Beam Me Up, Tachyon.

Tachyon's unique two-way satellite connections allow resellers to expand and upgrade customer services without lengthy waits for installing underground cable. It also spares customers long distance telephone charges in rural locations where land lines and cable modems may not be available.

Tachyon's service, called Tachyon.net, uses geostationary satellites already orbiting the earth above the equator. Tachyon.net connections are called TAPs (Tachyon Access Points). A TAP is a small satellite antenna, less than one square meter in area, with a radio for transmitting and receiving data packets and an indoor network server that acts as a satellite terminal and router.

Tachyon offers three tiers of service, with the lowest service level providing data rates superior to standard telephone business connections. The top tier service level is faster than business standard T1 access.

Tachyon's satellite links are continuously live, which means packets are transmitted as soon as they are received, without delays for reestablishing the connection. This eliminates the multiple acknowledgments that create congestion and slow performance. Tachyon.net connects to the ISP's backbone and gives end users direct access to the Internet's highest-capacity channels. Large transceivers operated by Tachyon decode and transmit traffic directly to and from the ISP backbone links.

In addition to its growing reseller roster, Tachyon and the American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) just announced a program to bring advanced Internet applications to rural and low-income American learning centers.

Backed by a National Science Foundation grant of $4 million, the Advanced Internet Satellite Extension Project will assess Tachyon's satellite access service, and will investigate Internet 2 project delivery issues to rural learning centers, colleges and universities.