by Peter J. Brown

Throughout the next 18 months, commercial Ka-band satellite capacity will grow considerably. New North American broadband multimedia ventures in particular are starting to talk about specific plans rather than a wide range of opportunities. In Europe, however, the initial phase of this trend is almost over.

Military use aside, Ka-band must be seen as more than just a frequency, as spot beams, phased array antennas and new software tools enter the picture. Because the hype is gone and mood is more cautious, yet optimistic nonetheless, there is no real audience for any wild-eyed projections. Most if not all of the early backers with their deep pockets are gone also.

With more than 80 Ka-band geostationary orbital slots assigned to U.S. operators by the FCC, and with almost 50 active licenses assigned in two rounds, there is simply not enough space here to update the status of all the Ka-band ventures, both geostationary and non-geostationary systems.

Still, look at all the recent and quite unexpected developments. Echostar Communications Corp.’s decision to acquire Ka-band capacity on SES Americom’s AMC 15, and the decision by Liberty Media Corp., Intelsat Inc., and the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC), among others, to invest in Colorado-based Wildblue Communications are signs of forward momentum adapted to the new realities of the broadband arena.

Besides obtaining a stake in Wildblue, Liberty Media also announced in January that it had reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Space and Mission Systems Corp. (formerly TRW Inc.) and Telespazio S.p.A. involving a proposed restructuring of Astrolink International LLC. Liberty Satellite will acquire substantially all of the assets of Astrolink, which is scheduled to initiate service in late 2005, while the two satellites for Astrolink are simultaneously back on track at Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

"We here at Astrolink are not familiar with the specifics of Wildblue’s market strategy," says Steve Soroka, Astrolink’s vice president of operations. "That said, given our performance levels, we believe our service offerings are complimentary with Wildblue’s. Our services are directed at the enterprise market, and include bandwidth on demand, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), as examples."

What does the NRTC, for example, see as the value proposition in this transaction with Wildblue? "Our members will be poised once again to deliver a valuable product that is needed and desired by their customers in rural America," says Roy Heffernan, senior vice president of business development. "The ability to deliver a converged data and video product, even potentially bundled with their electric or telephone services, will put our members in a strong strategic position.

"NRTC is thrilled with our new partners, Liberty Satellite and Intelsat, as well as the existing team of investors, and we look forward to maximizing the return on our collective $156 million investment," adds Heffernan.

When is the last time you heard that anyone use the word thrilled to describe their decision to plunge into this arena which has been so volatile and slow to develop to date?

In Europe, which emerged as the true launch pad for the global Ka-band sector, there are other indicators of changes underway. Eutelsat is now exploring the merging of its Skyplex platform with the Ka-band capabilities on its new Hot Bird 6 satellite to enable micro-broadcasting as one of many possible interactive products, while SES Astra plans to use Ka-band capacity on its Astra 1H for a new always-on satellite return path-based service known as Satmode, short for satellite modem. SES Astra links up with partners Canal Satellite, Canal+ Technologies, Newtec, STMicroelectronics and Thomson in this venture. Satmode is seen as a thin stream interactive solution that will boost demand across the board for various new gaming, video-on-demand, and messaging services.

As for Ka-band in Asia, Space Systems/Loral announced in mid-April that it had completed static load testing of iPSTAR-1, the immense 14,900 pound or 6775 kg 1300 satellite under construction for Shin Satellite, Plc. With 84 spot beams, this hybrid Ku-band/Ka-band platform will be operational at 120 degrees E starting in 2004.

According to Richard Jones, a spokesman for Shin Satellite, iPSTAR 1 will be launched in the first quarter of 2004, depending on the available launch window.

"We have decided to launch with France’s Arianespace due to their long success record, and excellent relationship with the company. Following the problems with the new version of Ariane 5 last December, the company was informed that Arianespace would launch iPSTAR on an earlier, more stable version of the Ariane 5 and also ensure the satellite would be launched alone," says Jones. "Furthermore, Arianespace has agreed that it will have to make three consecutive successful prior launches in order to secure the launch of iPSTAR 1."

