by Katie McConnell

Five years ago, satellite-based distance education appeared to be a minor marketplace barely being pursued by the satellite industry. Today, that scenario has changed. With the worldwide acceptance of the Internet, the consumerization of satellites and the FCC’s decision that DBS operators must reserve 4 percent of their capacity for public interest programming, distance learning is starting to be realized in the satellite industry as not only a service well suited for satellites, but a good business.

In the United States alone, Frost and Sullivan calculates the 1999 market at $65.1 million for satellite-based distance learning equipment. Another $106.7 million is being spent on services. Alena Carroll, a former research analyst for Frost and Sullivan, adds that the market has been growing from 5 to 8 percent per year, starting in 1994. While Frost and Sullivan had not yet released future projections as of presstime, Carroll says the market will continue to see growth. "Satellites are very useful for applications [such as distance learning] where you have primarily one-way broadcasts to a lot of downlink sites," she says, "because your costs are not dependent on how many sites can receive a broadcast." In other words, a network can have 50 sites or 1,000 sites, and the client will pay the same fee for the satellite time.

Because of the obvious cost effectiveness of a satellite-based distance education network, Carroll says, "there has been more activity in the market lately, and the satellite providers are now specifically targeting distance learning as an application." In the past, she says the capabilities were sold as business television that could incorporate distance learning programs. "But now a number of companies are exploiting the distance learning concept as a way of selling their solutions," she says, "because the demand for training in general is increasing rapidly."

Laying Down The Law

Industries that really seem to be adopting satellite-based distance learning are the ones that require certification. For instance, in the United States, lawyers are required by law to continue their education. To make the process of continuing education less time consuming and more cost effective, Lawyers TV was created.

Lawyers TV is a satellite-based provider of continuing legal education and additional training for lawyers and legal professionals. The service provides live, interactive continuing legal education (CLE) and legal training directly to attorneys’ offices and homes via DBS small dish receiving systems. "Lawyers TV is a convenient way to provide programming or seminar access to a large number of lawyers," says Todd Hardy, president of Lawyers TV. "Lawyers need 12 to 15 seminar credit hours per year in the vast majority of states, and frequently they have to travel to seminars to get credit to keep their licenses up to date. Lawyers TV simply provides a product in the most convenient format, which is delivered through satellite to their offices. Therefore, they don’t have to incur the costs of traveling to those seminars."

When a law firm signs up for the service, it is provided with satellite time and turnaround services for the signal to be delivered to the firm. The earth station can be either bought or leased from the company. "We sell the programming through a pay-per-view service," explains Hardy.

The service is based on Microspace’s Velocity product. According to Greg Hurt, sales and marketing manager for Microspace, the Velocity product is a MPEG 2/DVB digital service that transmits video, audio and data content via GE 1, which is located at 103 degrees W. The GE American Communications-operated satellite boasts a footprint that covers the continental United States, as well as Alaska and Hawaii.

In addition to providing Lawyers TV to law firms, the service is also available to corporations for their in-house counsel. A private company, Lawyers TV does not make public its customers or its revenues. But Hardy says, "We have dozens of firms and thousands of lawyers in those firms as clients. We have customers in about 20 states, and we serve corporations like AT&T." In addition, he says the company has a relationship with the government through the Department of Justice.

While the two-year-old company has not yet hit the break-even point, Hardy is confident that distance learning for U.S. lawyers is a viable and lucrative business. "There are more than 1 million lawyers in the country," he notes. "And we don’t need every lawyer that we serve to buy every hour of programming for us to be viable. We know that lawyers frequently take trips to attend seminars off site for a number of reasons such as networking with other lawyers and meeting potential clients, but we believe this is a convenient supplementary service to the overall efforts and resources that they need to meet state demands."

Future plans for the nascent business include branching out into other professions that require life-long training such as doctors, nurses and accountants.

The DBS Solution

With the consumerization of satellite services, particularly the popularity and accessibility of DBS, distance education is now something that schools and corporations can adopt with less capital expenditure-a high hurdle that prevented many from moving forward into this arena in the past.

Helping to catapult distance education onto DBS networks is the FCC’s decision in the Cable and Telecommunications Act of 1992, which states that DBS operators must reserve 4 to 7 percent of their capacity for not-for-profit programming. While distance education has not been officially approved as a product that would fall under this purview, many in the education and satellite industries are betting that it will.

