Many of Africa's cities and populous areas are reaping extraordinary benefits from new cellular telephone networks and Internet access. But it will be many years before rural interior areas -- where the majority of Africans live -- follow the cities into the information age. Children there don't even have recent-edition textbooks, much less Web-connected computers.

But help could be on the way in the form of a narrowband but workable technology: one-way delivery of digital information via satellite.