News Analysis

by Elisabeth Tweedie

Los Angeles,Calif.  April 30, 2010. When I think about 3D the British expression "two swallows don’t make a summer" keeps coming to mind. In the last few months we’ve indeed seen two "swallows": "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland", both of which generated the vast majority of their significant revenue (they were respectively the 1st and 22nd highest grossing films ever) from the theaters showing the movies in 3D. "Call of the Wild" also in 3D was released six months before "Avatar" but only managed to produce box office revenues of around $30,000 in the US.

by Chris Frith 

President, AUSPresence

A telco PR executive once remarked to me that satellite was like a solution always looking for a problem.  Given that he was looking to represent my satellite consultancy firm, I thought this was an odd way to earn my business!  Dents to my ego aside, what this guy was reflecting is simply the wider telecommunications industry and a great many potential customers’ perception of satellite – VSAT communications in particular.  How things have changed! Now, not only do the problems exist – let’s refer to them as needs (it’s more marketing friendly) but also customers are willing and have the means to pay for them. Today, we have broadband satellite providing internet access not just in the remote areas but right up close to population centres; innovative service providers are marketing hybrid satellite networks on the basis of their increased reliability and quick deploy systems which provide large scale connectivity to those first on the ground when disaster strikes. So let’s take a closer look at what needs are emerging and how leading VSAT service providers are rising to the challenge. Then we’ll take a look into the crystal ball to see where this is heading.

by Roxana Dunnette

 by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

The satellite industry responded again admirably in the wake of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. The response to a crisis can highlight  the unique advantages of satellite technology as well as its limitations.

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.

by Bruce Elbert

Much attention is being paid to consumer broadband service via satellite as this has the potential to match the US penetration of DTH TV and Satellite Radio (DARS). However, there is still a very substantial ongoing business using various types of VSATs to serve commercial and govern-ment needs in developed and developing regions of the world. After all, satellite communications is the best alternative if modern terrestrial infrastructure is not available.

by Elisabeth Tweedie

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 Robert Bell

Executive Director, World Teleport Association

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.

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.

by Dr. Andrea Franz and Dr. Gerhard Franz

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. This worldwide standard describes the way a digital TV signal (audio, video and data) is encapsulated in a specific container format. It also includes metadata such as electronic program guides (EPG).