In fact, Echostar’s Vice Chairman Scott Zimmer is so convinced that distance education and DBS are a perfect marriage that he recently left the company to start his own firm called Educating Everyone. It should be noted, however, that DBS is not the only technology this not-for-profit, multimedia education foundation will pursue. But the technology has opened up many doors that were previously closed.

"As an educator, DBS has a lot of exciting possibilities, including high-quality access to the home," says Monica Pilkey, director of educational services for Educating Everyone. "The last mile is the challenge. DBS opens up a world of possibilities, especially if the partnership with America Online moves forward, and the DBS pipe gets educators to a multimedia environment."

Academia is not, of course, the only sector that sees the value of DBS in providing one-way transmissions of distance education programming. As mentioned earlier, the Lawyers TV network uses DBS dishes. Digitalxpress is yet another distance education company that bases its network on the DBS platform.

Founded in 1995 through the joint efforts of Boeing Co., Conus Communications and Ceridian, Digitalxpress is a service provider of information and communications solutions for the corporate market.

"What we observed was that there was a driving demand for distance learning and communications solutions that were cost effective," says Joel Wright, president of Digitalxpress. "To satisfy that demand, we have taken some core technologies that were developed for the direct-to-home marketplace and customized them for the business market."

Basically, the company has modified the DirecTV platform. All of its clients’ networks incorporate the General Instrument-designed multiplexers and encoders on the headend, the Thomson Consumer Electronics set-top box and the New Digital Systems conditional access system. "We put all that together in conjunction with a back office infrastructure that we developed to allow companies to schedule and broadcast their programming," says Wright.

Domestically, the company has a dedicated transponder that it leases from Panamsat on SBS 6, which is located at 74 degrees W. "Internationally, we buy what’s available," Wright says.

The company’s current list of clients are all U.S.-based companies, with some having international offices. For instance, one of their clients is Air Products and Chemical. Digitalxpress provides an international capability to broadcast the chemical company’s distance learning classes as well as their corporate communications events to a dozen or so locations in Europe.

VSATs Still In The Mix

While DBS is emerging more often on the distance education market, VSATs are still popular in this arena, especially since they have one- and two-way capabilities. Hughes Network Systems’ Inteleconference is one product that makes use of this technology, and it is finding popularity in both school systems and the corporate world for distance education applications.

In North Dakota, the public school system is using the Inteleconference product and is very pleased so far. Bill Strasser, North Dakota public school system’s director of distance education, says the technology has helped provide classes to students that otherwise would not have had this benefit due to the teacher shortage North Dakota is experiencing. Classes that are taught over the Inteleonference product include anatomy and physiology, Latin, Spanish, French, art and even home economic classes, among others. The overall network reaches more than 600 students, quite an impressive number when you take into account that most schools in North Dakota have an average class size of 12 students. Now that the videoconferencing network is in place, students attending three rural secondary schools outside the 125-mile, terrestrial-line access area are receiving instruction in previously unavailable subjects via satellite. Strasser adds that in many instances, "if classes are not being taught via videoconferencing, it’s not being taught."

On Strasser’s end, he ensures that classes begin and end on time. Students sign an agreement much like the "honor system" of yesteryear and promise to be in class and ready to start on time. Currently, "70 percent of the students are upper level kids," he notes. "And word gets out that you have to work hard."

The VSAT satellite system supports point-to-point as well as multipoint interactive video and audio conferences between schools. These features make it possible for an instructor to hear student discussions and questions from all the classrooms. Students can see and interact with the instructor simultaneously via monitors and microphones located in the classrooms. Likewise, instructors can hear questions and discussions from all classrooms and, by simply switching from one view to another on their monitor, interact visually with any of the classrooms, one at a time. In addition, since it is a fixed cost per hour no matter how many remote locations are reached, the system is affordable for such organizations as school systems and hospitals.

