Broadband Satellite -- celestial simplicity

April 2002

While DSL and cable broadband services continue to be deployed on a piecemeal basis across Europe, operators of these technologies have left themselves vulnerable to competition from satellite -- whose broadband credentials continue to impress

British Telecommunications recently cut its wholesale price for ADSL broadband Internet access in the UK from €40.4 per month to €24. In its advertising, BT proudly states that 60 per cent of its exchanges are DSL-enabled. The downside of this, of course, is that 40 per cent are not - and are probably not passed by cable either.

Fortunately for business Internet users in the UK, and consumers in some other European countries, two-way broadband satellite access is coming to the rescue. The new Digital Video Broadcast -- Return Channel over Satellite (DVB-RCS) standard removes the need for a telephone line for the return (upload) channel.

SES Global - with its 29 satellites -- is the world's largest satellite operator. The company was formed in 2001 through the merger of Luxemburg-based SES Group, operator of the Astra direct-to-home satellite systems, and US satellite operator Americom.

SES's Astra Broadband Interactive (BBI) System, launched in November 2001, was the world's first commercial application of DVB-RCS. The company's first customer for BBI was the Spanish broadband solutions provider and wireless local loop operator Neo, which intends to provide a two-way VPN and Internet satellite service for the Iberian peninsula in early 2002.

Paris-based Eutelsat, which was set up in 1977 as an intergovernmental organisation, is also now one of the world's leading satellite communications providers, with a fleet of 18 satellites. On 2 July 2001, Eutelsat was transformed into a limited liability company, which will be offering 30 per cent of its shares to the public within two years of that date.

Broadband plans

Jean-Francois Fremeaux, business manager of Eutelsat's multimedia department, explains that the company has put in place broadband ground infrastructure near Paris and in Turin, North Italy, with similar installations in Germany and the UK to follow.

'These platforms, dedicated to multimedia, are used to broadcast IP data over DVB to our W3 and Atlantic Bird 2 satellites, and to e-Bird -- a new satellite, which will be launched in the middle of this year and dedicated to two-way systems,' says Fremeaux.

Rather than seeing Eutelsat's service as competing against cable and DSL, he prefers to say that the satellite is a complementary device. 'Satellites have access to any kind of location,' points out Fremeaux. 'Satellite is very efficient when it provides delivery of data one-to-many, because you pay only once. The average price for one Mbps broadcast for one year is around 200,000 Euros.'

Eutelsat's services are aimed at ISPs and the business-to-business market, as well as supporting vertical applications such as e-learning and telemedicine. One of Eutelsat's ISP resellers is Netherlands-based start-up Aramiska, which aims to provide a satellite broadband Internet service to SMEs in the UK (from €160 per month) and continental Europe (from €99 per month).

'It's true two-way broadband,' says Steve Petrie, Aramiska's chief marketing officer. 'We've got higher throughput rates than DSL has in the UK. At the moment, we're offering upload speeds of up to 320Kbps. By the middle of 2002, they'll be up to one Mbps; by the end of the year, we'll be looking at two Mbps upload speeds, and eight Mbps download speeds,' he says.

Petrie emphasises that Aramiska offers more than just two-way connectivity. 'We offer a full ISP and e-mail service on top of the broadband platform,' he explains. 'There's Web hosting, DNS name registration, and all the usual ISP services. We offer 24/7 customer service; our competitors don't do that.'

Satellite access offers many advantages, according to Petrie. 'We're cheaper per PC connection,' he says. 'There's quite a drastic limit in the business package that BT offers on the number of PCs you can connect. Also, because we're always on, there's a very favourable comparison with the price of dial-up.'

Attractive

Inmarsat is another former intergovernmental organisation, which was set up in 1979 to provide maritime safety services and communications. Since then, Inmarsat has expanded into aeronautical services -- with about 5,000 aircraft now fitted with its systems -- and also into land mobile services.

The organisation wholesales the airtime available (at a top speed of 64Kbps) via its nine satellites through a number of service providers at prices around €9 per minute. These are mainly 'blue chip' telecoms operators, including Telenor, France Telecom, Telstra in Australia, and KDD in Japan.

Satellite news-gathering is one of the main land mobile uses of Inmarsat's service. 'Oil exploration people also use our equipment, because they're out in very remote areas,' says Dale Irish, head of product marketing at Inmarsat. 'Aid organisations and UN people all use Inmarsat.'

Inmarsat is now trying to move into broader applications for a wider range of enterprises. 'Our drive is to provide smaller, cheaper, and higher-speed data services,' declares Irish. 'A 144Kbps land mobile GPRS-based service is to be launched in November of this year,' he says.

The company wants to make sure it can inter-roam with GPRS terrestrial operators. 'GPRS will be rolled out in the major conurbations around the world, but that still leaves huge geographies that won't have the service,' explains Irish. 'We want people to be able to go seamlessly from an urban environment on their cell phone to more rural areas where they're working using an Inmarsat system.'

In two years time, Inmarsat intends to operate a full UMTS service. 'In 2004, we're going to be launching some of the largest, most powerful satellites ever sent up,' claims Irish. 'That translates into smaller and cheaper, more consumer-orientated devices on the ground at a speed of 432Kbps. We have approval for a €1.6 billion project.'

The importance of satellite as a communications medium was underlined by the founding in Brussels on 1 March, 2002 of the European Satellite Operators Association (ESOA). The nine founding members are Europe*Star, Eutelsat, Hispasat, Inmarsat, New Skies Satellites, Nordic Satellite, SES Global, Telenor, and Telespazio.

One of ESOA's priorities is to promote the role of satellites in the European Commission's e-Europe broadband programme. European Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society, Erkki Liikanen, believes that by providing communications services all over Europe, satellites contribute significantly to the objectives of the e-Europe action plan.