Regional comms minister
Nash: NBN satellite
activation field-force
largest ever in Australia
NBN delivery partners have
trained up the “largest
field-force for satellite
activations ever seen in
this country,” targeting up
to 10,000 activations per
month – more than the
industry has ever achieved
in Australia, according to
regional communications
minister Fiona Nash. And in
her keynote at the
Australasia Satellite Forum,
jointly hosted by talk
Satellite & CommsDay, Nash
also revealed that NBN’s
second purpose-built
satellite has now completed
final prelaunch testing and
had a co-passenger lined up
for launch cementing its
target launch date in the
second half of the year.
Just last month Nash
announced the commencement
of commercial services on
Sky Muster, the first of
NBN’s two bespoke, cutting
edge comms satellites.
Sky Muster, launched last
October, will along with its
as-yet-unnamed sister craft
be used to provide broadband
to Australians living in the
country’s most remote areas.
The pair will ultimately
replace the interim
satellite service: a more
limited offering using
capacity on third-party
craft already in orbit.
But while Sky Muster alone
has a capacity that dwarfs
that of the ISS – 135Gbps vs
4Gbps – there’s a logistical
challenge to be met both in
bringing on new subscribers
and migrating over ISS
users. Indeed, Nash said
that NBN had already had
over 3,000 orders for
service since the launch two
weeks ago of commercial
services on Sky Muster. “I
have no doubt that as word
spreads in regional
Australia about how good the
service is, that number will
quickly increase,” she said.
Hence the huge ramp-up in
groundside support. “NBN’s
delivery partners have
trained around 650
technicians nationally to
install dishes and customer
premise equipment on the
250,000 homes and businesses
expected to order a service.
Ths is the largest
field-force for satellite
activations ever seen in
this country, and is set to
perform up to 10,000
activations per month – more
than this industry has ever
done in Australia,”
continued the regional comms
minister. “ISS users will be
migrated onto Sky Muster in
parallel with new users, and
the national ISS migration
is expected to take 10-12
months.”
SECOND SATELLITE TIMEFRAME:
Nash also provided a
detailed update on the
status of NBN’s second
satellite, designed to
supplement Sky Muster’s
national coverage with a
large amount of additional
capacity.
“The satellite is currently
situated in Palo Alto,
California where it has now
successfully completed its
final pre-launch testing,”
she said. “It is currently
having its solar panels and
antennas installed, and will
subsequently be made ready
for transportation to [the
launch site in] French
Guiana as a complete unit.”
Nash added that launch
partner Arianespace had
found a copassenger for the
NBN satellite. This is
important because, to make
space launches as
financially viable as
possible, Arianespace and
similar companies will seek
to use all of the available
payload capacity on each
launch vehicle – and, if the
space is not fully occupied
by a satellite such as
NBN’s, will wait until a
second payload can be added
to the vehicle before
locking in a launch
timetable. Indeed, the
launch of Sky Muster itself
was somewhat delayed when
its own original launch
partner pulled out and a
replacement had to be found.
NBN’s second satellite now
has a target date for launch
in the second half of this
year.
“As this industry knows
well, satellites have been
known on the odd occasion to
blow up while being
launched,” quipped Nash to
the audience of satellite
execs. “But given
Arianespace’s strong record
of success we can be
optimistic for a successful
launch, followed by a period
of in-orbit testing.”
Meanwhile, Viasat program
manager for the NBN LTSS
Erwin Hudson – whose firm is
providing elements such as
ground-based communications,
network management and data
processing systems for NBN’s
long-term satellite solution
– held up the Australia
approach as a case study for
the economic benefit of
satellite over terrestrial
broadband, in meeting the
ever-growing demand for
bandwidth in areas of low
population density. He noted
that the key criteria for
promoting satellite as a
credible broadband
alternative would include
large volumes of bandwidth;
terrestrial comparable
performance; concentrated
capacity in high demand
areas with the capacity to
shift bandwidth to match
changes in demand; and
subscriber pricing
comparable to fibre and
other access technologies –
all of which NBN is seeking
to offer with its own
satellite solution.