Each site’s equipment includes cameras, a monitor, microphones, and an Inteleconference station. Scheduling for the entire network is handled through a Network Control Center (NCC) located in Washburn, ND. Here conferences can be scheduled in advance, and then the connected schools enter their conference choice at the appropriate time without any operator action at the NCC. To maintain the network’s health, this single NCC also polls all remote sites and monitors the status of the entire network 24 hours a day. The interactive nature of the videoconferencing network makes the experience for both teachers and students very much as it would be if they were all in the same classroom.

Education In The North

Another company making a business of distance learning is the Candian company TRG Systems Ltd. TRG operates a satellite-based network called VIP Satnet, which provides broadband data, fax, Internet and videoconferencing solutions. TRG’s service is restricted to Canada for now, but the company has plans to expand globally.

The company made its start supplying its services to Canada’s largest distance learning project, called Ardicom, according to Rich Aitzetmueller, General Manager at TRG. The project was based in the Northwest Territory, the Yukon and Nunavut of Canada and spanned three time zones reaching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The purpose of Ardicom was to allow 58 Inuit communities to have access to the Internet, telemedicine and distance learning. The system was deployed in early 1998, and completed in October 1998.

Aitzetmueller sees a large business for distance education in countries like Canada, with geographically dispersed populations. "In the far north, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent bringing the Inuit children to centers like Yellowknife or Whitehorse for secondary school education," Aitzetmueller explains. "Now, there is the ability to do that via a videoconference, where for the first time children can actually ‘surf’ the Net for research on projects, or where they can look at a teacher that can look at them." Aitzetmueller estimates that distance education applications occupy 50 percent of his company’s business, and this figure is growing.

Adding In The Space Segment

While Hughes Network Systems is busy providing academia and the corporate world with the ground segment of distance education, its sister company, Panamsat, is busy providing the space segment for distance education applications around the world. Currently, the company provides capacity for such services in the United States, Latin America, Africa and Asia.

California State University uses on a full-time basis Panamsat’s SBS 5, which is located at 123 degrees W, to support two distance education networks that offer bachelor’s, master’s and certificate programs. The network is broadcast to more than 40 sites throughout California. In addition, more than 25 companies, including AT&T, Boeing North America and IBM, among others, take advantage of the California State University’s networks, CSUSAT-Chico and Chico Education Network.

Also in California and using SBS 5 full time, the University of Southern California’s Instructional Television Network provides an interactive one-way video, two-way audio broadcast system. This network provides instruction in regular campus classes and non-credit continuing education courses for participants at subscribing companies.

Using Galaxy 7 full time is Primedia Workplace Learning. The company uses the satellite, which is located at 91 degrees W, to transmit federal- and state-mandated training, continuing education and professional development programs to numerous industries.

Panamsat also provides satellite capacity for international distance education providers such as the Integrated Open Learning Alliance (IOLA) of South Africa. IOLA utilizes Panamsat’s PAS 4 Indian Ocean region satellite, which is located at 68.5 degrees E, on a full-time basis to transmit courses that provide students with business, technical and life skills, as well as offering the equivalent of a high school education. In cooperation with South African business, non-government and government agencies, churches and professional institutions, Panamsat is delivering affordable, quality education to sites around the country.

In addition to Panamsat’s full-time distance learning customers, the company also provides services for special events such as the Jason Project held by the Jason Foundation for Education. The Jason Project is a year-round scientific expedition designed to educate students in science and technology and to motivate and provide professional development for teachers. Panamsat has worked with the Jason Project since its inception in 1989, creating live, interactive "classrooms" from locations around the world, including the Amazon River basin in Peru, the Galapagos Islands and the Guaymas Basin in the Sea of Cortez along Mexico’s Baja, California, peninsula. During annual two-week-long expeditions, Panamsat relays video, audio and data signals originating from several locations simultaneously.

Conclusion

With the cost of satellite technology coming down, distance education via satellite is a service that is far more attainable for many than it was in years past. Furthermore, with more companies merging and employees being added by the thousands, corporations are seeing the bottom-line boosting benefits of distance learning and videoconferencing via satellite. And if the FCC approves distance education as an acceptable way for DBS operators to meet the 4 percent non-profit programming requirement, one can expect distance learning via satellite to grow exponentially in the ensuing years.

(Editor’s note: while this article examined the training side of these networks, next month, we will investigate just how businesses are using videoconferencing.)

Katie McConnell is senior editor of Via Satellite.

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