Kathy Gibson at SatCom, Sandton – The verdict is in, and consensus is that satellite is the best way to ensure nationwide broadband connectivity. But what needs to happen to make that a reality?
Denis Burgevin, vice-president: business development at Thales Alenia Space, tells delegates at today’s SatCom 2014 conference in Sandton that launching a satellite is not a trivial exercise.
Simply getting a slot in the geo-satellite orbit is a major undertaking.
“This is the most critical issue,” Burgevin says. “As of today, most operators and admins have submitted filing and the orbital arc is filled with filings. This makes it very difficult for a newcomer to get rights.”
The first option is for a new player to develop a new slot from scratch and submit a new filing to the ITU. But this could take five to seven years, Burgevin points out. And, since the geo-orbital arc is full, it may never actually happen.
“The second possibility is to negotiate with someone who already has some rights and may be ready to sell or rent their rights. It will cost, of course, but is a possible solution.”
The third option is to make use of your country’s national rights. “When the ITU created the SatCom organisation, it allocated frequencies in ku-band and c-band. So every country has these bands already allocated, and you could use those,” Burgevin says.
The type of satellite coverage also needs to be considered.
Burgevin explains that with traditional satellite systems, you have regional coverage. “So a satellite would cover a country and connect anyone in the country.”
For broadband connectivity, however, this isn’t good enough. “Today we use multi-beam coverage. This gives more bandwidth over the country at better performance because you don’t have a wide arc, but spot beams.
“This offers much better capacity than traditional satellite. So operators can offer higher throughput, thanks to frequency re-use, and higher performance whatever the frequency band – c-band, ku-bank or ka-band.
“Today, most of the satellite operators are looking at this kind of architecture in ka-band and starting to come out with it in ku-band and c-band as well.”
