosheh and convinced the innovators of Tosheh that it is ready for public release. Mr. Yahyanejad, who is the innovator and one of the operators of Tosheh, says this about the users' reception: 'In the short time we have offered Tosheh, there has been a very high reception. I understand this from the fact that not only has this software been received and used in all parts of Iran, but there have also been many questions and suggestions; during this short time, we have received over a thousand emails, from emails about content suggestions to technical questions about how Tosheh works and how they can receive more content, even some who have had problems with older models of satellite receivers have asked questions, and we have tried to address them. They can email us at [email protected] or go to our website toosheh.org and click on 'Receive Tosheh' to get and use our software.' At the same time, let’s not forget that Tosheh is a one-way method for receiving information, and this technology has not yet developed to the point where users can customize the received information or rely on their own satellite receivers and dishes to send information. Share your experiences and questions about using Tosheh with us so we can discuss it in the Dotcom program with the project operators.