[Satellite News 03-25-09] IP technology will play an evolutionary, not revolutionary role in providing development opportunities for the satellite industry – depending on if it can overcome some formidable challenges, according to the panel of speakers at SATELLITE 2009’s opening IP technology panel.
    That evolutionary role includes limitless, recession-proof growth potential for satellite. “The long-term, three- to five-year enterprise contracts we see, combined with a significantly growing budget in the government sector and the fact that VSAT offers IP broadband to businesses and consumers where there is no terrestrial option, will greatly benefit our industry,” said Alasdair Calder, director of product management for Spacenet. “The VSAT providers aren’t even competing with each other with the growing demand and our advantage with DVB-S2 technology. We’re sailing in the same direction,” he said.
    While the mindset that IP is a revolution for satellite has become more popular, panel moderator and NSR analyst Claude Rousseau illustrated that IP as a technology is a 35-year-old invention and referred back to a study published in 1974, called “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.” The real change, according to panelists, will come in how the satellite industry changes itself to take advantage of the tools it already has.
    Kevin Boyle, a partner of the law firm Latham and Watkins, explained that the regulatory process does not move as fast as the technology it is meant to oversee. “Providing the same service, in this case, the delivery of video, voice and data, using a different physical and logical layer, provides different legal challenges for broadcasters,” said Boyle. “The rules for Internet service providers, regardless of whether they are Cable, DSL or wireless, are the same, much to the frustration of the players in that space,” he said.
    Michael Kazmier, CTO of Avail Media, said that the frustrating regulatory process, which does not adapt well to new communication technologies, can hinder growth for satellite. “The use of MPEG-4 encoding hasn’t even relaxed regulatory policies. It seems as the FCC (U.S. Federal Communications Commission), in its efforts to promote competition and bring every competitor into the decision making process, is seriously hindering our ability to leverage profitable communications infrastructures.”
    Newtec CEO Serge Van Herck said that serious regulatory issues exist internationally and could also hinder growth. “An example can clearly be seen in the Middle East, where it is extremely difficult to host an IP service through a hub located out of certain countries.”
    Van Herck said that the use of Ka-band spot-beam technology, which is one of satellite’s primary weapons against the bad publicity over its signal delay issues, is particularly affected by the regulatory process. “There is no article 22 [a signal-pointing FCC rule] regulation for Ka-band. To prevent interference without regulation or the ability to manage all of these signals, end-users have to get larger antennas which they cannot afford.”
    Van Herck alluded to the second issue which faces satellite in its drive to leverage IP benefits – the cost of equipment. How will the satellite industry make terminals cheaper? The answer lies in making equipment smarter, according to Calder. “Especially for Ka-band, we need smaller and smarter terminals which have automatic pointing solutions. At this stage, it is a responsibility of research and development,” said Calder.
    Van Herck believes that the cost of terminals will go down naturally with an increase of both capacity and demand. “The fact that IP traffic is doubling every two years only supports the fact that Ka-band’s growth potential is a no-brainer. Imagine giving those stats to the U.S. auto industry. Just the demand alone is going to cut the cost of equipment by a factor of 10 in 2012. The real question is, what affect will the demand have on its infrastructure when we can’t keep up with demand?” he said.
    Kazimer agrees. “I see the natural evolution here as a switch from transponders to packet-switching for satellite. The future is a smarter eye in the sky.”