This Digital Radio Gets Messages to the World’s Remotest Locations

Filed by Dana Graviton

Shortwave radios offer a way to connect one location on Earth to practically anywhere else with minimal infrastructure. But these radios come with some drawbacks—a significant one being that, unlike satellite communications, their transmission rates for digital data are typically measured in just hundreds of bits per second. Peter BloomPeter Bloom is the founder of Rhizomatica, a nonprofit that works with remote, indigenous, and off-grid communities around the world to build shortwave and cellul