The iPSTAR terminals are being supplied by Ohio-based Efficient Channel Coding, and dishes are being supplied by Channel Master of the USA. The gateways are being produced by Andrew Corp. and Nera.

"Ka-band will be used only for the communications link between the satellite and the gateway. The satellite will convert the signal to Ku-band for the end user. The capacity of the Ka-band beams is approximately equal to the Ku-band beams, about 40 GB/s," says Jones.

IPSTAR 1 will join other Ka-band satellites in the region including New Skies Satellite NV’s NSS 6 at 95 degreesE, Koreasat 3 with three Ka-band transponders and the SCC SuperBird and JSAT NStar satellites serving broadband markets in Japan.

"The market is certainly much smarter now, and companies cannot justify the deployment of large Ka-band networks. We will not see much demand for these services before early 2005," says Chris Baugh, president of Northern Sky Research in Orland, FL. "Incremental business with reduced up front costs is where the emphasis lies."

According to a recent Northern Sky study of DVB-RCS worldwide, there are an estimated 32 hubs and 8,500 terminals in operation today. Baugh reminds readers that few, if any, of these hubs and terminals are using Ka-band capacity, with the exception of a handful that may have a Ka-band return via the SES Astra 1H satellite. Otherwise, the vast majority of DVB-RCS deployments to date are Ku-band only.

"The entire telecom sector has lost considerable ground. The hype is out of the market," Baugh says. "Operators who have talked for a long time about the promise of Ka-band satellites know they have to do something. Can they get it up and running at the right price point? There are lots of what ifs here."

"You have a delicate situation here. None of the operators can afford to be late because they risk the fact that their brand will not be associated with this new technology," says Karim Nour, an analyst at Frost and Sullivan. "At the same time, if they come too early to either the enterprise or consumer markets, they will find nobody to sell Ka-band to."

Although subscriber acquisition costs (SAC) will not represent a big hurdle in the enterprise sector, consumer business models are a different matter altogether, according to Nour, because they will need to accommodate a SAC much higher than the one associated with mainstream DTH services, due to significantly higher terminal costs.

"How do you stimulate a broader consumer market? Not through government subsidies. You have to a hit certain price point, a very specific dollar amount in the $40 to $50 per month range," Nour says.

Sorting Out The Standards

While much has been said about DVB-RCS (Digital Video Broadcasting -Return Channel Satellite), and DOCSIS (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) over satellite in terms of their role as the two fundamental standards which will serve as the foundation for next generation satellite-based broadband multimedia services, there are other standards in motion as well.

The Spaceway Air Interface from Hughes Network Systems (HNS) is making steady headway, and there are likely to be other options as well in the future.

"We also have a placeholder for additional families such as a EuroSkyWay family, but the current state of the economy means that this work is currently on hold," says Rupert Goodings, president of U.K.-based Ecotel Ltd., and an independent consultant representing HNS for ongoing work on standards at the ETSI TC-SES (Technical Committee -Satellite Earth stations and Systems) Working Group on Broadband Satellite Multimedia (WG-BSM) which he chairs. Goodings is also vice-chair of TC-SES, and chairman of another SES working group addressing mobile services, GMR WG.

"The BSM concept is to divide the air interface into two parts consisting of the upper satellite independent part, and the lower satellite dependent part, which is partly based on the concept from the European IST-BRAHMS project," Goodings adds.

The Spaceway technology is being standardized as a BSM family (i.e. lower layer set of standards) under the name "RSM-A" which stands for Regenerative (satellite payload) Satellite (return channel) Mesh topology. A DVB-RCS family with the name "TSS-A", or Transparent (satellite payload) Satellite (return channel), Star topology is evolving as well.

"Be aware that our ETSI standards will make no reference to Spaceway since trademarks are strictly not allowed. The ETSI name is just RSM-A," says Goodings.

Talk of separate work any higher and lower layer dimensions unfolding here with respect to broadband multimedia satellites may be a bit confusing, but Goodings sees the process as orderly and beneficial.

"The concept is to separate the satellite dependent lower layers from the satellite independent upper layers," says Goodings.

