By Jeff Hill

In an effort to refocus the satellite sector’s approach to managing and prevent RF interference (RFI) and establish the carrier ID concept, SES is adopting training services from Global VSAT Forum (GVF) and engage other operators on a series of specific initiatives.
In its basic form, the carrier ID aims to embed uplinker location or contact information in the uplink signal to facilitate troubleshooting by operators. Its implementation, however, also involves the participation of actors from the entire satellite chain: from equipment manufacturers to operators and integrators.

“Leveraging these kinds of tools is essential to the integrity of the industry going forward. Our current commitment to GVF training will be used in a number of ways, partially internally but primarily externally, to provide training to customers and installers in key VSAT operations regions,” said SES Senior Vice President Stewart Sanders.

The carrier ID concept is anything but new. The issue has been pursued by SUIRG and WBU-ISOG for some time. On Nov. 18, an industry-wide meeting hosted by Intelsat took place to endorse the adoption of carrier ID technology by equipment manufacturers. “Three subcommittees looking, respectively, at video, data and VSAT communications were formed with operators and equipment manufacturers,” Intelsat CTO Thierry Guillemin said.

Since 2008, the World Broadcasting Union’s International Satellite Operations Group has been making recommendations on carrier ID initiatives. Industry members seem to have been taking this onboard. On the data and VSAT side of the satellite family, the carrier ID initiative is not as advanced, though progress is being made.

SES and GVF reported that regular working meetings have been held on these initiatives as well as presentations and speeches at numerous venues by the participating operators, in order to promote support for the initiatives. To date, there are 15 satellite operators actively participating in these initiatives.

The other important factor in the development of interference issues is appropriate training and the human factor, especially in the enterprise sector’s more dangerous environments — where competence can often be the difference between life and death.

“The Schlumberger Global Connectivity Services (GCS) group has long recognized the importance of having their field staff properly trained,” said Andrew Rope, Schlumberger’s remote connectivity training manager. “Our field engineers work to avoid allowing a GCS installation to be the source of interference. All GCS VSAT field engineers are required to participate in a fixed-step, three-year training program pertaining to both technical and business practices. For the past three years, we have worked closely with the Global VSAT Forum to integrate the GVF VSAT installer’s certifications into the technical curriculum of our fixed-step program to align our training with industry standards.”

Training personnel is a paramount component of the initiative that involves the education of personnel in a wider sense. Intelsat, for example, is offering a training incentive for technicians employed by its customers. “We endorsed a training and certification program with two industry-leading vendors: the Global VSAT Forum and BeaconSeek. We offer training to our satellite newsgathering customers through BeaconSeek’s SlingPath and through GVF’s program to educate VSAT technicians on proper equipment installation and operational parameters,” said Guillemin. “Our goal is to provide training to 1,200 engineers from our customer base within the next three years. We expect that this and other efforts will create an industry momentum for other operators to join in the training effort and that industry awareness of this problem will be raised.”