NBN Co issues RFI to understand future LEOsat capabilities

NBN Co has sent a closed request for information to low earth orbit satellite providers to further understand their offerings.

The telco described the move as a “ϐirst step” in determining how to continue to serve its satellite customers into the future, with its current satellites scheduled to reach end of life early next decade around 2032.

Speciϐically, NBN Co is seeking to understand directly from the LEO operators what might be possible in light of the scale of the NBN satellite footprint and user base, which covers several hundred thousand people over nearly eight million square kilometres.

It also wants to understand whether a number of “unique obligations” can be met in order to supply services, including “price certainty, network and data sovereignty and options for local support.”

NBN Co is currently shrinking its satellite footprint from 400,000 to 300,000, in order to enhance the capacity of those remaining. Just last week NBN Co launched Sky Muster Plus, which enables uncapped data downloads.

NBN Co said it had a strong record on the introduction of new technologies, pointing to its testing of extensive long range mmWave.

NBN Co EGM Fixed Wireless and Satellite Jason Ashton said: “We are always thinking about how best to meet the evolving broadband needs of the households and businesses across Aus[1]tralia, including those in our satellite footprint.”

“We believe that low earth orbit satellite technology could be a part of our network in the future, so we are engaging with those that may be able to offer this as a service in order to ϐind out whether it is feasible.”

“It is critical for us to thoroughly examine all emerging technology options to ensure that that we make the most informed decisions, considering factors such as technology advancements, commercial sustainability and customer experience.”

“The NBN Sky Muster satellite network remains a critical part of our technology mix and we continue to invest and make enhancements to this service for the benefit of regional Australians.”

NBN Co expects that the assessment of information received under the RFI will take several months. Ashton told CommsDay that the RFI was speciϐically focused on 8,771 opens last issue LEO as NBN Co was already cognisant of the capabilities and possibilities of GEO.

“We are very aware of GEO, given we launched a cutting edge GEO satellite in 2015.

We work with Viasat, Gilat and others and thus have a wide degree of awareness around GEO. In regards to MEO, it sits between the two for latency and we want to look at the lowest latency solutions.”

“But this is going to be exhaustive process. LEOsat is new and there are new constellations. We want to know the roadmap for LEO across ϐive to ten years. And we’ve got a signiϐicant window of time before we need to make a decision.”

Ashton said that NBN Co had speciϐic and unique requirements. “We have price parity requirements and we need to know that the economics are sustainable. Are the earth stations in Australia? Does the data stay in Australia before it hits the internet?

Where is the provider based and who owns it? Can we get comfort around the network path, topology and resilience that doesn’t, say, put end users at risk from cyber security events?”

NBN Co will not disclose the LEOsat providers involved in the RFI due to conϐiden[1]tiality requirements.

Ashton said he was keen to emphasise that NBN Co will continue to optimise its ex[1]isting Sky Muster offering. The actual capacity—around 150Gbps across two satel[1]lites—is relatively set in stone, but NBN Co still has other options to augment the ser[1]vice, including expanding the terrestrial capacity which supports Sky Muster, improv[1]ing trafϐic prioritisation and introducing improved modulation and efϐiciency at “both the teleport and the terminal.”

Grahame Lynch, Commsday @ ASF2023

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