"The upper layers should contain a set of common functions. In particular, common IP interworking functions (e.g. common ways of handling addressing, multicast and QoS). In very crude terms, this means a standard way to connect the satellite modem to your IP/Ethernet network," he adds. "The lower layers contain the satellite specific parts. These layers are closely tied to the payload capability of the satellite and hence cannot be the same in all cases."

Goodings indicates that this is actually an increasingly common model in the standards world. However, this work must be seen as part of a much bigger picture, something that the satellite industry as a whole must come to terms with.

"Satellite services are too expensive, especially when compared to wireline services such as ADSL, and satellite internet access services suffer (relative to terrestrial) due to the inherent unfriendliness of IP standards to satellite communications because of the costly signaling overhead due to "chatty" protocols and the relatively poor performance over long delay paths," says Goodings.

The work at WG-BSM on the layers/families concept is meant to address both these issues," he adds. "We want to encourage the adoption of lower layer families, thus ensuring a small number of competing standards. We need to encourage innovation to reduce costs."

By focusing a major new effort on developing common upper layer standards that directly address the issues of interworking IP over satellite, the WG-BSM is confronting several overlapping issues head on such as the fact that in terms of multicasting, IP standards do not even address multicast and broadcast, which is a satellite service strength. TCP enhancements are part of the mix too with the intention of improving performance through long delay paths.

"The main challenges are at the higher layers, which have to deal with the satellite unfriendly aspects of the IP protocols. The WG-BSM is attempting to focus on this aspect, i.e., common solutions to reduce IP signaling overheads, increase TCP performance, etc," Goodings says. "These solutions should be independent of the satellite dependent lower layers (modulation, coding, etc.), and should be solutions to shared problems such as delay and bandwidth limitations.

"When it comes to Quality of Service (QoS), for example, IP QoS standards are not designed with satellite links in mind," adds Goodings. "I think proprietary software solutions to these problems are what leads to any perception of user unfriendliness. Such solutions must constantly be upgraded as the IP standards themselves evolve. What we really need are standardized approaches to the satellite independent layers, which take into account forwards and backwards compatibility, as well as more uniform interaction with the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force)."

An Unexpected Twist

The European Ka-band rollout is unfolding slowly, and essentially on schedule despite the unfortunate loss of Astra 1K after a launch misfire a few months ago. Luxembourg-based Satlynx S.A., an SES Global and Gilat company, is adjusting its game plan accordingly, according to Robert Feierbach, vice president of corporate and DTH services at Satlynx.

"The loss of 1K has forced us to fine tune the existing Ka-band beam configuration on 1H, and this involves a slight change in the slanting of the eight beams in order to fill up the gaps in our key markets in France, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom that were to be addressed by 1K," says Feierbach. "We are now in the preliminary stages of a two to three year project to develop a follow-on satellite, more like 1H and simpler that 1K."

The Ka-band DVB-RCS Satellite Interactive Terminal (SIT) market is moving ahead with Montreal-based EMS Technologies Inc. as well as Newtec, Nera and Raytheon. Current prices are in the 2,000 to 3,000 Euro (U.S. $2,160-3,240)-plus range. Satlynx projects a non-cable, non-ADSL target market in Europe of approximately 250,000 corporate sites, and 1.3 million Small Office/Home Office (SOHOs), "prosumers" or small-to-medium enterprises, along with upwards of 7.3 million consumers who will only become accessible in 2005 once SIT prices fall to under 300 or 400 Euros (U.S. $324-432).

"Here in Europe, most service providers are leaning toward DVB-RCS, although DOCSIS is under consideration as well. For our Broadband Interactive (BBI) service, we use DVB-RCS for the high-end corporate market. With our proprietary Gilat interface, starting with the 360E family, up to four or five PCs per terminal can access our services," says Feierbach.

In addition to corporate LAN clients who are billed on a per GB basis, a hybrid satellite/Wi-Fi consumer-oriented platform is emerging as a top seller particularly in rural Spain and Italy. Spain is becoming an attractive model in Europe when it comes to rural broadband deployments in general, and BBI terminals linked to Cisco’s Aironet Wi-Fi systems are popping up everywhere in the process.