Petroc Wilton
Australia’s space economy
grows strongly:
Asia Pacific Aerospace
Consultants Australia’s
space economy is significant
– in the billions of
dollars, a material part of
the global space sector –
and growing at a healthy
rate, according to Asia
Pacific Aerospace
Consultants SVP William
Barrett.
APAC is a Sydney-based
consulting firm specialising
in the space and telecoms
industries; it has conducted
a number of studies for the
Australian government
including the 2010 and 2011
Australian Space Activities
studies. It was engaged by
the Commonwealth in 2015 to
conduct a study of current
Australian space
capabilities.
For that most recent
research, Barrett told the
Australasian Satellite Forum
that APAC had directly
interviewed 46 Australian
companies – of the several
hundred Australian firms
connected to the space
market – aiming to encompass
the widest possible range of
Australian space
capabilities. These
respondents ranged from SMEs
(the largest section of the
sample) through to
multinationals with
Australian operations, and
covered the gamut of space
capabilities from launch and
ground systems through to
‘space enabled services’,
space-related R&D, and
support services. Between
them, they generated almost
A$2 billion in annual
revenues from space-related
work (of an estimated A$3-4
billion across the entire
Australian space sector,
accounting for about 1% of
the global space economy),
and employed over 1,300
staff.
Interestingly, the research
also found that the
companies interviewed were
using their space
capabilities to serve a
comprehensive cross-section
of the Australian economy –
most prominently the mining,
defense and federal
government sectors, but also
everything from farming to
construction and retail
trade, education to real
estate.
“Every part of the
Australian economy relies on
space in some way,”
commented Barrett. Perhaps
most revealingly, however,
the APAC data indicated that
the space economy was
growing in Australia. 79% of
the respondent companies
reported revenue growth in
the last three years, 61%
reporting growth over 25%.
66% reported growth in the
last year alone, 35%
reporting growth over 25%.
And 91% of them predicted
revenue growth over the next
three years – 74% of them
predicting growth over 25%
across the three years.
Globally, Barrrett noted a
dramatic spike up in
commercial revenues from the
space sector from around
1998, when it drew roughly
level with government
expenditure – and then began
to grow much faster, at a
CAGR over last fifteen years
of 13.7%, to the point where
it comprised some 76% of the
global space economy by
2015. “This is why
governments including the
Australian government are
starting to look at this and
say ‘wow’ – how do we tap
into this?” he noted. Petroc
Wilton
SERC, science minister
spruik Australian role in
space debris monitoring
The Space Environment
Research Centre, along with
federal science minister
Karen Andrews, have talked
up Australia’s role in
tracking and ultimately
facilitating the removal of
space debris.
Speaking at the Australasia
Satellite Forum in Sydney,
SERC GM Steve Gower
delivered an overview of the
centre’s activities and
future plans. Gower said
that over the last 20 years,
SERC’s work had been purely
an Australian effort. “But
now we also have a number of
international partners; we
have Lockheed Martin and
Nict from Japan in the
original mix as well.” He
said SERC managed a key set
of research programs, which
focused on the tracking and
characterising of objects in
orbit, determining and
predicting the behaviour of
those objects, as well as
preserving the space
environment.
“Everyone needs to work with
everyone,” he said. “There
are many optical research
programs out there where
there are disparate programs
where they contribute to an
overall goal… but they’re
not contributing to a single
focused goal.”
“There’s a A$100 million
committed by the federal
government and the industry
partners for the management
of space debris, and [that]
involves tracking and
ultimately de-orbiting or
manoeuvring space junk in
orbit,” Gower added, noting
that the Australian
government had also
emphasised the commercial
value of access to space.
