News Analysis

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 Martin Jarrold

In a previous article I referred to the operational deployment of naval and naval auxiliary forces in "non-conflict" roles and within "non-conflict" environments – across multiple and varied geographic theatres – particularly during times, and against a general backdrop, of "international peace." Specifically, such deployments include fisheries and oil/gas installation protection; human trafficking and narcotics trade interdiction in home waters; international sea lanes security; emergency food aid distribution in drought/famine-struck regions; and, similar types of task for which naval resources are particularly suited. It is in the context of such deployments that, once again, the fundamentally mission critical role of satellite-based communications – as characterized by some of its most crucial features of flexibility, reliability, rapidity of deployment, footprint ubiquity, and cost-effectiveness – becomes evidently clear.

by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

The satellite industry, or at least the overwhelming majority that were still in business or were still employed at the start of the new year, breathed a collective sigh of relief for having survived 2009--one of the worst years since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The industry can take heart that not only has it survived 2009--it has gone through an entire decade in a better position than it started.

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).

by Martin Jarrold

Director, International Programs, GVF

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. A result of this is that the applications solutions and broadband communications solutions imperatives of the energy market, whilst they represent, in relative terms, a small fraction of energy companies’ total CAPEX and OPEX, well managed ICT networks can play a disproportionately great role in reducing expenditures in exploration, drilling, and production.

The World Teleport Association (WTA) has published its annual Inside the Top Operators research report. The  eagerly awaited report draws from data submitted to WTA by teleport operating companies around the world for the association’s 2008 Top Operator rankings.