"Many people in North America probably do not realize that Spain has taken such a lead role. Wi-Fi is very hot in Europe, and these rural systems costing under 1000 Euros (U.S. $1,080) can cover an area with a radius up to 1 km," says Feierbach. "I estimate that 40 percent of our Spanish BBI installations to date involve Wi-Fi networks."

Other than the high-end "prosumer" or SOHO market, Satlynx has no consumer market at this time. Satlynx is adding more network hooks, customer visibility, accessibility and tools for customers accessing their hubs. For example, reference sites for each beam have been put in place to enable customers to troubleshoot QoS across the eight beams. The goal is to simplify the terminals, by not adding bells and whistles, while commercial hub features continue to evolve.

"By adding new subscriber, traffic and network management capabilities at our hubs, we allow our customers to do such things as their own provisioning and they can adjust QoS to different subscriber groups as well," says Feierbach. "Traffic meters give them greater control, and the option to engage in more in-depth network monitoring so they can identify potential problems before they arise, too."

North America Gets Ready

The launch of Nimiq 2 by Telesat Canada signals the beginning of a new era in North American satellite ventures as a significant amount of commercial Ka-band capacity lights up. With Echostar 9’s launch date in midyear and later in 2003, Anik F2 preparing to head skywards, the stage is set for a new range of broadband multimedia services.

Anik F2, in addition to C-band and Ku-band capacity, will carry 45 Ka-band circular spotbeams with 30 licensed to Wildblue Communications, and 15 dedicated to Telesat’s Canadian customers. Total throughput will range between 3 and 4 Gbs.

"Our success will be determined by how well we price and package our terminals. We have an ultimate target of less than $500 for the consumer market, and we have a Ku-band terminal for under $1,000 in mind as our target in the enterprise market, which is our primary objective," says Paul Bush, Telesat Canada’s vice president of business development. "Telesat has RFPs (Request For Proposals) out to vendors for the building of three gateways in Canada and terminals. Our mission here is to build volume, and drop prices."

Brad Greenwald, spokesman for Wildblue, said his team was keeping things close to its vest, and the recent decisions to invest by Liberty Media, Intelsat and the NRTC, among others, is opening up a new chapter as the company prepares to win over an estimated 30 to 35 million unserved residential and SOHO customers.

"A number of milestones, including the granting by the FCC of a Change of Control motion in March have been met, and we are now working on the paperwork to officially close the deal," says Greenwald.

There is no firm launch date for Wildblue 1, which is to follow Anik F2. Work on gateways by Andrew was restarted after being put on hold several months ago, and both DOCSIS and DVB-RCS interface standards were on the list.

"Our belief is that in order to attract a consumer market, you need to charge less than $50 per month, and that CPE [customer premises equipment] prices have to come down to a couple of hundred dollars," says Greenwald.

On Anik F2, a Boeing 702, a half dozen wideband 492-MHz transponders will beam traffic to the six planned gateways–three each in the United States and Canada–relaying multiple MF-TDMA return carriers from users grouped into six to eight beams in the process.

The F2 gateways use a series of 56-MHz transponders powered by 31 90-watt TWTAs to access users in each spot beam with 17 spot beams designated as heavy rain beams for customers in the eastern half of North America with a single 90-watt TWTA assigned to each beam. The other 14 TWTAs support a pair of beams each.

BeamLink, described as an advanced, flexible multiplexing subsystem, can be adapted to meet the requirements of numerous different traffic patterns amongst users in each group of beams, while the SpaceMux onboard processor will demodulate uplink MF-TDMA carriers, remultiplex the packets, and then remodulate the TDM downlink. Bear in mind that achieving true 5-6x frequency reuse demands adequate spatial isolation at all times. The spot beam coverage must also cope with the everpresent possibility of rain fade, which will require variable uplink power at both the terminal and the hub.

