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[S93]Satellite And Internet Packages

by Ned Hughes, Ned

HughesNet is the leader in Satellite Internet connectivity in the United States. It has 325,000 customers and the number is growing everyday. To meet customer's expectations HughesNet has launched the Boeing built Space3 satellite into space. The Ka- band satellite was launched by the Ariane 5 ECA launcher from Kourou, French Guiana on 14th of August 2007. The spacecraft will maneuver in a circular orbit at a height of 22,300 miles above the equator at 95 degrees West longitude. Hughes will start using the satellite for commercial purposes in 2008. The Space3 satellite was designed and developed by Hughes because there was a need for commercial satellite to fulfill growing customer expectations. It has features such as onboard traffic switching and routing capability. Other advanced features include 10Gbps overall capacity, fast packet switching and dynamic beam forming. The satellite will help Hughes to launch bandwidth-on-demand satellite services with site-to-site, single hop networking of high performance ground terminals. The single hop communication between satellite terminals will eliminate the need for routing traffic through a central hub earth station. The Ka-band spectrum will help in high speed services for IP data and multimedia applications. The satellite has a digital processor, downlink phased array antenna, microwave switch matrix and flight hardware and software.

In the next couple of months Boeing along with Hughes will complete on orbit testing of the systems. It will also complete deployment of the satellite's 132-foot solar arrays. An overall satellite checkout and systems acceptance testing will also be completed during this period. After completing all tests Hughes will put the satellite into commercial operation providing high-end satellite Internet connectivity to clients across America and Canada.

Hughes mission statement of ?Connect to the Future? through Satellite based Internet services can be partly achieved by the launch of the Spaceway 3 satellite. Like many other first's to it credit Hughes will be able to offer high-end Satellite Internet services to customers and will move ahead of it competitor Wildblue. The Satellite Internet market has enough space to grow and the technology is being accepted by people across the length and breadth of the country. Customers in rural areas who do not get access to broadband and cable modem facilities will benefit greatly once Hughes puts the Spaceway 3 satellite into commercial use. The expected date of the start of commercial operations of the satellite can be anytime in the early part of 2008. HughesNet is a communication filed with the SEC has stated that Spaceway 3 can help address a US$ 26 billion per year market in North America. Apart from this HughesNet can offer services in Canada and Puerto Rico. The existing customers of Hughes are offered service using the conventional Ku-band satellite systems. They would need to change their existing equipment to receive services from the Ka-band Spaceway 3 satellite. There are licensing issues which Hughes needs to sort out before the commercial operation starts in early 2008. Once that is done customers can expect Satellite Internet connectivity with speeds that are comparable with any other technologies and no downtime of services

A study conducted by ?The Economist? magazine, showed a strong correlation between the price of a ?Big Mac? in a country and it's cost of living. The cost of living?rent, consumer goods, food, entertainment( www.ticketnest.com ) is usually significantly higher in the US than in the developing world(and so is the price of a ?Big Mac?). However, ?Big Mac? index notwithstanding, the price of internet bandwidth in the third world is off the charts. As a point of comparison, a 1 Mbit/sec ADSL costs about 20 dollar for a home user in the US, and about 800 dollars in Pakistan. Needless to say, there is a strong need for a reduction in cost and improvement of quality of service.

The issue with the developing countries is the lack of infrastructure. Our case study of Pakistan showed that all of Pakistan has only one backbone fiber line, resulting in bottlenecks. The lack of redundancy has its costs'in July 2005 the fiber wire got severed resulting in massive outages. The back up satellite connection was hardly a solace to the burgeoning IT industry of Pakistan.

A significant percentage of traffic in Pakistan is domestic, but it's routed through servers in the US and Europe. A trace route from one Pakistan ISP to another yields a shocking pattern?packets traveling from Pakistan to UK, US, Singapore and back to Pakistan. The situation is exacerbated in the case of fiber failures, when the traffic gets routed over multiple satellite hops. The latency is about 700 milliseconds/hop(or about 1.5 seconds for every transaction). This not only adds latency, needlessly raising costs but chokes the connection slowing down genuine Pakistan to international traffic.

Internet Exchange Point is a facility to allow the exchange of traffic between multiple ISP's. In general the ISP's have to pay to the tier-1 providers or the governing body(say Pakistan Telecom Authority) for the carriage of traffic. Even if the traffic is local, without the Exchange Point, the traffic is routed over the international internet.

The peering arrangement allows local ISPs to exchange traffic on a barter basis, rather than on a cash basis?net neutrality being the key. Such arrangements bypass ITU protocol, regarding revenue sharing and allow net lower cost to all the ISP participants.
The exchange point essentially allows the ISP's to segment the traffic, according to the destination and by pass the tier-1 providers. Results are dramatically lower cost and lower latency.

The entrenched incumbents in developing countries(such as Pakistan) have the most to lose from domestic exchange of traffic and are the biggest impediments to the adoption. The governments of such countries also have a vested interest in supporting the monopoly of Telecom companies, given the revenues and taxes received. The larger ISP's also have a vested interest in using high cost of connectivity to hasten the exit of smaller or less capitalized players through attrition.

In conclusion, to reap advantage of internet exchange points, the telecom companies have to overcome their monopolistic ways and there has to be an effort to make a neutral body responsible for the traffic sharing facilities. The lower cost of internet will actually foster overall growth in overall traffic, which will compensate the monopolies? initial loss of international traffic.

For more information about Satellite Internet Exchange visit: http://www.nayasat.com/satellite-internet-exchange.html

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Both Ned Hughes & Jill Murtha are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

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