[Satellite News 03-18-09] Two X-band capacity contracts with the U.S. government announced by Arrowhead Global Solutions are just the tipping point in a wave of interest in the commercial frequency for government and military customers, Arrowhead Global Solutions President Tom Eaton told Satellite News.
    "We timed our entry into the X-band market perfectly," said Eaton. "I believe we have entered at a time when there will be a lot of interest in the frequency."
    While the potential of X-band has been a discussion topic in satellite industry and government circles for years, the contributing factors for the sudden shift to making X-band a reality are fairly straightforward, said Eaton. "Ku-band is highly constrained. Along with constraints come price increases and in the current economic climate the government is always looking for cost-effective alternatives. Government and military customers, who already use multi-band terminals for combat operations, can use the X-band frequency without having to acquire new hardware," he said.
    Arrowhead’s X-band contracts for more of 200 megahertz of X-band capacity, announced March 17, have been in the works for some time, a shift of dynamics in the Ku-band commercial marketplace — diminishing supply and increasing demand for bandwidth — also served as a bellwether for change in the interests of government and military customers. Until recently, X-band alternatives were high-priced in comparison to what the government was accustomed to paying for commercial Ku-band. In the current bandwidth market, X-band now us competitively priced.
    These changes presented an opportunity for Arrowhead to get a jump-start on capturing government business by simultaneously solving security issues, said Eaton. "X-band is more than just economically viable. It alleviates the security issues associated with other commercial frequencies for military customers. You have so much traffic on these Ku-band satellites today that they’re highly susceptible to interferences. The X-band frequencies are allocated exclusively for government use, even though it’s a commercial band. This is a concern for our customer. While I cannot go into specifics about the customer, I can say that the services we are providing are to support operations in battle theater and in remote areas, where X-band is much more reliable. Because of the eventual types of uses on the systems, X-band is a much cleaner environment. We’re not dealing with commercial interference." he said.
    To operate the service, Arrowhead launched a managed network services in December based on commercial X-band satellites, which Arrowhead said is targeted at the military and intelligence community. Arrowhead also made investments in X-band teleport infrastructure and satellite capacity, including signing a multi-year, multi-transponder agreement with Xtar LLC for X-band capacity on the Xtar-Eur and Xtar-Lant satellites.
    Arrowhead also was contracted to provide a variety of remote site equipment packages in fixed and rapid deployment configurations, field services, teleport services and terrestrial interconnects to public, private and government network gateways. The first master earth station is scheduled to be available within months. The company has secured X-band deals through multiple contract vehicles including the company’s GSA Schedule and through the Satellite Transmission Services-Global contract, for which Arrowhead has been a prime contractor since 2001. The service will provide coverage over key regions, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia.
    "We’re also adding training and support as value-added services," said Eaton. "This way, we’re not relying on third parties."