Australasia Satellite Forum 2013

Hosted by talk Satellite & CommsDay.

Hartsuyker calls for more NBN satellite capacity

Shadow regional communications minister Luke Hartsuyker has called on NBN Co to increase the capacity available to its interim satellite service, warning that regional and remote users could soon be left with no viable option for broadband access.

Delivering a keynote address to the Australasia Satellite Forum, Hartsuyker said that interim satellite capacity is likely to be used up by the end of 2013, two years ahead of when NBN Co is scheduled to launch its own satellites. He warned that not only would rural users be disadvantaged, but skills could also be lost ahead of the long-term satellite launch.

The NBN interim satellite service is provided using bandwidth from Optus Satellite and IPstar and has been capped at 48,000 users. However, a number of retail service providers have already been told by NBN Co that the capacity is limited and have restricted their plans as a result.

Hartsuyker suggested that the wireless and satellite components of the NBN were “progressing reasonably well”, but noted that people using the NBN satellite service had no other options
for internet access.

“The market for satellite internet services is substantially larger than 48,000 customers, so there is a real danger that once the cap on the interim service is reached, thousands of potential customers may be forced to wait until the NBN Co satellites are launched in 2015 before they have internet access,” he told the Australasia Satellite Forum audience.

“For those people living in rural and remote Australia who are lucky enough to have access to good quality broadband, the internet is having a transformative impact. Leaving the rest of rural and remote Australia without an affordable satellite broadband option for up to two years is unthinkable, so it is vital that the cap is increased well before the 48,000 customer limit is reached,” Hartsuyker said.

“Failing to increase capacity on the Interim Satellite Service would also impact on NBN Co’s ability to efficiently deliver the long term satellite solution. There are currently hundreds of trained installers on the ground installing end-user equipment for the interim satellite service. Once the long term service is launched in 2015, these installers will be needed to install new equipment in tens of thousands of premises.”

“If there is a substantial period of time between the closure of the interim service and the launch of the long term service, much of that expertise will be lost and NBN Co will almost be starting from scratch.

Finding qualified labour is proving to be one of the great challenges for NBN Co, so it is important that this aspect of the interim satellite service is also taken into consideration.”

A number of satellite capacity providers at yesterday's forum said they would welcome any moves by NBN Co to increase the capacity of the interim service.

Optus Satellite VP Paul Sheridan noted that Optus had already installed over 30,000 VSATs as part of the interim service and would be happy to provide more. “I'm hopeful and looking forward to discussions to increases in the 48,000 cap,” he said.

Similarly, Intelsat VP for Asia Terry Beakley said the company was “hoping that it does run out soon”, as it has capacity that it can switch to cover Australia if it was needed.

COALITION BROADBAND POLICY: Meanwhile, Hartsuyker also gave the Australasia Satellite Forum an early look at the coalition’s broadband policy for the satellite sector. While the NBN Co satellite service would go ahead largely unchanged, he also said that long-term plans would look to include more private sector involvement.

“Unfortunately, it seems that the contracts have been signed and we are now committed to the government’s current course of action,” Hartsuyker said. “However, that does not mean that we cannot consider private sector involvement down the track. Indeed, the private sector has a long history of efficiently and reliably operating satellite systems in this country, so a future government would be foolish if it did not at least consider private involvement in the nation’s flagship broadband satellite system.”

“While we will substantially change the NBN fixed-line rollout, it appears that the opportunity to materially change the satellite aspect of the NBN rollout has passed. As I said last year, if we had the opportunity to start from scratch, we would provide long term satellite broadband services to regional Australia with much more private sector involvement. However, the major contracts for the construction and launch of NBN Co’s two Ka-band satellites are in place, and we are not in the business of cancelling legitimate contracts.”

Geoff Long - Commsday

Closing the gap: satellite players call for continuity through the NBN Ka-band upgrade

The suggestion from shadow regional comms minister Luke Hartsuyker that NBN’s interim satellite service be extended past its current cap of 48,000 customers has sparked keen debate amongst industry players.

And a consensus is emerging that, however the migration from interim to long-term services plays out, continuity will be the most important factor.

