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New European, North American Consumer Broadband Satellites to Launch in 2012
Satellite broadband tends not to get much attention in U.S. broadband policy circles, but one can note the same capacity increase trend in satellite services as one sees for cable modem and telco services using either digital subscriber line or fiber to the home.
In Europe, Orbital Sciences Corporation is launching a new satellite for Avanti Communications Group, Hylas 2, in early 2012. The Hylas 2 will join the Hylas 1, to be launched in 2010.
Using the Hylas 2 spacecraft, Avanti will provide its data and video services to Northern and Southern Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In addition, the spacecraft will be equipped with a steerable spot beam, also operating at Ka-band, which can provide coverage anywhere on Earth that is visible to the satellite.
Avanti already sells wholesale capacity to around 50 broadband providers across Europe, using leased transponders.
Avanti also says it has signed contracts with a number of European phone companies, including “3.”
Hylas 1 will, target the whole of Europe, and will be the first satellit exclusively providing satellite broadband in Europe, with a footprint that also will cover parts of Asia and the Middle East. Hylas 2 will provide redundancy in Europe and also extend coverage to southern Africa.
Hughes Network Systems (News – Alert) will provide Avanti Communications Group and its partner channels with eight gateways and 50,000 customer premise terminals. Hughes also has agreed to acquire capacity on the Hylas satellite to expand the managed services it provides to major corporations in a variety of market sectors, including oil and gas, lottery, and retail.
Closer to home, Hughes Network Systems is launching another next-generation satellite, “Jupiter,” for the North American market in the first quarter of 2012, to support its “HughesNet” broadband Internet service across North America.
The new satellite will feature an aggregate 100 Gbps of throughput, which can be apportioned any number of ways, so it is hard to specify precisely what a range of consumer or business bandwidth ranges might be.
The basic trade off is number of users versus speed per user. Hylas 1 is said to be readying a 2 Mbps service for as many as 2.5 million users, for example. If Hylas 1 offered 50 Mbps speeds it could only serve 800,000 users.
Hughes Network Systems will face the same issue when it crafts packages for North American subscribers. The firm’s current services offer plans ranging from 1 Mbps to 5 Mbps, so it is logical to assume Hughes will want to bump the minimum and maximum speed ranges up from there.
Hughes Chairman Pradman Kaul told Thomson Reuters that “with this new satellite, we expect our base service will be around 5 Megabits, with higher-priced plans offering speeds up to 25 Mbps.”
Barrett Xplore Inc., Canada’s largest rural broadband provider, has committed to acquire and operate over 10 Gbps of capacity on Jupiter for its own use.
John Maduri, Barrett Xplore CEO said that his firm will use the capacity to create access offers in a range of packages offering up to 10 Mbps for residential service and up to 25 Mbps for business.
In all likelihood, few consumers with an option to buy fiber-to-home or DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem services would opt for a satellite provider. But that’s why satellite providers target rural and hard-to-reach locations. Over the next couple of years, potential consumers on a number of continents will have a chance to buy broadband access that is not available for any number of reasons, at speeds much higher than generally available today.
source > TCMnet.com