by Lou Zacharilla

In a forum on "Integrating Satellite Services into the Cloud" at the PTC 2010 in Hawaii earlier this month more game-changing ideas were put forward than at any other time in an industry forum.

At the beginning of 2008 Carlsbad, CA-based equipment manufacturer ViaSat startled the world with the announcement of ViaSat-1. Startling not only because of the capacity of the satellite, announced at 100Gbps, (but now increased to 125Gbps) represented a ten fold increase on existing Ka-Band satellites, but also because ViaSat with no operating experience was planning to enter a market dominated by two major players: WildBlue and Hughes. These two operators currently have just under one million subscribers between them.

by Lou Zacharilla, Director of Development, SSPI

Depending on whose science or projections you believe, the world is melting, its waters rising and its future looking a lot like the movie "2012." It may well be. Among the many stepping forward to help save it, the global teleport industry is now taking its turn.

The Year of Living Dangerously" is a great 1983 film by Australian director Peter Weir about an Aussie  journalist (Mel Gibson) covering political turmoil in Indonesia during the reign of Sukarno. He gets caught up in the chaos of an abortive Communist revolution and manages to escape, barely, with his life.

With the introduction of digital TV a new way of video transport and delivery has emerged, using the Internet Protocol (IP). Video over IP is a general term to describe the use of IP in any or all stages of video transport to the subscriber (or end-customer). This has to be distinguished from the term IPTV, which means specifically the delivery of video as an IP stream to the subscriber set-top box or TV set. All digital video today that is broadcast, transported over satellite or distributed in cable systems is using the MPEG transport stream (TS) communications protocol.

My previous column for this publication focused on the oil and gas exploration and production sector, with particular reference to the increasing attention of the energy industry on deepwater and ultra-deepwater hydrocarbon reserves which now appear to be much more abundant than was thought ten years ago.

The next Pacific Telecommunications Conference, PTC ’10, will again focus on a hot topic for many in the telecommunication and IT industries, "cloud computing". While seemingly esoteric to many, especially some in the sometimes insular satellite sector, cloud computing is coming to dominate the thinking of planners and implementers in many telecommunications and IT sectors.

by Martin Jarrold, Chief, International Programs Development, GVF

Deployment of broadband satellite technologies is correctly recognized as an imperative to maximization of cutting-edge digital oilfield applications and to considerations of cost-effectiveness – it is a force multiplier, enabling return on investment, as well as facilitating mission critical communications links.

Phew…we survived! That seemed to be the expression on everyone’s lips at the recently-concluded Satellite Business Week organized by EuroConsult held in Paris from 7-10 September. There was a definite feeling of relief in the air. Relief that the recession hadn’t hit the satellite companies as badly as it had other industries. A sentiment that probably isn’t shared by companies that recently filed for bankruptcy such as ICO Global, Protostar and SeaLaunch-all but the latter were noticeably absent this year.

by Lou Zacharilla, Dir. of Development, SSPI

At the recent Satellite Business Week summit in Paris, the buzz centered around emerging markets for broadband and mobile services, as well as an increased use of satellites in support of emerging economies in Africa, observational and environmental sciences and the appetite of the global enterprise.