As NBN Co satellite program director Matt Dawson explained, the first release satellite service has seen even higher uptake than planned – and is currently ahead of schedule. But that implies the potential for a ‘capacity gap’ if that 48,000 target is hit far in advance of the start of the long-term solution.

“The uptake is there… I think that we should look at two very important parameters that we should
evaluate quickly and come up with a decision,” said Gilat APAC regional VP Oded Sheshinski. “What do we do fairly soon, when the 48,000 have been completed and there are two years to go? And the other question is, if everything is  so successful and everything is working so [well], why stop it?”

“We installed our 30,000th NBN customer on Friday last week… we’re maybe 40% above of where the target would be,” added Skybridge CEO Michael Abela.

Optus satellite marketing director Nick Leake was confident there’d be enough capacity to avoid a Kuband supply block, should the first release satellite service be extended. “We’ve got probably 10,000 ABG customers that will migrate at some stage, whether it’s on FRSS or directly onto NBN’s Ka-band[satellites]. As they migrate, they give up capacity; on Optus satellites, we’ve got enough capacity to support our portion of the NBN rollout, and IPStar are in the same position,” he said. “So it becomes a capacity management issue… there’s no issue with good quality capacity to keep FRSS going, but… it’s a policymakers’ decision.”

With the extension question ultimately up to policymakers, Dawson was unable to comment further on the matter. He did acknowledge that additional Ku-band capacity was available, though he highlighted the differences between services offered via the interim solution and those planned via the long-term satellite service, suggesting the respective capacities would be an order of magnitude apart.

Dawson also noted that, with more of the fibre and wireless parts of the network rolled out, the qualification criteria for the long-term solution would be somewhat different from those currently in place for the interim service – yielding a very different footprint and further increasing the required capacity. And he also said that once Ka-band was available, existing Ku-band VSAT infrastructure would have to be replaced on premises – though he said that was already factored into the business case.

For Abela and Sheshinski, though, continuity emerged as the key concern. “At the moment, we’re rolling out a couple of thousand services a month; that takes anywhere between 200 and 400 men and women,” said Abela. “I agree… that it would make a lot of sense if the government were to just continue and expand [the FRSS] but as Matt has pointed out, it’s a policy decision.”

“The impact of it not continuing for someone like Skybridge or the contractor market overall is that
you’ve then got those 200-400 people that then have no work to do… so for us, managing that continuity is absolutely critical. Not just for today and tomorrow – when it comes to 2015, when the Ka-band [satellites] are launched, we need to make sure we have that inbuilt capacity to be able to roll out those services.”

“We should just continue with the project, do a good job, and not stop it and try to reignite engines
two years later – because that will be problematic,” argued Sheshinski. “And it would be very costly.”

Petroc Wilton - Commsday

Debate rages on NBN Co slot filings

The debate about whether NBN Co will be able to secure its own orbital slots and co-ordinate them with other operators ahead of its planned satellite launch in 2015 has spilled over into the Australasia Satellite Forum.

As reported by CommsDay, NBN Co has filed for a number of slots with the ITU and has also commenced coordination with some operators with nearby slots, including Optus. However, there is still speculation on whether it will be able to complete the process ahead of its proposed 2015 launch.

Shadow regional communications minister Luke Hartsuyker re-ignited the debate. “While NBN Co is publicly saying that this process is moving along as expected, I’ve been told that the process is proving to be problematic, with the very real possibility that the launch may be delayed,” he said.

“I do recognise that this sort of international negotiation is time consuming and complex. If the negotiations drag on for some time, there is an ever greater imperative for NBN Co to ensure that the current cap on the interim satellite service is lifted,” he added.

The comments prompted a follow-up panel discussion to give their thoughts. Newsat CEO Adrian
Ballintine was one of a number of private sector operators to suggest that it was likely to be a big risk not to have the orbital slots finalised. “For everyone in the room who's in the business of satellite, it would be pretty difficult to get our boards or our organisations to support a project that didn't have an orbital slot,” he suggested.

SES APAC VP Glen Tindall agreed. “In my experience you don't build satellites without having slots to put them in. I know there was a statement from the ITU that said otherwise, but that hasn't been my experience in the industry.”