"We want to try and do most of the adjusting at the hub and we will use advanced techniques to ensure continuous operations even with rain fades by stepping down speeds of operation if conditions warrant it. That means taking the return channel speed at 500 kbs and easing it back to 384 kbs or even 194 kbs," says Bush. "The power levels on Anik F2 are 55-58 dBW. These power levels coupled with adaptive coding will enable us to provide a competitive Internet service to consumer and enterprise customers."

Are there any new markets that kA-band service providers might pursue? Abdullah Lakhani, Telesat’s senior specialist/applications of networks for future technology development, sees the North American Ka-band market coming to fruition at a time when the U.S. healthcare market is undergoing a profound transformation.

"The U.S. healthcare market is $1.4 trillion and growing with the majority of these expenditures supporting chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes largely through hospital and physician services," says Lakhani. "Ninety million Americans have chronic conditions which consume 75 percent of the total healthcare budget."

"Chronically ill patients living in their own homes tend to receive nursing services in order to help them better manage their health condition and to prevent more costly requirements for physician and hospital services," he adds. "Telesat is working with a number of partners to develop a home telehealth solution. This will allow healthcare organizations to reduce the number of physical nursing visits required to maintain a high quality of care and achieve health outcomes and saves scarce nursing resources in the form of time, salary as well as travel expenses."

Chip And Terminal Vendors: Strategic Players

What is it going to take to make the North American broadband multimedia market a success? Chip and terminal vendors are monitoring the progress on standards closely, while they keep their options open as they generate product maps for high performance, low cost terminals.

California-based Wavestream Corp., which lists Titan Corp. as one of its strategic partners, is pushing hard to ensure that its high power, millimeter wave, single chip amplifier technology is on everyone’s radar screen. Achieving data rates in the 1.5 Mbs category requires about 6 to 8-watts of output power. With their small size, low weight and reliability, current solid state amplifier chips can perform well in the range of 2 to 3-watts of output power, but to achieve higher output power, a larger number of chips comes into play which increases terminal costs in the process.

With its spatial combining technology, Wavestream’s Grid Amplifier can generate over five times as much output power as conventional chips. To do so, an array of transistors is fabricated on a single gallium arsenide or indium phosphide chip, and the transistor output signals are combined, forming a beam emanating from the face of the chip. This results in significantly reduced combining losses and the ability to provide up to 20-watts output power at 30GHz with high efficiency from a single chip.

"Less gallium arsenide translates into lower costs, which is what the industry needs to gain a quick foothold in the Ka-band arena," says Ed Tuck, Wavestream chairman and CEO, and a co-founder of Teledesic, among other things. "Our spatial combining technology will allow terminal manufacturers, system integrators, service providers and satellite operators to address previously inaccessible markets."

Montreal-based EMS Technologies Inc. reports that is has over a dozen customers for its Satellite Interactive Terminals (SITs), and claims that it enjoys the largest market share today in the DVB-RCS sector–both for hubs and terminals–with Satlynx S.A. as its largest customer.

"Our Ku-band terminal prices have dropped over 50 percent in the last two years, and we think that the same thing is possible for Ka-band," says Stephane Germain, vice president of sales and marketing at the satellite networking division of EMS. "However, we are all awaiting a strong uptick in demand. When you hear people quoting consumer Ka- band terminal pricing ranges today, it assumes terminal production runs in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of units."

Germain is confident that DVB-RCS will continue to gain momentum, and that it will remain the dominant standard in the broadband interactive market for some time to come.

"All the major satellite operators are either buying or are about to buy DVB-RCS equipment. There is a strong bias for DVB-RCS which is evident in Europe in particular," says Germain. "HNS, Gilat and Alcatel have all announced they are developing DVB-RCS terminals."

Germain strongly endorses the idea of industrywide adoption of a single standard, and he wants it to happen quickly.

"As an industry, we need to agree on a standard today, and we are only hurting ourselves by not doing it," says Germain. "We have to do this fast for both the enterprise and consumer sectors."

"It is very hard for proponents of DOCSIS over satellite to argue that this constitutes an open standard when its chip sets and reference designs are so tightly controlled by Broadcom. It is tantamount to a proprietary approach, and this market will never develop successfully under such circumstances," he adds.