Meanwhile, addressing the
conference via video link
from the NASA Tidbinbilla
tracking station near
Canberra, science minister
Karen Andrews also hailed
Australia’s part in
furthering research into
satellite communications
generally and the monitoring
of space debris in
particular. “The satellite
industry is vital to all
Australians,” she added.
“Our social, environmental
and economic security will
depend even more on access
to satellite data in the
future.”
Andrews said satellite data
was key to the mining,
transport and energy
sectors. “It’s [also]
crucial for environmental
management, emergency
disaster response,
telecommunications and
weather forecasting,” she
said. “It supports our
defence commitments at home
and abroad, and with the
launch of NBN’s Skymaster
[craft] last September,
satellite data is helping to
deliver high-speed internet
to 400,000 homes and
businesses in rural and
remote Australia.” Andrews
also noted that the federal
government was currently
reviewing the Space
Activities Act, adding that
Australia was well placed to
capitalise on the commercial
opportunities thrown up by
advances in satellite
technology. “Sending a
satellite into orbit is no
mean feat, so we need to
encourage entrepreneurship
and ensure the regulatory
environment is conducive to
private investment,” she
said. Richard van der Draay
Satellite manufacturing in
revolution: Orbital ATK
The satellite manufacturing
sector is currently
undergoing a revolution,
according to Orbital ATK.
During a panel on
developments in the
satellite ground segment and
advances in satellite
networking around meeting
end-user requirements at the
Australasia Satellite Forum
in Sydney, key
representatives from the
satellite supply side were
broadly upbeat about the
state of the business.
“There’s going to be a huge
revolution coming in
manufacturing,” said Orbital
ATK VP Ted McFarland. “Well,
it’s coming right now, a lot
of these new exotic things
are coming as we speak
[because] customers are
demanding them.” Among new
satellite technologies and
services springing up, the
panellists listed
software-defined payloads,
non-geosynchronous orbit
constellations, and
machine-to-machine
applications such as
satellite-powered automotive
connectivity.
McFarland also touched on
the recent merger between
Orbital and ATK, saying
“we’ve been integrating the
two businesses [of] Orbital
Sciences Corporation and ATK
and it’s a successful merger
today, not an acquisition.”
In broad terms, both the
satellite ground players and
operators noted the market
was increasingly moving away
from its previous narrow
business focus. “The
satellite industry is now
going from [being] a niche
player to becoming
mainstream,” said Newtec
Asia VP Mario Querner. He
said the industry had seen
“exciting new technology”
coming up, such as high
throughput satellite. “But
we’ve also [seen] steerable
antennas and… reusable
rockets, O3B’s medium-earth
orbit satellite
constellation, and [new]
lowearth orbit [systems]”
Richard van der Draay
Beware of NBN “creep” into
commercial satellite
services: operator panel
Participants on a thought
leadership panel of
satellite operators at the
Australasia Satellite Forum
have expressed concern over
the potential of NBN’s
satellites to cannibalise
their core revenues from
commercial sectors.
While the four senior
executives from the
satellite industry commended
the government’s decision to
tap satellite as a platform
to deliver broadband
services, they were quick to
point out that such a “subsidised”
platform should not be
allowed to offer commercial
services. “Our concern it
has creep into the
commercial sector,” said
Intelsat VP Asia Terry
Bleakley. “If you look at
the statement of intent from
the government for what the
NBN is going to do. And if
you look at the statement of
expectation, statement of
corporate intent from NBN
from 2012 to 2015, we think,
with the announcement of
what is being talked about
with NBN, ViaSat and Qantas,
it is starting to fall out
of the charter they are
meant to be representing.”
According to Bleakley, the
Qantas announcement is equal
to asking taxpayers to
subsidise passengers flying
over Australia in commercial
aircraft.