The panel also noted that the very same issue had tripped up a company called Protostar, which eventually went into bankruptcy. It had failed to get an orbital slot to launch its satellite after objections from the owners of adjacent slots.

However, NBN Co satellite program director Matt Dawson, who was in the forum audience yesterday, reiterated the company's position that the process was unlikely to hinder the launch.
“We've got a number of filings, and we're progressing through the process that we need to go through to get those filings fully coordinated,” Dawson said yesterday. “So it's not a single slot . . . we're working through the process to get all of those filings we've nominated coordinated. We've done quite a bit of work examining the existing slots that existing operators have that we need to coordinate with and we foresee no problem with us completing coordination with those operators within the next 12 months – a good 12 months before we need to launch the satellites,” he told the forum.

Geoff Long - Commsday

Australia to get first look at new satellite technologies

Australia is likely to witness a number of key developments in the satellite sector this year that could herald a new generation of services, including high throughput satellite and ultra high-definition video.

Optus Satellite will soon commence a trial of Ultra HD services in conjunction with one of its key customers, VP Paul Sheridan revealed at the Australasia Satellite Forum.

While still a number of years away, Ultra HD is seen as the next development in video services and is being particularly pushed by the Japanese government, operators and suppliers.
However, Sheridan said that Optus could also be an early player in the market. While it won't be available commercially for a few years in Australia, he said its testing would commence soon.

“We've currently got a 50+Mbps stream coming into one of our earth stations and we're going to
broadcast that under a trial in the not-too-distant future,” Sheridan said, noting that other requirements would be the availability of new screens, a need for the yield to increase through the transponder and the availability of Ultra HD content.

While Optus and its parent SingTel have announced a review of the satellite operation, Sheridan said that it was business as usual at the company. It will also launch its Optus 10 satellite later this year.

Another new technology in the satellite space is so called high throughput satellite, or HTS, which uses spotbeams to deliver a big jump in available throughputs.

One of the most anticipated launches of HTS technology is O3b Networks, which is planning a fleet of medium-earth orbit satellites that will include capacity over Australia. The company will have a gateway in Perth, which is expected to play a key operational role in providing O3b's services throughout the region.

O3b director of sales John Turnbull told the forum that the company will set up terminals in Perth
towards the end of June to educate the market on its services. He said that O3b was already speaking to a number of operators that provide service in Western Australia, in the Northern Territory and in Papua New Guinea.

“We certainly see Australia as a target market for our spotbeam type services and we've been setting up some terminals to see how services can work and to show operators how the services will work,” Turnbull said.

He said the company's satellite launch had slipped from May to June 24 due to problems with another launch that was ahead of it, but he said that its second launch in September was still on track and expected that “within about 80 days the first four satellites will be in orbit.”

Another satellite operator with HTS plans is Intelsat, which provided the first public glimpses of its
EPIC project at yesterday's forum. Epic is a platform that provides a combination of wide beams and spot beams using any band and technology for frequency reuse.

According to Intelsat VP Asia Terry Beakley, the technology could see a 10-fold increase in throughput compared to its traditional satellites and will be launched in 2015/2016.

He said both Australia and Papua New Guinea were target markets for the technology, particularly the resources sectors. “It's been interesting, we've been watching what's happening with high throughput in the past and we've been speaking a lot with our customer base and we've taken a different approach to how a lot of other people are doing their high throughput play,” he said. “A lot of our competition are looking at a consumer play but if you look at Intelsat the majority of our business is actually wholesale carrier grade business. So that's dictated how we've played with our high throughput technology,” he said.

Beakley also noted that Intelsat had upped its capacity in the region in the last two years. He pointed out that the company had launched five satellites in the last two years, three of which have footprints over Australia.

Geoff Long - Commsday

Weak business case for satellite life extension: manufacturers panel

Extending the life of satellites remains a low priority for the industry, according to a panel of executives from satellite manufacturers.

While the representatives from Thales, Space Systems/Loral, and Lockheed Martin acknowledged the possibility of extending the working life of satellites, they highlighted both commercial and technical challenges for business cases that go beyond the existing 15-year lifespan.