Eutelsat S.A. recently chose Viasat Inc. for deployment of Viasat’s LinkStar DVB-RCS hub and terminal technology intended for the enterprise sector. The system will be deployed for use on both Eutelsat’s conventional Ku-band transponders and with Eutelsat’s Skyplex Ka-band onboard processor.

The Comsat Laboratories division of Viasat will oversee this work, which is based on a shared 60 Mbs DVB outbound channel with a TDMA return channel operating at up to 1.1 Mbs. The LinkStar contract calls for Viasat to develop both the network control center, and Ka-band terminals.

"The processing payload on Hot Bird 6 provides the DVB gateway function onboard the satellite. Our Linkstar system equipped with a Ka-band front end working with the onboard processor provides full broadband mesh connectivity with small, low cost terminals," says Ben Pontano, president of Comsat Laboratories.

In addition, Viasat’s SurfBeam broadband system will undergo trials by Eutelsat as it explores new two-way consumer and SOHO service offerings using DOCSIS with the intention of launching these services in the second half of this year.

"Surfbeam leverages all the capabilities of the DOCSIS system including handling such things as QoS, provisioning, and authorizations in a user-friendly fashion," says Steve Cable, vice president of Viasat’s broadband division.

For Wildblue Communications, Viasat’s goal with respect to Anik F2 is to get the highest return rate for the same EIRP using a DOCSIS platform.

"Everybody’s forward channel is high rate. We want to run at 1.2 Mbs over multiple pipes so subscribers can consistently achieve rates in the 256 kbs range, or even 512 kbs," says Cable, who adds that "I cannot rule out the possibility that our Code Reuse Multiple Access (CRMA) technology might show up in consumer products in the future. With CRMA, we can handle multiple terminal bursts while achieving a higher data with a given SSPA."

Viasat is actively involved with Astrolink and having discussions regularly with Liberty Media and with Echostar as well, according to Cable.

"Liberty Media could make Astrolink work for a lot less than $2 billion, and actually a lot less than $1 billion," Cable adds. "During the next 12 to 24 months, we will all be stepping onto the proving ground with spotbeam satellites in orbit."

By the way, when asked if Astrolink had decided to adopt the DVB-RCS standard, Steve Soroka, Astrolink’s vice president, operations, was quite firm in his reply. "Based on our unique architecture and waveform, and planned service offerings, we are not currently planning to adopt the DVB-RCS standard," says Saroka.

Spaceway Is Engaging The Market

With News Corp. engaged in negotiations with General Motors at press time, which will probably result in News Corp. gaining control of DirecTV, Hughes Network Systems and Panamsat, Spaceway might wind up with a new owner as well. However, a News Corp. spokesman in New York City said in early April that it was far too premature to discuss outcomes here.

Spaceway continues to aim for a 2Q 2004 service launch with work on two very important chips designated Maxwell and Copernicus making steady progress.

"Maxwell is being fabricated by IBM. It is a 440 Mbs digital modem ASIC, essentially a Ka-band modem on a chip. Copernicus is undergoing design verification testing," says Mike Cook, vice president and general manager of the Spaceway business group at Hughes Network Systems in Germantown, MD.

Providing all of the IP functionality, Copernicus is the service delivery link between the user IP packets and the Maxwell modem.

Cook is quite pleased with the reaction of the various ETSI working group members to the Spaceway Air Interface.

"Our interface has been well received thus far. Because our satellites are different, neither DVB-RCS nor DOCSIS would be appropriate. We have to deal with the unique characteristics of our solution, we demodulate the signal on the spacecraft enabling switching through the onboard processor and then we downlink through the phased array antenna," says Cook, who indicates that terminal production will commence in 4Q 2003.

"Spaceway is optimized for point-to-point transport services, which will include services specifically designed to compete directly with terrestrial services," adds Cook. "We have created a center of excellence for applications development in India. Among other things, they are working on video collaboration service infrastructure, along with toolsets adapted to suit our entire service portfolio which will include frame relay, IP VPN, multicast and business continuity services, to name a few."

