SatMagazine — September 2010 Beam Insight The Race To Ultra Broadband 8 Solaris Mobile: 30 by Maxime Baudry, “Swimming With The Tide” IDATE by Chris Forrester Mining Imagery For All It’s Worth 16 Helping Others To Help Others 76 by Dr. Christopher Ralph Lavers, by Eric Jan Bakker, Britannia Royal College Vizada Standards... What Standards? 22 Space Technology Is Making Commercial 102 by Martin Coleman, Aviation Faster, Safer, and Greener Colem SatBroadcasting™ Executive Spotlight Satellite Broadcasting — An Evolution 36 Jonathan Weintraub, CEO, 88 by Jack Vickers, SENCORE MTN Satellite Communications Compressed Content Analysis 60 Event by Robert Millis, Harris Broadcast Communications Debating Global Issues On A Global Stage 26 IBC2010 An Uplink Project Of Olympian Proportions 68 Stagnation Prevention... 48 Changing A Name Is One Thing... 86 A Meeting Of SatMinds — SATCON by Angie Champsaur, Encompass Digital Media Focus Global Sharing — Reaping The Benefits 92 Getting The Most Out Of IP-Based 44 by Paul Sims Satellite Bandwidth Entertainment At Your Command 100 What’s Next For 3DTV? 52 by Adam Nightingale, by E. Pinson, Irdeto TEAMCAST History In The Making — Again! 108 Next Step: Europe 64 by David Pollack, Spacecom TechWorks TWTAs Lead The Way 72 by Doug Slayton, Capacity Optimization — 80 CPI A Technology Comparison by Dirk Breynaert + Max d’Oreye, Innovation In Network Management 96 Newtec by Guy Adams, iDirect This Hub Experiences 106 The Benefits Of Elevation by Katie Gryadunova, Pactel International A Case Of Terminal Innovation 110 by David Geen 6 SatMagazine — September 2010 Beam The Race To Ultra Broadband... A Major Challenge For Satellite Players author: Maxime Baudry, IDATE Even more than bridging the digital divide, it appears to IDATE the race to ultra broadband has become the next main challenge for satellite players, as the public and private sectors are moving towards this objective. Switch to superfast broadband is spurred by the rise of the digital home…which leads to increased demand for bandwidth. In parallel to the reduction of the digital divide, Governments In Asia, the Australian government issued an RFP in April 2008 are now focused on the development of ultra broadband. for a national broadband network, or NBN for short. The goal In the USA, on the matter of ultra-fast broadband, and of the network, which would be based primarily on an FTTN specifically of optical fibre access, the federal government architecture, was to provide 98 percent of the population with has yet to announce any dedicated programme. Existing high-speed access at 12 Mbps. FTTx networks have been deployed chiefly by the RBOCs, Verizon and AT&T, and by a handful of local authorities — Australia has become one of the first countries to have a some of which can probably count on getting a subsidy from nationwide FTTH rollout programme. Through the “NBN the new national programmes if they show an interest in Company”, which is a public-private partnership of which the performing a rollout and their targets are in line with those of State owns 51 percent, the government plans on deploying the national initiative. an open network that will supply 90 percent of Australian households (i.e. all towns and cities with a population of over 1,000) and all schools and businesses, with an FTTH access service running at 100 Mbps. For the remaining 10 percent of the population, alternative wireless and satellite technologies will be deployed, delivering access at up to 12 Mbps. Towards this objective, Australia recently expressed interest for satellite systems in the Ka-band, which is likely to attract potential providers like Hughes or Thaicom. In Europe, and notably in France, the government has decided to become more heavily involved in helping to develop ultra-fast broadband nationwide Source: IDATE through funds from the national. As a Figure 1: Estimate of the need for speed for consumer applications. 8 SatMagazine — September 2010 10 SatMagazine — September 2010 Beam result, 2 billion EUR have been earmarked for ultra-broadband, through mobile infrastructure sharing. IDATE performed a model the main goal being to step up rollouts in the most sparsely demonstrating that in France for instance, the cost per inhabitant populated areas where private sector initiative is lacking (low of deploying LTE in rural zones (less than 500 inhab/km2) would commercial potential compared to the investments needed). be 4 to 7 times more expensive than in urban areas depending on National authorities, and especially the regulator ARCEP, are configuration of the landscape. IDATE strongly believes there is a working on defining the different areas in the country with the strong window of opportunities for satellite players. stated goal of encouraging a greater degree of cooperation between private sector companies operating in this market, and Satellite + The Ultra Broadband Arena so to enable a certain level of cost sharing for the rollouts. In a Satellite is clearly a viable alternative technology for reducing