• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Ihof Logo Header 182px 67px
Search DropdownSearch IconNominate
  • About
    • Advisory Board
    • Previous Events
  • Inductees
  • News
    • Blog
    • Announcements
  • Nominate
Home / Inductee Highlights / Venezuela’s First Connection a Result of “Sheer Luck”
18 April 2018

Venezuela’s First Connection a Result of “Sheer Luck”

Ermanno Pietrosemoli is known as a pioneer, both for his efforts to connect Latin American to the Internet and for setting a world record for distance of a Wi-Fi signal.

What many don’t know is that also brought the first data connection to Venezuela in 1996, an early achievement that he credits to “sheer luck.”

While it may have indeed been luck that got the ball rolling, it was his dogged determination,  and a little scheming, that brought the project to fruition.

A picture of Ermanno Pietrosemoli giving a speech.

While visiting the University of Maryland on a sabbatical in 1991, Dr. Glenn Ricart introduced Ermanno to Saul Hahn, from the Organization of American States (OAS) who told him about a program to help Latin American universities get connected to the Internet via satellite. OAS had donated to the Venezuelan Government a satellite gound station (VSAT) for Internet access.

“Once I returned to Venezuela, I tried to find out what happened to the VSAT that had been sent to Venezuela,” Pietrosemoli said.  “I found out that it was still in the original crate in the basement of a government office. It had been sitting there for several years and nobody had ever opened the box.

With the help of Ernesto Lorenz, a friend that worked at a satellite company in Caracas, a training course on connecting to the Internet via satellite was organized at ULA, and  a request to borrow the VSAT for that purpose could not be refused.

Getting the connection was easy. Getting the funding to pay for it was not.

“I started trying to convince a group of people to talk to the Rector of the university to get things going,” he said. “Meanwhile, the president of Intelsat Venezuela called me on the phone. He said, ‘Look, if you are going to hook up the university you need to make a decision now. We need to commit the bandwidth, otherwise you will have to wait until next year.’”

Without any decision yet from the Rector, Pietrosemoli said he sent a fax stating that as head of the telecommunications Lab he requested the Internet satellite connection.

Fortunately, later the Rector (who was the only one authorized for this kind of commitment) signed the formal request.

“So, we had the first connection in our country out of sheer luck,” he said.

Related Posts

27 June 2018

Mike Jensen: At the Forefront of Next Gen Internet Connectivity

Read More about Mike Jensen: At the Forefront of Next Gen Internet Connectivity

15 October 2018

Inductee Helps Students Use Internet to Assess Forest Health

Read More about Inductee Helps Students Use Internet to Assess Forest Health

24 September 2018

Jaap Akkerhuis: Internet’s Future Hard to Predict

Read More about Jaap Akkerhuis: Internet’s Future Hard to Predict

10 July 2018

Craig Partridge: Internet Restriction is Never the Answer

Read More about Craig Partridge: Internet Restriction is Never the Answer

Footer

Facebook F 1
Twitter 1
Youtube 1
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact Us

The Internet Hall of Fame is presented by:

Internet Society 76x25

USA

11710 Plaza America Drive
Suite 400
Reston, VA 20190
+1-703-439-2120

Switzerland

Rue Vallin 2
CH-1201 Geneva
+41-22-807-1444

Other Offices

© 2023 Internet Society