Ka-Band: What's All the Fuss About?
by Elisabeth Tweedie
Los Angeles, Calif., November 8, 2012--Ka-Band is one of the most popular topics at industry conferences, and in trade newsletters and magazines. What is all the fuss about? Is Ka really the magic bullet for the satellite industry or are we in danger of once again drinking our own bath water and letting our enthusiasm for new technology override our common sense?
Let’s face it, if you work in the satellite industry no matter what your role whether you’re an engineer, accountant, lawyer, marketer, analyst, administrator or anything else you get excited by new technology and new capabilities – why else would you be in this industry? So it’s easy for us to get carried away by “technology push” and caught up in the excitement of being able to produce a 100Gbps satellite for not a lot more than it cost to produce a 30Gbps satellite a few years ago. But if we don’t have customers to fill that 100Gbps satellite it might as well be a 30Gbps one! In other words ‘technology push” alone will not close any business case; there has to be “demand pull” as well.
In the case of Ka-Band the technology push has two prongs: as well as the capability to provide more capacity for the roughly the same cost there is also the very practical issue that spectrum is a finite resource and one that is becoming increasingly congested at Ku-Band. So for that reason alone, in some parts of the world Ka-Band is needed to meet “normal” incremental growth. However normal incremental growth doesn’t include providing over 70Gbps of Ka capacity where none has been available previously. But there is no particular reason to single Eutelsat out, Avanti, Hughes, Yahsat and ViaSat have also launched dedicated Ka-Band satellites, although in the case of Hughes and ViaSat the high capacity birds were follow-ons to existing Ka band satellites that were fast filling up in some areas. Other dedicated Ka– Band satellites such as O3b, Jaibaru-1, RSCC, Inmarsat, Jupiter and NBN have yet to be launched. Elsewhere other operators have taken a more incremental approach putting Ka payloads on multi-frequency satellites.
O3b is taking an even bigger gamble than the other operators, launching a MEO Ka-Band constellation to serve users located between 45oNorth and South, an area that includes some of the highest rainfall on the planet. One of the main criticisms of Ka-Band historically has been the degradation that occurs in heavy rainfall. O3b is claiming to have solved this issue and ViaSat have stated that ViaSat 1 is operating at 99.7% availabilitywhich is the same as most cellular networks.
Part of the supply side of the equation is in place, the technology hurdles have been overcome and satellites launched and brought into service. So the attention must now focus on the end users, since they are the ones that will now determine the success or otherwise of Ka-Band services. Generally speaking most customers and not just consumers are techno-logy agnostic, they buy a service – to satisfy a need or provide a solution to a problem. Whether that need is faster internet to the home, a better system for SNG, local television or more powerful and economical networks that is what the user is looking for. Very rarely do end users bang on satellite operators’ doors demanding Ka-Band!
That leaves two questions to be answered: Is there a demand for the services that can be delivered by Ka-Band? And is the industry geared up to satisfy that demand – both in terms of the distribution systems and the physical ground equipment? Obviously to close a business case demand has to be satisfied profitably, but I’m not going to try and pick apart the financial statements of the operators at this early stage, so will put that on one side for now.
Initially following on the success of WildBlue in the US all the rhetoric accompanying announcements of Ka-Band systems was focused on the consumer. Those that lived in areas that could not be served economically by terrestrial systems, the same argument that was used by the MSS systems in the 90s. However the big difference is that this time after the satellites have been launched those consumers are still unserved. 10 - 20M of them in Europe depending on whose statistics you use and around 10M in the US; more than enough to use up all the Ka capacity over those areas. Meanwhile demand for bandwidth by consumers continues its exponential growth largely fueled by video. Nevertheless take-up has been slower than expected, attributed by both ViaSat and Eutelsat to distribution issues. In the meantime other applications and customers have emerged, local television distribution, Satellite News Gathering (SNG), emergency response and cellular backhaul. Is this a technology looking for a solution? Or are these going to develop into viable segments?
There are many questions to be answered! The GVF Ka Roundtable Assembly taking place in London on December 5thand 6thhas an impressive line-up of speakers from all parts of the Ka-Band value chain and will attempt to provide answers to these questions and many others. For more information go to: www.uk-emp.co.uk/future-events-2012-13/ka-roundtable/.
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Elisabeth Tweedie is Associate Editor of the Satellite Executive Briefing. She has over 20 years experience at the cutting edge of new communication and entertainment technologies. She is the founder and President of Definitive Direction, a consultancy that focuses on researching and evaluating the long term potential for new ventures, initiating their development and identifying and developing appropriate alliances. During her 10 years at Hughes Electronics she worked on every acquisition and new business that the company considered during her time there. www.definitivedirection.com. She can be reached at: etweedie@definitivedirection.com