“What I think is interesting is that 15 years isn’t driven by technical considerations, we can all build 20 -year satellites, we can all build 30-year satellites. The 15 years is actually driven by business plans; business plans tend to fall off a cliff after about 12 years, and nobody is really willing to pay for a satellite that will go a lot longer than that,” said SSL VP Tony Colucci.“We are all looking at incrementally extending life, maybe to 18 years, but as of yet, there’s not a strong clambering from the customer that says ‘we’re willing to pay 10% more for a satellite that lasts 20% longer.’ There’s no strong chorus yet.”

Besides original designs that last longer, designing satellites that can be service after launch to extend operating life is also problematic both technically and commercially.

“It is a challenging problem. Satellites, by their very nature with their cost of launch and everything
else, are very optimised designs – there’s not a hell lot of redundancy built in, which means from a reliability stand point, they wear out,” said Lockheed Martin director of business development Roy Kampfer.

According to Kampfer, even if satellites are designed to be resupplied, such as with new fuel, the problem can “cascade upon itself” because each component will have to be reconsidered and redesigned. “If you bring extra consumables up there, which is an expensive prospect, then you have to starting asking yourself about… thrusters… electrical power systems… solar arrays… batteries… thermal design – the loss of the satellite to dissipate heat…”

This implied extra costs, which is difficult to justify since any overhead cost to extend a satellite’s life won’t see any return after the initial 15-year period, Kampfer continued. “Where was the satellite industry in terms of technology 15 years ago? That’s a life time ago. Do you really want to extend the life of an asset that you might want to redevelop and redeploy?”

“Satellites need to be designed to be serviced,” added Thales Australia space systems key account manager Jack Scott. “It would need to have a complete design for that and that would be costly. I’m not sure who would be willing to pay for that… let’s say if we had a car and after 15 years we replace the motor, it’s still a 15-year-old car.”

Tony Chan - Commsday

The pros and cons of defence budget cuts on the satellite sector

The retrenchment of government spending on space-based defence systems can be both good and bad for the satellite industry, according to speakers at the Australasia Satellite Forum. On the one hand, budget cuts will impact government spending on satellite systems. On the other hand, those same budget constraints may lead to more reliance on commercial satellite services.

In Australia, spending on communications systems will likely be cut as a result of the government's stated policy to freeze budgets, commented Captain Vaughn Rixon at the Australian Defence Force.

“There’s a freeze in government spending across the board, and there’s been published reductions on defence spending… if we have to take those sorts of cuts, we’d be looking at winding back what we spend on commercial contracts to start off with to generate savings. We’d look at winding back and making better use of our alliance relationships in terms of trying to squeeze other partners to get more out of them,” said Rixon. “At the end of the day, we’ve got an operational outcome to deliver and anything that doesn’t directly contribute to the operational outcome required on the day, is at risk.”

But while militaries look to spend less, they are more likely to seek out more cost efficient commercial systems to replace previously proprietary deployments, commented Don Brown, vice president, Hosted Payloads, Intelsat.

“I think that you are going to see across the board as the pressure of traditional space system acquisition really takes hold, you’ll see a whole variety of opportunities [for the satellite industry]… and it will include applications and systems,” he said. “I think across the spectrum, there’re going to be opportunities that change the demarcation line between commercial and government.
“I think if you look across space-based capability… you are going to see that there’s going to be a lot more opportunities for – whether it is IR sensing or other kinds of sensors, other kinds of comms applications, to get to persistent, resilient architectures… satellite operators are going to start having the oppor-tunity to be more involved in a greater variety of military space-based applications because of the desire to get to these resilient, distributed architectures.”

One example of such a project is Intelsat’s hosted payload support for the ADF.

“One of the main theme in our relationship with the ADF is we said, ‘look, you want to save money
and you want to have the capability to be in orbit when you need it, you are going to have to buy into the idea that you will let us use commercial practice to give you the capability you want,” he said. “[The project] gave us the ability to use our knowledge on how you buy spacecraft systems, and how you test them and put them in orbit, and that worked. We were able to deliver the capability within three years of contract…and the commonwealth saved US$150 million.”

