[Satellite News 09-06-11] The industry’s excitement leading up to last year’s IBC conference in Amsterdam was largely focused on satellite broadcasters and developers’ technology plans for the world beyond HD, as companies rushed to embrace a seemingly robust 3-D consumer market created by such catalysts as the success of the blockbuster film Avatar and the international 3-D presentation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

   At this year’s IBC conference, set to kick off Sept. 9, the satellite industry is looking to broaden the conversation with lessons learned from the new satellite broadcast environment and its new technological entrants.

   One of the major new satellite developments to happen during the past 12 months was Ka-band’s evolution from a concept to a reality in orbit. The bandwidth has taken off with considerable momentum and is set to accelerate at a blinding pace as $5 billion in new Ka-band spacecraft are set to launch through 2014 and place unprecedented amounts of new bandwidth into the sky.

   The World Teleport Association (WTA) and Eutelsat have teamed up to lead a Ka-band seminar at IBC to examine what the future of TV distribution and contribution will look like in Europe and what role may Ka-band have in preserving satellite’s competitive edge. In a preview of the seminar, WTA acknowledges that IP-based interactivity is transforming the traditional viewing experience to exist beyond the living room. 

   “While business plans are narrowly focused on broadband for consumers, it would be naïve to think that this much expansion in total capacity will fail to have impacts, both expected and unpredictable, in the markets for satellite services,” WTA said in the preview. “One such impact may be on television. Linear broadcast is under siege, and nowhere more than in satellite TV homes, where the one-to-many power of satellite has been so successful but the lack of a broadband return path is increasingly seen as an issue … Connected TVs offering both video and Internet are expected to flood consumer markets in the next few years.”  

   Services based on Ka-band have made a significant impact on several operators and their business models as a fair amount of Ka-band satellites were launched to rectify capacity shortfalls. Newtec CEO Serge Van Herck counts himself as another believer in the fact that Ka-band has almost become a necessity for satellite players to remain competitive in the long-term.

   “The increasing demand for more Ku- and C-band bandwidth in dense population areas for additional DTH channels, HD and 3-D TV, combined with the increasing bandwidth consumption for satellite-based broadband, requires the availability of Ka-band. However, in less densely populated areas in many parts of the world and also in some climatic conditions, Ku-band will continue to be used for satellite based broadband,” Van Herck told Satellite News.

While Ka-band has already been deployed for broadband access and TV distribution in the United States, other regions have not had access to the appropriate technologies to support these applications. Van Herck said this is about to change, as multi-service platforms become a reality at IBC this year. “The additional applications will rapidly add value to Ka-band satellite networks and provide a way of dramatically increasing the return on investment for satellite and service operators, by speeding up the fill rate of Ka-band satellites,” he said, “Additional services will generate extra service revenues and provide new offerings to millions of households and businesses, which will help the satellite industry to compete with terrestrial high-speed broadband services.”

   Another new topic that is sure to find its way into the general IBC satellite discussion is interference. The Global VSAT Forum (GVF) is hosting a pre-IBC show satellite industry forum Sept. 8 titled “Interference – The Counter Offensive.” GVF organized the event with partners Eutelsat, the Satellite Interference Reduction Group (sIRG), the Radio Frequency Interference-End Users Initiative (RFI-EUI) and the World Broadcasting Unions-International Satellite Operations Group (WBU-ISOG). GVF said the summit’s objective is to examine several years of concerted collaboration between broadcasters and satellite industry leaders to combat satellite radio frequency interference throughout the world.

   “The satellite industry associations [and Eutelsat] established are three collaborative working groups, with representation from all the above mentioned organizations. The goals of each of these three working groups will develop plans designed to take quality assurance and satellite signal integrity to the next level,” GVF said in a statement. “Such plans are critical because continuing interference is still causing service interruptions, leading to increasing operational costs, decreasing reliability rates, and impacting industry competitiveness. Broadcasters’ and satellite industry efforts to solve interference problems have been extensive, but the adoption of viable solutions and their comprehensive implementation has yet to be achieved and there is now a heightened urgency to yield results.”

   Eutelsat CEO Michel de Rosen said his company, which recently joined the Space Data Association (SDA), hopes to contribute insight to the summit related to the results that have been achieved by the satellite industry on interference throughout the past few years, what challenges remain to be addressed and what is required to address those outstanding challenges.

   “Safety and integrity of the space environment and radio frequency spectrum is vital. Beyond our own individual actions as a company, Eutelsat wants to be involved in any association that advances a responsible attitude to how space is used,” De Rosen told Satellite News. “Joining the SDA adds a new strand to this approach, which includes our membership in the Global VSAT Forum (GVF) and the Satellite Interference Reduction Group (SIRG). Our intention is to bring our own experience on ground and satellite to the table and to collaborate on improving the safety and efficiency of satellite operations.”