recent report made public, the strategy recommended to insure both broadband and ultra broadband digital divides. Its full population coverage is to combine FTTx with LTE. development is nevertheless being challenged by the steady progress being made in terrestrial technologies and the need to Is LTE THE Solution? increase data rates. Whereas it is certain the coverage of fixed FTTx and cable DOCSIS 3.0 networks will remain limited on the long term, LTE appears more Although the Eutelsat Ka-Sat or Avanti Hylas spacecrafts and more as the best solution to insure a 100 percent coverage. will be launched this year and allow access speeds of around But is it really the ideal solution? LTE, with its theoretical 100 Mbps, 8-10 Mbps, they are already behind their landline competitors appears on the paper as a seducing solution but in reality, effective as the data rates supplied by DSL2+ and FTTx are closer to bitrates will be in the 5-10 Mbps range and strong uncertainties 20-80 Mbps. Regarding LTE, bitrates will be limited to 5-10 remain on the cost of deploying widely this technology, even Mbps but operators are already working on next generation SatMagazine — September 2010 11 Beam through the use of the Q and V frequency bands (2017-2020 timeframe). In addition to L-band payload operated by Inmarsat, the first commercial satellite using the Alphabus model, the Alphasat I-XL, which is due to launch in 2012, will have three technological demonstration payloads (TDP) supplied by the ESA: an advanced star tracker using active pixel technology, *FTTH: deployment of an all optical network to the home an optical laser terminal for geostationary to low-Earth orbit **SC: increase access rates by equipping the sub local-loop communication at high data rates, and a dedicated payload for ***LTE: next generation, or 4G wireless network the characterization of transmission performance in the Q-V band in preparation for possible commercial exploitation of Source: French Ministry responsible for Regional Development these frequencies. It is only by being able to rival its terrestrial Table 1: Target scenarios for covering the French counterparts that satellite can become a credible alternative, population with ultra high-speed access which is why projects like the MegaSat and the Terabit Satellite are the focus of current efforts. mobile networks (LTE advanced) which could allow theoretical bitrates of 270 Mbps from 2016 (effective bitrates About the author of at least 30-50 Mbps). Maxime Baudry joined IDATE as a senior consultant in April The satellite industry has begun to react to the threat. The 2006. His main area of endeavour is monitoring the satellite French space agency, CNES, in fact announced in late 2009 industry, the telecommunications that 500,000 isolated households could be supplied with ultra services market and operator high-speed access using a revolutionary satellite. Baptised strategies. Prior to IDATE, MegaSat, this satellite could supply French households with Maxime worked for two years access at 50 Mbps starting in 2014. The MegaSat initiative for a major strategy consulting firm specialised in the space involves satellite manufacturers EADS Astrium and Thales industry, where his work focused Alenia Space, and service provider Eutelsat, among others. primarily on industrial analysis of satellite telecommunications for As part of its ARTES programme, the European Space Agency space agencies and the sector’s also has plans to develop a very high-speed satellite called equipment providers. the Terabit satellite. Based on a very broad platform (probably Alphabus), the Terabit will make it possible to achieve speeds of around 200 Mbps with dishes measuring 40 cm in diameter, Source: IDATE Figure 3: Satellites follow terrestrial performances 12 SatMagazine — September 2010 Beam Mining Imagery For All It’s Worth author: Dr. Christopher Ralph Lavers, Britannia Royal College High resolution commercial satellite imaging is now a sufficiently mature technology which can provide near-real time monitoring of a broad range of man-made land use and cover activities, and is an important geographical tool for the modern GIS professional. Market globalisation and climate change related factors are set processing methods, are used to look at regions of global to increase the impact of conflict between complex resource concern that include: Zimbabwe, West Papua, and India. extraction and simple ethnic communities — the greatest burden of impact usually affects those nearest to the base of the socio- The use of high resolution satellite imagery has been associated economic scale the hardest. The latest developments in this with the military ever since the Cold War — they were the only technological area, combined with astronomy-based image organisations with launch capability to place polar orbiting satellite platforms into space. Historically, such sensitive Papua New Guinea Satellite Image, image courtesy of Geology.com satellite imagery was difficult to disseminate due to security classification.