High Throughput Satellite - Solutions of Dynamic Connectivity

From east to west and north to south, High Throughput Satellite (HTS) communications are being delivered today to millions of users at subscription rates that transform the broadband value proposition, as well as the business plan.

On planes, trains, ships, and in cities, villages, the full spectrum of enterprises - and now consumers - are taking advantage of 30-100 Gbps connectivity and applications that require new definitions of "access".

Reaching the Unreachable

HTS opens up a wealth of opportunity for a wide range of applications, often in locations which were previously unreachable. Indeed, for the consumer market, it provides cost-effective broadband access where there is not any, as well as being a competitive alternative to existing broadband services. Crucially, HTS means that people who previously could not afford access to broadband satellite can now. For the enterprise market, HTS provides a new type of offering, with higher throughput and cost-effective offering.

The introduction of HTS has led to rapidly deployment of consumer class terminals that provide much greater throughput than their predecessors. This has already brought astounding benefits to crucial groups, such as first responders and humanitarian organizations, as well as warfighters. Wireless operators are tapping market that were previously unreachable through satellite backhaul of not only GSM, but also LTE, WIMAX, WiFi, Pico, and Femtocell solutions.

The Perception

Despite all this success, there is still a feeling among some that HTS, such as Ka-band, is just not quite up to scratch. There is especially a certain amount of caution around the issue of rain attenuation. However, the industry has been working hard to ensure that any possible way to minimize rain attenuation effect. Indeed, there are two main mitigation techniques :

1. Site Diversity :

    Typically, the operator will ensure there are uplinks in geographically diverse locations, which naturally means that if one site is being impacted by heavy rain, they can simply switch to another site. This is not a new approach, but it has been applied with good effect for years.

2. Adaptive Code Modulation (ACM)

    ACM is a technology which can automatically change the forward error correction and modulation of a link to compensate for changes in link conditions. Commonly these changes are due to weather, e.g. rain fade, but can also come from other sources such as RF level changes or interference.

From the experiences of people using Ku-band and Ka-band right now, the customers really just seeing not significant degradation or signal loss due to rain fade.

That said, it is important to remember that as with every other service, Ku-band and Ka-band is well suited for some applications, but not others. It is a question of having another tool in the kit from which to choose.

The Business Opportunity

The business benefits are potentially huge and fall into two categories, the first being the opportunity for the consumer, and the second the enterprise business opportunity.

1. The Consumer Business Opportunity

To fully appreciate the consumer business opportunity, we need to look back at the roll-out of first satellite consumer service, Direct-To_Home (DTH) broadcasting. For many years, the expectation was that satellite DTH broadcasting would be what consumers would purchase when there is no terrestrial access.

Such turned out to be true, to some extent, but the industry was taken back by the growing interest in the urban and sub-urban areas of these territories. It turned out that satellite DTH was a competitive offering for consumers, which led to tooth-and-nail competition between satellite and terrestrial. Today, the satellite industry is doing very well in the broadcast market.  

Back to HTS, there has similarly been an expectation, as these services roll-out, that satellite broadband will be an offer when no terrestrial service is available or limited service. However, if you were talk to some of the satellite operators rolling out consumer DTH broadband, you would discover there is a similar trend starting to play out as occurred for satellite broadcasting. The satellite and terrestrial industries will once again be in a pitched battle for hearts and minds of consumers everywhere.

That is great, as competition is good. For the consumer, this creates a huge opportunity as both industries will refine and offer the most competitive pricing and bandwidth for the consumers.

2. The Enterprise Business Opportunity

The terrestrial industry has predicted the imminent demise of the satellite industry in the enterprise communication technology space, yet in every single year, without exception, the satellite industry delivery of service in the enterprise market has grown. The reason behind that, the more point to multipoint the applications, the more satellite is the best option. Terrestrial is best on point-to-point, but satellite has advantage in point-to-multipoint.



Getting The Correct Business Model

KA-SAT(Eutelsat) coverage over Europe and the Mediterranean Basinat 9°E

As with any new satellite band, there are numerous questions about getting the correct business model. For example, what are the new pricing metrics? Have service level agreements changed fundamentally and if, so, how? What about reliability? How high is "high throughput"? New value-added re-sellers are entering the market; who are they (and do they know what they're doing)? 

IPSTAR coverage over Asia Pasific at 119.5 °E

We are starting to obtain to these, drawing upon the recent track record of a growing list of industry leaders, including Eutelsat and Avanti in Europe, Yahsat and Arabsat in Africa and Middle East, IPSTAR in Asia, and Hughes and ViaSat in America. Added to their experience are the innovation and short-term plans of competitors such as Inmarsat"s Global Xpress, Intelsat's EPIC, O3b orbit solution, and many more other launches.