Video collaboration, which encompasses training and work group collaboration and more, is described as supercharged desktop videoconferencing that can run simultaneously with instant messaging and file sharing components.

"Our strategy is simple. We want to fully exploit the frequency re-use and architectural flexibility that we have attained here via both the onboard processor, which represents 10,000 Pentium 4 processor equivalents, and the new phased array antenna technology," says Cook, "These will enable us to offer a unique range of highly competitive Direcway branded services."

As of late April, according to a Boeing spokesperson, the Spaceway spacecraft payload module testing with the DSP is nearly complete, the bus module testing is complete and the phased array antenna integration is nearly complete and ready for testing.

As for the El Segundo, CA-based Boeing phased array manufacturing facility, the electronics manufacturing and array integration and test labs total greater than 15,000 square feet and it currently employs more than 150 people.

Finally, in its consolidated application for authority to transfer control, which was filed at the FCC by The News Corp. Ltd. on May 2, it spells out the possibility of a new role for Spaceway in its plans for future DBS services in the United States.

"News Corp. is committed to dramatically increasing DirecTV’s local-into-local commitment by providing local-into-local service in as many of the 210 designated market areas nationwide as possible, and to doing so as soon as economically and technologically feasible. Among the possibilities being studied are the use of capacity on HNS’ recently expanded North American Ka-band Spaceway system, further incorporating digital terrestrial tuners into set-top boxes so that subscribers can seamlessly integrate digital over-the- air signals, and other emerging technologies."

Game Plans Emerging

Both SES Americom and Loral Skynet, which has now absorbed its Cyberstar unit, are pursuing the Ka-band market, but both seem to be headed in very different directions in the process.

SES Americom has successfully leased its entire block of Ku-band capacity, along with one polarity of the full Ka-band payload on AMC 15 to Echostar Communications Corp.

Prior to December 2003, Echostar plans to use its Space Systems/Loral-built Echostar 9 to start testing the Ka-band waters. Echostar would not divulge exactly what sort of testing would go on. At the same time, the status of its Ka-band Visionstar project is uncertain, as Echostar’s request for an FCC extension has yet to be approved. .

AMC 15, with its payload of two dozen 36 MHz Ku-band transponders, and a dozen 125 MHz Ka-band spotbeams, is scheduled for launch in August 2004.

"This validates our concept of Americom2Home (A2H). We are essentially real estate developers and we have just got a very large tenant in our first building," says Kevin Smythe, senior vice president of residential satellite services at SES Americom. "We are in the process of modifying both AMC 15 and AMC 16 to make them more DTH-friendly. We have characterized A2H as replicating what SES Astra has done already in Europe with respect to wholesaling capacity to DTH providers."

A new reflector and an increase in power by 1 to 1.5 dB is what will be found aboard the upgraded AMC 15 and 16 which use circular polarity as well.

While there is no firm launch date for Telstar 8, a Ku-band forward channel/Ka-band return channel-equipped satellite, Loral Skynet expects it to be built by the end of this year. It will open the door to spot beam-based services using DVB-RCS, or whatever standard a service provider decides to implement, according to Robert Hedinger, executive vice president of sales, marketing and client services at Loral Skynet.

"Our plan is to extend our Ka-band capabilities on Telstar 8 with additional Ka-band capacity as the market develops. We want to time our infrastructure rollout so that [it] is there when it is truly needed," says Hedinger. "We can start a wide range of IP-based and VPN services at Ku-band and migrate them to Ka-band when the time is right."

"We are frequency independent. We do not look at the market as strictly a Ka-band phenomenon. Instead, we are following the market in an incremental fashion. We see an evolutionary process unfolding in terms of implementing next generation VSAT solutions with broader dynamic bandwidth allocations, and hubbed networking capabilities," Hedinger adds.

