Kacific satellite to provide broadband to Pacific nations
9 December 2013
Kacific Broadband Satellites announced plans to launch a Ka Band High Throughput Satellite (HTS) to provide enhanced broadband to 40 million people in the Pacific including the Pacific islands, New Zealand, eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.
According to the World Bank, the Pacific is significantly underserved in terms of broadband access. Estimated total potential demand for bandwidth by Pacific island states is 44 Gbps. Today just 20 percent, or less than 10 Gbps, is supplied. The Pacific has the highest internet pricing and the highest Skype call prices on earth. Substandard, over-contended, 1 Mbps broadband services can cost more than US$700 per month in some territories. Kacific will sell wholesale bandwidth and anticipates that telcos and ISPs will offer it to end users at speeds of up to 10 Mbps and at price points as low as 5 percent of current costs. The service will be provided through small terminals costing just a few hundred dollars.
“This will be the world’s most geographically dispersed broadband satellite footprint,” says Kacific CEO Christian Patouraux. “Our aim is to create a high quality broadband network offering direct internet access to around 99 percent of the government agencies, institutions, businesses and people within the total footprint area.”
Kacific expects to commission its launch vehicle and payload in 2014 and to provide broadband services to the region by late 2016.
Tapping the
Pacific’s
potential
Geographic
and
demographic
factors
present
particular
difficulties
for the nine
million
people in
the Pacific
islands.
There is a
significant
challenge in
getting
coverage –
even simple
connectivity
– to remote
locations
such as the
Line Islands
in Kiribati,
the northern
atolls of
the Cook
Islands, the
archipelago
islands and
scattered
populations
of
Micronesia
and the
Marshall
Islands. And
places like
Tuvalu and
Tokelau also
face issues
in providing
quality
coverage to
their small,
distributed
populations.
These factors mean that Pacific island nations have two to seven times lower internet penetration than continental nations with comparable GDP per-capita and adult literacy rates. Macro-economic modelling suggests there is an untapped pool of 2,000,000 internet users in the Pacific islands and eastern Indonesia who would be connected if internet prices were in line with the rest of the world.
The World Bank notes that developing countries enjoy an increase of 1.38 percent per year in average GDP for each 10 percent increase in broadband penetration. But at penetration rates below 5 percent, which is the case in the majority of Pacific island nations, this growth does not occur.
Kacific satellite to provide faster, more affordable broadband to Pacific nations Speed and affordability To help address these inequalities, Kacific will provide broadband service via a payload co-hosted on a geostationary satellite. It will operate up to 48 beams, each providing coverage of 700km diameter and up to 400Mbps (duplex) throughput. Beams can be adapted to provide service to remote atolls with low populations without increasing the price of bandwidth in those locations.
“We have been highly encouraged by feedback from government agencies and internet and economic development communities throughout the Pacific,” says Patouraux. “They recognise the significance of competitively priced high availability broadband to economic growth, health and education throughout the region. High speed broadband is now a fundamental infrastructure for economic growth, employment, security and the improved delivery of essential services.
“By providing high quality broadband at a fraction of the current cost, we will allow a much larger part of the population to participate in the digital age. With support from local governments and global institutions, that will foster greater internet usage on the island, fuelling economic growth. At the pricing and speed Kacific will offer, many Pacific nations should be able to reach the critical 10 percent penetration threshold, thereby substantially lifting their GDP.”
Target
markets
Target
customers
include
mobile
networks
(for
back-hauling),
primary,
secondary
and tertiary
education
institutions,
hospitals
and
healthcare
providers,
hotels and
airlines and
tourist
services,
government
departments,
agencies and
services,
emergency
services,
aid
agencies,
banks and
financial
institutions,
mining, oil
and
agriculture
businesses,
as well as
small-to-medium
enterprises
and
consumers.
Kacific will position four or five beams over New Zealand, complementing fibre networks by offering broadband service to remote areas and service assurance to customers, mitigating the impact of disruption of the fibre trunk.
Eastern
Indonesia
and Papua
New Guinea,
while more
densely
populated
than the
islands of
the Pacific,
have similar
connectivity
landscapes:
broadband
access is
constrained,
unreliable
and
expensive.