Tony Chan, CommsDay

COMMENT BY KEVIN MORGAN

NBN and C-band the big issues for satellite

In his keynote at yesterday’s Australasia Satellite Forum, shadow regional communications minister Luke Hartsuyker outlined several themes that came to dominate much of yesterday’s discussion.

Although Hartsuyker took the opportunity to catalogue NBN Co’s well publicised rollout delays and its lack of accountability he focussed on the future of the NBN’s satellite services under coalition government.

He described the interim satellite service as one of the few NBN success stories and confirmed that the coalition would continue with NBN Co’s plans to launch two Ka-band satellites which he dubbed ‘Conroy One and Two’.

But while Hartsuyker said the satellite and wireless rollouts seemed to be progressing well and the commitment to the 25/5 service on the two platforms was welcome he did have some concerns.

The shadow minister said that the cap of 48,000 services on the interim satellite service could lead to many thousands in the bush being denied access to good broadband services for a prolonged period given that the cap could be reached before the end of this year, two years before the long term satellite service became available. Hartsuyker was particularly concerned that the momentum that had been built up in rolling out the interim service, which already has 30,000 users, would be lost when the cap was reached.

That could, he feared lead to a loss of the skilled workforce that have been installing satellite terminals meaning that in 2015 NBN Co would have to rebuild competencies for the rollout of Ka band equipment, leading to delays.

He argued that more capacity should be sought to extend the interim programme beyond the existing cap. And echoing an issue first raised by his colleague Malcolm Turnbull, Hartsuyker expressed concerns about NBN Co’s seeming lack of progress on securing the orbital slots it
needs. Again he feared that this could lead to delays in implementing the long term satellite service.

The question of the cap on the interim satellite service and NBN Co’s access to orbital slots continued to be matters for debate in the forum’s second session, the satellite operators round table. Newsat CEO Adrian Ballintine questioned the wisdom of NBN Co proceeding so far with satellite acquisition without having a confirmed filing with the ITU and also questioned the fairness of private sector operators having to compete against taxpayer funded satellites.

Optus VP for satellite Paul Sheridan said he hoped the cap on the interim service would be lifted adding that Optus could readily provide additional capacity in the Ku band given it is set to launch a further Ku band satellite.

Sheridan argued that the commitment by Optus to more Ku band capacity was proof that despite the promise of enhanced performance on high throughput Ka band satellites the market for Ku band remained strong especially for broadcasting and video.

He said concerns about the relative merits of the two reflected an earlier debate about C and Ku band and as history had shown there was still more than a place for both technologies.
Sheridan’s confidence about demand for capacity was reflected by all the operators, who despite the small size of the Australian market, see opportunities for strong growth in the region. Glen Tindall of SES believed that the entry of NBN Co into the market would ‘grow the cake’ rather than take business away from other operators. There were also growing opportunities in specialised market segments such as comms services for the mining services.

These services typically use C band capacity, given issues of rain in many remote areas, especially in Africa and, as Chris Hill of ITC Global outlined, Australian operators have built world leading facilities particularly in Western Australia to land C band traffic. But notwithstanding the continued importance of C band, spectrum used for C and L band satellite services is at risk from claims to the spectrum by mobile broadband operators.

The growth of microcells particularly in C band spectrum will cause increasing interference because the 3.7 -4.2 GHz band is not reserved solely for satellite but is shared.

As the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s Andrew Kerans explained, the regulator
thinks C band and major built up areas cannot co-exist, implying C band facilities would be gradually moved to more remote areas.

The question of the future of C-Band spectrum will be asked at the forthcoming ITU World Radiocommunications Conference in 2015. Bob Horton, arguing on behalf of VSAT operators, says any move to reserve C band spectrum solely for mobile has to be fought vigorously.

As Horton explained, with 35 C-Band satellites still on order with a lifespan stretching out for another eighteen years, C band is still a critical ingredient in the satellite industry mix and has to be protected.

Ultimately, as this panel on regulation confirmed given the complexity of spectrum management and the co-ordination of satellites in limited orbital slots, the future of the satellite industry is as at much at risk from highly politicised international regulation as it is from launch or orbit failures.