“There is concern that you
have taxpayer money being
used to subsidise what we
think is a commercial
service. It is like we going
to the taxpayer in Australia
and saying, ‘I’d like some
money to provide a service
to airplanes flying across
Australia to provide service
to those passengers, can you
help me out?’ I think the
answer would be ‘no’,” he
continued. “I think there is
concern amongst the industry
about the creep, and how it
will affect the commercial
market in Australia.”
The sentiment was echoed by
Eutelsat Asia CEO Jean
Francois Fenech, who called
for assurances of a
“level-playing field” for
commercial satellite
services. “What is for sure
is that this [NBN] satellite
is supposed to be designed
to service consumer
broadband and I think as
long as it remains like
that, it’s wonderful. But
for the rest, I think from
the professional
applications, the level
playing field should be
established, having all
players being able to
compete on a fair basis,”
Fenech said.
On a more positive note,
Optus Satellite VP Paul
Sheridan downplayed the
threat. While Optus has
“general concerns” over NBN
Co’s potential encroachment
into commercial services,
Sheridan pointed out that
the Ka-band architecture
behind NBN Co’s satellite
won’t be enough to support
some applications.
“We don’t see Ka spot beams
as the solution to all
opportunities, and we are
working hard to find
opportunities and develop
those opportunities with
customers,” Sheridan said.
The situation still leaves
at least 10% of the market
for commercial satellite
operators, added SES VP Asia
Pacific Glenn Tindall. “I
think if you look at the
user base out there in
Australia, probably 90% of
the users just want cheap,
fast internet service… I
think the NBN satellites
addresses their needs pretty
well. The remaining 10%…
like the mining companies,
broadcast networks,
customers who need high
availability, different
connectivity… I don’t think
the NBN satellite
architecture will suit their
needs,” Tindall said.
“I think the real question
for us as an industry is
making sure there are
suitable infrastructure and
applications out there that
can support all these
customer requirements. In
order to grow our businesses
– part of it will be eaten
by the NBN, I’m sure that is
the case – but I think we
should be looking to find
new applications and new
verticals that will continue
to grow.” Tony Chan
No simple solution for
connecting PNG: regional
comms panel
Despite a dire need for
connectivity, a combination
of difficult terrain, lack
of infrastructure and low
income presents some serious
challenges to bring
connectivity services to
Papua New Guinea, a panel of
satellite industry and
communications experts
offered at this year’s
Australasia Satellite Forum.
According to communications
consultant Dr Bob Horton,
PNG has one of the worst
telecoms infrastructures in
the region, with just 7.75
kilobits of international
bandwidth per population,
compared to over 500k per
population in New Zealand.
While there are three
projects in the works to
bring additional capacity
into the country, including
a national satellite project
dubbed Kumul Aerospace
Satellite Project, they all
face considerable economic
and infrastructural
obstacles.
One major challenge
highlighted by Horton was
the affordability of
communications services for
Papua New Guineans.
“Right now, the percentage
of income we spend on
reasonable broadband is
about 5% of the household
income. In PNG, it’s 145% of
household income,” said
Horton, who also serves as a
board member for PNG’s
regulator National
Information & Communications
Technology Authority. “So
affordability is an enormous
challenge.”
Rolling out infrastructure
has its own obstacles,
commented Telikom PNG CEO
Michael Donnell.
“It is a difficult country
to run a telecommunications
network. Just keeping it
operational on a daily basis
is a challenge,” Donnell
said. “98% of the land is
customer owned, so every
tower, every metre of cable,
every piece of
infrastructure you want to
put on the ground is
hardcore negotiations. Then
you need a SWOT team
following behind to make
sure the infrastructure
remains there, and it’s
there the next day when you
go back to service it.”
While satellite technology
would solve many of those
access issues by bring
ubiquitous coverage even to
remote and rural areas of
the country, other
supporting infrastructure
also needs to catch up. “It
is a fairly complex
environment. We can build a
giant satellite that sprays
internet to everywhere, but
that’s no good because the
towns haven’t got
electricity, there are no
schools there, and frankly,
there’s a drought there at
the moment and people are
very hungry. There’s a lot
of basic ground up work that
needs to be done,” added SES
VP Asia Pacific Glenn
Tindall.