Strategies Abound

The satellite industry is pursuing hybrid networking strategies along with the rollout of Ka-band broadband multimedia services. We see this underway, for example, with Panamsat Corp.’s launch of its new virtual teleport concept involving the consolidation of six Panamsat teleports, and decision to flow Panamsat video and data traffic through Level 3 Communications Inc.’s Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled network. With this in place, Panamsat customers will now be able to access this hybrid network via Level 3 points of presence (POPs) in 70-plus cities in the United States and Europe.

Path 1 Network Technologies Inc., based in San Diego, is providing its Cx1000 IP video gateway technology for this hybrid network. "Panamsat is using the Path1 CX1000 IP video gateways as part of the virtual teleport project to interconnect our teleports for transport of broadcast-quality video over fiber networks," says Bridget Neville, Panamsat’s senior vice president, engineering. "We are also using a Tandberg 6120 to provide similar functionality to the Path1 product. The video over IP technology is geared toward contribution of broadcast-quality video. The video over IP technology is relevant to our ground infrastructure (fiber and teleports), and is therefore agnostic to the satellite frequency, whether C-, Ku-, Ka-, or even X-band."

Path 1’s solution was demonstrated recently by ND Satcom, which used the video gateway to encapsulate and encode a high quality video signal via an ASI port into the Fast Ethernet port of the ND Satcom SkyWAN system

"Such a device is always required if a video signal is available via an ASI port and needs to be transferred via the Broadband Media Network solution. Our solutions work well with Ku-band, C-band and Ka-band geostationary satellites," says Peter Neu, manager of product marketing at ND Satcom. "The questions surrounding Ka-band involve cost, which is expected to come down, especially for the ODU, and availability, which is expected to be worse than with Ku-band because of rain fade. So, it will depend on customer requirements, applications and the specific rain zone where the customer is located."

"Today, most Ka-band projects are dedicated to the residential and SOHO business. Our approach is targeting high performance, professional applications for broadcasting and media companies. High quality and reliability is key so Ku-band is adequate," adds Neu.

The emerging broadband multimedia marketplace will also be impacted significantly by advances in MPEG-4 encoding, and solutions that transcode pre-compressed MPEG-2 satellite video channels to H.264-enhanced MPEG-4 a.k.a. MPEG-4, Part 10.

For example, Santa Clara, CA -based iVast paired up with VideoTele.com, a division of Tut Systems Inc., to offer an MPEG-4-based digital headend. iVast has devoted considerable man hours to developing standards-based, interactive digital media solutions.

"Yes, iVAST’s MPEG-4 solution will match MPEG-2 video quality at a lower bandwidth. This can yield 2x or 3x bandwidth savings, or broadcasters can use the same bandwidth to deliver higher quality video such as HDTV," says Alex Derecho, vice president of professional services at iVAST.

By taking advantage of MPEG-4’s inherent compression efficiency and system layer support, iVAST is focused on enabling the delivery of high quality, rich media with previously unobtainable bandwidth efficiency, according to Derecho.

"We expect broadcasters to migrate to MPEG-4. Our indications are that they’ll likely do so to address the bandwidth issues associated with delivering HDTV first," Derecho adds. "The iVAST product suite will enable both increased channel density and the ability to offer more compelling services on existing Ku-band platforms."

These changes are coming fast and furious. Broadband multimedia via Ka-band and new terrestrial wireless breakthroughs including Wi-Fi, video over IP and MPEG-4/H.264, unite under the banner of content delivery, whether the content in question arrives in real-time or not. To the extent that new digital encoding platforms and compression schemes, along with advances in video over IP, free up Ku-band capacity, this will impact on the demand side of the satellite transponder market as a whole, and it could reshape broadband multimedia strategies in a dramatic fashion going forward.

However, there are bound to be differences of opinion here. "Because the application is part of a broadcast solution, there is no direct correlation between our video over IP terrestrial service and Ka-band broadband multimedia technology," says Neville.

In a nutshell, how much goes up in the sky, and how much stays on the ground will certainly help to determine the future of the new cluster of Ka-band satellite broadband multimedia ventures.

Peter J. Brown is Via Satellite’s Senior Multimedia & Homeland Security Editor. He lives on Mount Desert Island, ME.