“We should be careful about
thinking about simplistic
terms… probably the right
response is a lot of
experiments. I think a
cellular service is an
excellent approach. There
are a lot of families in PNG
with at least one
smartphone. That is probably
how people are getting the
internet. We should leverage
that and create wireless
clouds, hotspots, which can
be fitted out using which
ever is the best
infrastructure, whether its
fibre, or a cable or a
satellite.”
Similarly, Speedcast CEO
Pierre-Jean Beylier said:
“Satellite might not be the
best technology for consumer
broadband… We have seen in
emerging markets, cellular
networks playing a
significant role in rural
connectivity and I do
believe it is a very
interesting alternative.”
Tony Chan
Defence likely to seek
commercial providers for
next-gen satcom services
Accelerating technology
evolution and rapidly
shifting requirements for
satellite communications
services are obliging the
Australian Defence Force to
seek out more business with
commercial providers.
In his keynote at the
Australasia Satellite Forum
in Sydney, ADF head of ICT
operations air vice marshal
Andrew Dowse highlighted
several emerging satellite
communications requirements
driving the Australian
military away from its
traditional reliance on
internal proprietary systems
on hosted payloads inside
third party satellites, to
commercial satellite
services provided by third
party operators.
“As we look forward to our
future satcom requirements,
we have a strong suspicion
that our requirements will
be likely satisfied through
a hybrid solution,” Dowse
said. “What I mean by hybrid
solution is a mix of
milsatcom for command and
control and especially for
slow and stationary terminal
users, and commercial satcom
providing diversity and
providing on-demand services
and taking advantages of the
emerging high throughput
satcom technologies that
might be applicable to fast
movers.”
According to Dowse, these
‘fast movers’ – such as
reconnaissance aircraft and
fighter jets – are
challenging existing satcom
architectures not only with
their velocity, but also the
nature and amount of their
data communications
requirements.
While maintaining the
situation is “manageable” at
the moment, he said that
emerging applications would
make it difficult to
“support into the future.”
In one example, he described
an emerging requirement to
support real time download
of data collected by
intelligence, surveillance,
and target acquisition
aircraft.
“One of Defence’s biggest
challenges right now is
trying to deploy
technologies that
effectively support
Defence’s fast movers. Many
air platforms are seeking
satcom capabilities that
demand very high data rates
for both push and pull
capabilities,” he said. “We
don’t want to wait for an
ISR aircraft to land before
we get the valuable
information they have
collected. By the same
token, we might not want
that aircraft to pass over
finite satcom links the
terabytes of raw data, some
of which are collected
during their mission. I’m
aware of the emerging
technology developments in
commercial sectors, and I
can see applicability to our
requirements.”
Further, Defence is under
pressure to deliver more
agile and flexible services.
“Another driver for satcom
is the high tempo of modern
warfare, the need for
command to re-task assets on
the fly, rather than on
deliberate planning, which
needs an on-demand approach
to satcom,” said Dowse.
“Under most of our current
arrangements, our own satcom
or commercial satcom, we are
challenged to find ways to
meet communications needs at
short notice. Those satcom
systems require planning
weeks in advance, which is
not good for something like
operation “Fiji assist”
where Defence needed satcom
resources at very short
notice to support a
humanitarian assistance
mission.”
BUDGET: While Dowse
acknowledged that commercial
suppliers could “fill the
gap” in most cases, budget
constraints could present a
further challenge in meeting
those requirements.
“We want the latest and the
best capabilities by we also
want a good deal,” he said.
“We want satcom to be
provided as soon as we need
it, with as much as we need,
and wherever we are in the
world, but we need it to be
affordable with some level
of assurance. You can
consider us to be fairly
demanding customers in that
respect.”
As such, the ADF has its own
tactical strategy to engage
commercial vendors. “We will
be looking for innovative
ways of meeting these
strategic objectives within
our finite resources,” said
Dowse. “No matter what sort
of services Defence seeks in
the commercial sector, we
will continue to look at
ways of reducing costs
through the establishment of
things like fixed rates, or
seeking services that are
readily available through
numerous providers to create
competition and an market
advantage. Defence’s
requirement for commercial
satcom services will
persist.”
NEXT INVESTMENT: Looking
ahead, Dowse pointed out
“the speed of technology
vastly outpaces the speed of
bureaucracy.” While Defence
has budgeted between A$2
billion to A$3 billion for
satcom investments for the
2020s, he expressed the need
to work closely with
industry in order to ensure
that what is procured won’t
be outdated by the time it
is launched into service
given the long design and
development times of
satellites. Tony Chan
DDoS major security headache
for satellite sector
Distributed denial of
service attacks have been
identified as an increasing
cyber security risk to the
satellite sector, according
to a panel of experts from
industry, academia and
government organisations.
Speaking at the Australasia
Satellite Forum in Sydney,
the panel agreed that while
DDoS attacks threatened a
broad swathe of
telecommunications services,
there were some increasingly
disturbing aspects to the
way they could impact key
satellite systems and
services.
University of New South
Wales engineering and
information technology
lecturer Dr Abdun Mahmood
said there were specific
aspects of satellite systems
that were coming under
threat. “Especially the
satellite communications
themselves, which use
several forms of
encryption,” he noted. “But
think about the denial of
service [incidents] that can
happen; for instance, a
ground station which is
responsible for
communication with another
ground station and
commanding an uplink… if
it’s attacked deliberately
numerous times in a short
space of time, that can
really cause havoc to the
availability of the system…
and because satellites are
used as a critical
infrastructure, this [has]
an enormous effect.”
“Everything is internet
connected now,” put in
Computer Emergency Response
Team Australia senior
technical advisor Scott
Brown. “It has added to the
complexity.”
ViaSat Australia government
and defence GM Colin Cooper
noted that the Australian
defence sector also treated
DDoS as a key threat to be
included in its cyber
security strategy. “Defence
spends a lot of time
practising denial of service
[scenarios],” he said. “We
rely heavily on [being able
to use] satellites, and one
day [they] may not be
there.”
Several of the panellists
emphasised the importance of
cooperation between industry
and government to address
satellite-specific cyber
attacks, as well as the
broader threat landscape.
Brown, for example, invited
industry to engage with
CERT; Cooper added that
ViaSat, in working with both
government and the
commercial sector, saw many
learnings that could be
transferred between the two.
“There are a lot of
commercial sectors that
identify different threat
vectors before the defence
area but some of the
techniques that can be
deployed, that expertise
rests with some of those
government agencies.” Cooper
advocated a whole of systems
approach. “You need to look
at the problem not just from
the physical aspect, but
there are other
methodologies to [deal with
it] at each level of the
stack,” he said. “A more
holistic approach to how to
resolve the problem when you
find the interferer and deal
with it is probably the most
likely [way] to find a
solution that works.”
Commenting from the
conference floor, Pacific
Islands Telecommunications
Association manager Fred
Christopher provided a
specific case of a DDoS
attack on a satellite system
taking out a commercial
provision of internet
services; he noted that most
of the Pacific Islands lands
had now been connected by
satellites. “In one case,
the Marshall Islands’...
email service was down
because of a DDoS attack
that was carried by
satellites,” he said. “One
of the things we’d like to
talk about with satellite
operators and other
technology and service
providers about is how we
can stop these attacks.”
Christopher noted that DDoS
attacks hit the broadband
services of island nations
such as Fiji and the
Marshall Islands
particularly hard. “We
already have very limited
bandwidth,” he said, urging
more cooperation and
discussion between parties.
Richard van der Draay
